PLAYING TO THE GALLERY

These days there are massive protests going on not only by the government but also by the opposition with regard to the appointment of a UN panel. The government members are threatening that leave alone the United Nations, no country in the world will be allowed to poke their fingers into internal affairs of Sri Lanka.

The opposition is also crying that the UN does not have powers to appoint such a panel.

The Foreign Minister and other influential ministers of the government are threatening that none of the members of this UN panel will be allowed to set foot on Sri Lanka.

And so, those sitting in the public Gallery are shouting Hoorahs and singing Hosannas, and clapping at this display of bravado by our politicians.

So, now everybody is happy. That’s the end of the matter. Or. at least that’s what they all think.

But nobody bothers to look into the origins of this problem. Nobody wants to study how past instances of a similar nature had been handled by those in charge. And nobody even thinks of learning any lessons from the past.

There is one thing that everybody should pay attention to in this instance. That is the fact that nobody could initiate legal action against Sri Lanka in any International War Tribunal. If such a thing is to be feasible, Sri Lanka should have entered into and signed a convention to accept its contents. Although such a Convention had been presented to Sri Lanka in the year 2003, Mr.Ranil Wickremasinghe who was the Prime Minister at that time had wisely refused to sign it.

At that time, those advocates of human rights who were in the opposition saw this act as a violation of human rights and isolation of the country from the international community. But Mr. Wickremasinghe did not budge an inch and refused to sign that convention. Therefore, no one has a right to file legal action against Sri Lanka in a War Tribunal now.

But since, the USA has signed this convention, it is possible for American citizens to be brought before such a tribunal. The government says Sarath Fonseka is an American citizen. The opposition says Gotabhaya Rajapakse is an American citizen. If these claims are true, then these are the people who should be afraid of going before a War Tribunal.

Therefore, it is clear that this talk of someone summoning Sri Lankans to go before a War Tribunal is pure imagination in the minds of the government, just to draw a red herring and to earn kudos from the public. So these protests about the UN Panel are also just a magic show aimed at satisfying the Gallery.

During the latter part of the eighties, the United Nations was initiating an investigation into human rights in Sri Lanka in response to a petition filed by the then opposition member Mahinda Rajapakse. At that time, what President Premadasa did was to send Ranil Wikremasinghe to USA as his personal emissary. Whilst in USA, Mr. Wickremasinghe invited the members of Human Rights organizations and the American Congress to visit Sri Lanka to see for themselves the actual situation. Also, the government at that time facilitated such visits by extending all due courtesies to them.

After visiting the country and getting a first hand knowledge of the situation, these members reported back to the United Nations that the actual situation in Sri Lanka was not so bad as Mahinda Rajapakse had complained and therefore, there was no need to appoint any investigative commissions.

It is indeed poetic justice that Mahinda Rajapakse who at that time went after the UN begging for investigative commisisons to be appointed to look into human rights violations in Sri Lanka; has to now shy away from facing such commissions himself.

If Mahinda Rajapakse wants to avoid facing such commissions, all he has to do is to do what President Premadasa wisely did at that time.

Otherwise, issuing threats to the UN and declaring that members of the panel will not be allowed to set foot in Sri Lanka is not going to take us anywhere and will only result in getting the country into a worse situation as far as the world body is concerned.

Because, although those members may not be allowed to come to Sri Lanka, the government might not be able to stop people who want to give evidence from going out of the country to other venues in order to do so.

So, at least now, what the government should do is not to play to the Gallery with its foolish acts but to act intelligently and diplomatically following the precedents.

What the Government has forgotten or deliberately ignored is that not everybody likes to sit in the Gallery and enjoy cheap shows and there are other people too who sit in Balconies and other classes, and observe such foolish acts with much disdain.

MONKEY TRICKS

In Sinhala literature of yore, there is a very interesting story of a monkey.
This particular monkey was very loyal to his King and was even prepared to sacrifice his life for the King.

But, alas, he was only a Monkey!

One day as the King was sleeping soundly, a fly who came from nowhere started to disturb the king’s slumber. The monkey, due to his sheer dedication to the King, thought that the fly was going to disturb the king’s royal sleep, took the King’s sword, and stuck. The fly, of course, flew away. But, the King died instantly due to injuries from the sword.
Unfortunately, thanks to the monkey brain, the King went into eternal slumber.

