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.