Jeyaraj Fernandopulle - A Tamil Perspective

“Tamils avoid going to these areas as far as possible purely to escape the indignity and harassment of being checked. Kadirgamar hardly spoke, read or wrote any Tamil whereas Jeyaraj spoke colloquial Tamil with apparent unease - and no more. I wonder if he read and wrote the language. He certainly spoke and wrote good Sinhalese. But to say he spoke and was able to make public addresses in Tamil "excellently" is to carry the tributes too far.”
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by Ilaya Segaran Senguttuvan

(April 27, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is not in good taste to speak uncharitably of someone who was buried only a few days ago - particularly since some of my comments can be misunderstood to be those that belong to the personal domain. But JF was a public figure and my comments in fair intent, are made in the interest of the public good. I count on a media culture that respects plurality and diversity of views to offer expression to my comments.

The natural post-Jeyaraj response of the general public is to think simultaneously in terms of both of him and the late Lakshman Kadirgamar - since both were both SLFP/PA heavy-weights; had Tamil names - and both were senior Ministers. It will be naive to compare their legal backgrounds only because they were lawyers. LK was a legal colossus - invited in his late 60s by other legal giants to enter the political fray who will hardly fit into that variety which the late Anura B was to pithily identify as "they came to politics in old Bata slippers on broken bicycles and now emerge out in Mercedes Benzes from mighty mansions".

Anura B was bemoaning a Lanka of a bygone era and time when the senior Bandaranaikes, Amarasuriyas and other respected families entered politics when they were millionaires to serve the country and people; but ended up losing much of their long-held wealth. The current variety, however, no longer consider politics from the service-to-the poor angle but as one of Anuras lineage unabashedly declared - "politics, is our business."

It certainly has been to many who began at lower levels in the national scale now are virtually in the trajectory of the Tatas, Ambanis, Mittals, Buffets, Slim Helus and the Li-Ka Shins. Why the media rushed to accuse the LTTE of the killing seconds after the event is puzzling since those tasked with the inquiry are still trying to disprove the theory of another alleged assassin/s from across the road having "thrown something" - as confirmed by two youth who have been witnesses.

Naturally, the police and the government put it on the LTTE minutes after the incident. But this is now a predictably boring routine with which the country and the world have become accustomed to. I am certainly not suggesting the LTTE may not have had a role. The signs of their brutal efficiency and professionalism in the killing is there for all the world to see. But how did Tamil-speaking (and Tamil-looking, if you will) persons (you need more than one to do this tango) get across to the Sinhala dominated Weliveriya via Wellampitiya/ Angoda/ Kaduwela areas where a fairly large number of the State armed militia are always day in and out manning check- points.

Tamils avoid going to these areas as far as possible purely to escape the indignity and harassment of being checked. Kadirgamar hardly spoke, read or wrote any Tamil whereas Jeyaraj spoke colloquial Tamil with apparent unease - and no more. I wonder if he read and wrote the language. He certainly spoke and wrote good Sinhalese. But to say he spoke and was able to make public addresses in Tamil "excellently" is to carry the tributes too far.

As mentioned elsewhere, snubbed in Geneva he was, but this was because, as the tale goes in reliable circles, he stealthily approached Thamilchelvam and proposed the LTTE would do well to speak to the President and the government via his medium since he was also a Tamil. Thamilchelvam, experienced, intelligent and shrewd smiled and suggested "that is a proposal that should come through the Sinhala government." This ambitious proposal of JF began and ended within seconds.

That he was clearly trying to enhance his candidature for PM in the eyes of the President is a badly kept secret - something the President is reported to have simultaneously assured DM Jayaratna, Nimal Siripala and Maitripala Sirisena while the current one is in pretty good physical shape. Well! one more will not do much harm, eh?

Why Jeyaraj was returned to the Gampaha District is only because there is a fair anti-UNP Sinhala vote there - as in most constituencies in the South. He fitted in perfectly since he came from the SLFP/PA List. If someone is to suggest the Gampaha Sinhala voter chose Jeyaraj because he was from the minority community is to fool yourself.

He certainly was no darling of the cohesive coconut estate-owning Colombo Chetty Brahmins of the area - elitist, staunch Catholic and UNP supporters. This exalted group considered JF - son of minor government official - parvenu and pointed out his truculent behaviour in Parliament for their isolating him from their ranks.

He gained local and international notoriety for his outrageous and controversial comments both within and outside Parliament - something that earned for him public opprobrium - if not antipathy. In initiated circles, he was nothing more than "a loose cannon" trying to please his political masters for his own upward mobility. The higher political hierarchy used JF's over zealous dramatics to their advantage.

Calling visiting high officials - Allan Rock Louise Arbour - and even UN-SG Ban-Ki Moon in far away New York - and other dignitaries as "terrorists in the pay of the LTTE" is both utterly irresponsible and in poor taste. If there was a LTTE hand in the killing it may have had something to with JF being unable to control his tongue when he went to India recently where he relentlessly attacked, in the full glare of publicity, the LTTE in Tamilnadu that has a large following and mass sympathy for the Lankan Tamil suffering. A Lankan minister with a Tamil name (whether he was emotionally such is another matter) berating the LTTE in Tamilnadu soil is, to say the least, undiplomatic and imprudent. While claiming to be Tamil, he went out of his way to justify enormous crimes against the brutal killings of Tamils in the island. He hurt Tamil feelings when he, unsolicitedly, justified the internationally-condemned police action of "throwing out hundreds of Tamils in Colombo because they had no papers" to Vavuniya - an aberration that will take a long time to be erased from the public mind.

A noted commentator referring to the late Lakshman Kadirgamar observed "LK got carried away by the praise showered on him as Foreign Minister for his patriotic zeal in conducting propaganda against the LTTE." If the LTTE had indeed carried out the Kadirgamar and JF killings, then their message is patently clear to the government "We will get any one of you, wherever and whenever we want" - We now learn even the President warned JF to be cautious since police intelligence had suggested he was a marked man. JF had flippantly dismissed this in the illusion he was an exceptionally well loved politician.

The LTTE has once again managed to get the higher levels of government in the scared mode. The government clearly views the JF slaying as a defeat in the on-going GoSL-Vs-LTTE battle which explains the exaggerated ceremonies inspired by government circles after the death of JF. In speaking to some visiting Tamil Lions from Colombo (he was a former Lion) who had expressed concern about his ultra-Sinhala political polemics within and outside Parliament, he has dismissed this with his characteristic laugh "I am in a Sinhala dominated electorate and I have to speak this language to survive."

This is hardly the ethics, responsibility and balanced language expected of someone who fondly entertained ambitions of being a future PM. In a TV clipping of his last speech made at Rakwana beamed on national TV on the evening of his death he said "They (the Tamils/LTTE?) can come to Colombo and the South and be safe; enjoy all rights here. But we cannot go there...." In this "we" and "they" syndrome JF exposed the transparency in his duality and unambiguously established he was part of the "we." Tamils have reason to suspect in this speech he was rousing the Sinhalese against them.

Of course, JF was not the first politician living a Jekyl and Hyde life and wishing to be comfortable in both worlds. Neither will he be the last in the degenerate and opportunistic environment of our present political culture. If he wanted to retain his Tamil background, he could easily have named his children with a Tamil identity. By choice, he did not. He wanted to play the majority card and still claim to be a Tamil - only when this was convenient and profitable to him.

In the final analysis, though he had engaged in many provocations to engage shared Tamil ire, we condemn the brutal manner in which JF died. One does not have to harm or kill another simply because you do not share political views. That is barbarism and has nothing to do with Tamil culture and behaviour.
- Sri Lanka Guardian