This story is well known to politicians of Sri Lanka.
But, what is unfortunate is that these politicians still depend on monkeys. And continue to take advice from monkeys and get cheated by monkeys. And finally, destroy their whole political careers by following advice from monkeys.

Chandrika Bandaranaike came into political field when no one expected it. Within a matter of a few months, she succeeded in becoming a Chief Minister, Prime Minister and finally the President, due to “Chandrika Attraction” which was spreading all over the country.

But, after a short period of 7-8 years, she started to lose that charisma. Currently, she has just become a non-entity as far as Sri Lankans are concerned, just being a name only and not as a character who rode the highest echelons of the country.
This happened to her because she took advice from the monkeys who were surrounding her. Finally, the monkeys prospered whilst Chandrika’s political life ended with the monkey’s sword.

These are very good lessons for everybody.

Today, what is happening to the government as well as the opposition is the same. The main opposition is in disarray with members washing their dirty linen in public even going to the extent of ignoring Lord Buddha’s wise words of not to take house fires out of one’s own house.

When such unfortunate things happen, the government controlled media is putting more fuel into the fire and make merry with headlines over headlines in their newspapers and increasing their profit margins.

Why did this happen to the Opposition. It can be summarised in just one sentence: due to taking advice from monkeys. Especially, the influential monkeys surrounding the leaders of the opposition parties.

But unfortunately, these leaders of the opposition are so naive that they cannot see the damages being inflicted by these monkeys to their reputations and their carreers due to their blind faith in monkeys.

Therefore, they carry on merrily until the monkeys kill them with a big blow from the sword.

Not only the opposition, the situation with the government is also the same.

President Mahinda Rajapakse had the golden opportunity, after the war victory, to unite the whole country and march towards real development coupled with a new political culture.
But the monkeys surrounding him did not allow him to do so.

What really happened is unfortunate in that there have been more and more internal and external divisons due to advice from monkeys.

Even the opportunity which presented itself at the first commemoration of war victory for reconciliation had been marred by the President’s speech which contained certain ideas engineered by these very same monkeys.

As pointed out by well wishers, if the President fails to look afresh at the problems facing the people and lead the country on a new path, it will be so unfortunate that neither the President nor the people would even be able to enjoy the fruits of the well-earned war victory.

It would definitely do well for the politicians on both sides of the divide to shun these monkeys and safeguard their political lives from their monkey tricks.

BUDGET BLUES

The people had high hopes for the 2010 Budget. It was during the last Presidential Elections that the President promised to increase the salaries of public servants.
It was also during the same Presidential elections that a slew of promises were given to take a number of steps to reduce the high cost of living.

When nothing happened even after the Presidential elections and when the people were eagerly waiting for fulfilment of those promises, the government yet again promised that all those relief measures would be announced in the forthcoming budget for 2010.

Even before the Budget, the prices of many essential items went skyrocketting. And there were hints in the government controlled media that relief is definitely on way for the consumers who are suffering due to high prices of food items.

But a few independent media were instrumental in letting the public know that whatever it says, the government will be forced to prepare the next Budget as per the dictates of the IMF. And obviously, the government controlled media never mentioned this fact.

The controlled media then started giving massive headlines in their newspapers saying that the Government was not prepared to “betray the country for a few more dollars by agreeing to the unjustified terms of the international community”.

Due to these headlines and the various speeches of the President and the cabinet, the unsuspecting people in Sri Lanka truly believed that the “proud father” i.e. the President would this time prepare a people-friendly budget for “his children” in the country.

Therefore, no one bothered to read through the IMF announcement of 21st May. Actually, the people thought why listen to “foreign uncles” when their own “Father” says things would be alright for them.

This is what the IMF said: The 2010 Budget of the government which aims at reducing the recurrent expenditure and considerably reducing the budget gap, would be presented to the Parliament soon.

Of couse, the government controlled media and other faithful followers in the media, and the general public did not even care to give any thought to that statement from the IMF – since when the “Father” promises something, why listen to “uncles”.

Then the IMF issued another statement on June 28th. It said: The strict implementatioin of this budget would result in revision of taxes and reduction in recurrent expenditure for the period under review, by giving careful consideration to the lapses which occurred in the past financial management.

The IMF statement obviously gave away the budget secrets in advance by clouding it in economic jargon that there will be no relief for the consumers in this budget and instead there will be more taxes and reduction in recurrent expenditure.

It did not stop at that. The IMF issued another statement concerning the Budget for the year 2011.

There will be amendments to tax concessions, increase in excise taxes, expansion of VAT and Income Taxes as part of the Budget for 2011.

In this background, the Minister of Finance (i.e. the President) did not even come to the Parliament to present the Budget speech.

Not only that, he was not even present in the country as he knew very well who the real architect of the Budget was.

But the sad thing is people like Wimal Weerawansa and Champika Ranawaka, who event went to the extent of demonstrating and protesting in front the IMF offices (remember the pledge to “unplug” ?), and those government controlled media, did not know who the real architect of the budget was – or pretended to be so.

So, no wonder the ordinary people were also in the dark as to the true origins of this Budget.

But, those in the know are aware that the real Father of this budget is a foreign Uncle !.

SJ & SJ (Shameless Jokers)

Arjuna Ranatunge was a “king” in the cricket field. He not only contributed heavily to the less experienced Sri Lankan cricket team to win mathes, but also brought great glory to the whole country by winning the Cricket World Cup. Those great victories on cricket field were a real consolation to the war weary public in Sri Lanka at that time. That Arjuna, who was a great pride to all of us, then fell to a trap laid by the then President, Chandrika Bandaranaike, and entered politics. After 6 years of doing politics, it is a pity to look at the sorry status he is currently in today.

He is now merely a candidate seeking re-election from a group belonging to the JVP.
There is no guarantee that he will win in the forthcoming election. So this is how a great hero in the cricket field ended up: as a political refugee.

Now it is Sanath Jayasuriya’s turn. And Susanthika Jayasinghe’s turn. Commonly known as SJ & SJ. It is their turn now to suffer the same humiliation as Arjuna did.
It is their turn to be the laughing stock of the public who had been keeping them on a high pedestal.

What an ordinary person cannot understand is, why a person of the calibre of Sanath Jayasuriya who had earned kudos internationally and in the process earned substantial amounts of money, should get into the murky field of politics. Is it to earn more money as the other politicians usually do. Or is it to become the President of the country one day?

Let us then analyse independently the reasons for such personalities to get into politics.

This type of “stars” always think of what is going to happen to them when they retire from their fields. They have already become VIPs in the country, so in a way they cannot go and mingle with the ordinary folk on road sides or go about buying their grocery. Because they are special people. In countries like USA, such retired sportsmen go and play Golf with their contemporaries or take up jobs as commentators on TV and Radio. Or else, start a sports academy with their own money to coach poor students. Or write a book.

But, our guys are incapable of doing any of these. So, the best thing they could do is to get into Politics: especially in a country like Sri Lanka, politics is the only “profession” (if one could call it that) where no basic qualification or experience in any field is required. One only needs to look at all sorts of actors and actresses choosing to enter politics when they are at the tail-end of their careers.

They feel that they cannot behave like ordinary citizens because they are “stars” It is the ordinary sports lovers and spectators who made them in to “stars”. They, therefore, feel that they should not be second to the youngsters who enter their particular fields as new comers. That’s exactly why cricketers like Sanath Jayasuriya still try to hang on in the team – if not through the selection board, then through presidential directives!.

Generally, parents and elders say that youngsters should take over from them when they become old. But, in the case of these stars like Sanath and Susanthika, they never think like that and dread even to think along those lines, and still try to hang on to their particular positions in their chosen fields. According to their theories, even though the flesh is weak, the mind is willing !

It is this mentality of the “stars” that crooked politicians like Chandrika and Mahinda take advantage of. The reason being that with such a mentality, they easilly fall prey to the machinations of corrupt politicians. These politicians also know that if such “stars” win elections and go to the parliament, it is a very easy thing to control them as they do not know any “poli-tricks” and also they have no strong base in their political parties.

It is really funny that members of parliament are known as “law makers” . One wonders what legislative knowledge such uneducated “stars” have to function as law makers. Having a bunch of such jokers in the parliament is a great boon to the experienced politicians to take everybody for a right royal ride, while at the same time enjoying all the luxuries and making loads of money. While this goes on, all what the ordinary man and woman who voted them into power can do is to gaze at the sky to see the “stars”

One could only think of Sanath and Susanthika as those who betrayed the adulation of the general public for their own personal benefit.

And with such shameless acts, they even betrayed the souls of those who adulated them as “stars”.