“When Perera came to Australia as the High Commissioner the Tamil Tiger lobby was ready to get him kicked out of Australia. The muddle-headed JVPers, frustrated by their bid to capture power in the disastrous Marxist uprisingof 1971, joined the Tamil Tigers. Together they had roped in Amnesty International, Christian Churches, NGOs, Asuain HC Human Rights Commission, media and even left-wing MPs to attack him - and attack him they did! They were lobbying collectively to send him back home.”
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July 02, Melbourne , Sri Lanka Guardian: Maj-Gen (retd) Perera joins "Maj-Gen" Ranil and arms dealers It took the Sri Lankan expatriates by total surprise when Maj-Gen-(retd) Janaka Perera, former Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Australia, joined Ranil Wickremesinghe, more so because he kept denying that he had any plans of joining any political party. Looking back, it seems appropriate for Perera, who was always allied ot the UNP, to join Wickremesinghe – a politico who has earned the rank of a Maj-Gen in his own right by being a "major" disaster to the nation and is in a "general" mess of his own. So the UNP now has two Maj-Generals, quite an unusual record for any political party!
The official news of Perera joining Wickremesinghe was a disappointment to the Sri Lankan diaspora, particularly those in Australia, because he was presenting a different face to them
when he was the High Commissioner in Canberra. Then he needed them to survive as the High Commissioner facing the formidable Tamil Tiger lobby. He won the hearts of the disapora in Australia by posing as an anti-UNPer patriot. The Sinhala Cultural Foundation led by Dr (Mrs) Olga Mendis and the active Society for Peace Unity and Human Rights with its national and international network threw their weight behind him trusting his anti-Tiger and anti-UNP stance. They even sponsored him as the alternative presidential candidate to Wickremesinghe when it seemed that he was set to the formidable presidential candidate.
But Chandrika Kumaratunga who blocked his promotion into the Army Commander's chair kicked him out of Canberra into Jakarta to make way for her crony, Kusum Balapatabendi. His career came to an abrupt end when Wickremesinghe's No. 2, Mangala Samaraweera, the then Foreign Minister, gave him the marching orders to leave Jakarta without even a roof over his head to stay out the last few days. Mangala Samaraweera recalled him a few months before his term expired in Jakarta. During the brief period Wickremesinghe was he Prime Minister he tried to creep into the Army Commanders's chair. But Wickremesinghe asked him to stay abroad for the good of the country. Without any qualms he has now joined the ranks of Wickrremesinghe, Kumaratunga and Samaraweera (the WIKUSAs).
Nevertheless, he has no reason to grumble because, unlike the poor soldiers who sacrificed their legs, arms and even their lives to make him a great soldier that he claims to be and got a pittance in return, he was given two comfortable postings abroad, And as ambassador to Indonesia he was defending Mahinda Rajapakse and his administration to the hilt. Now he has joined the WIKUSAs and is running down the administration which he praised a few months ago.
If he calls himself a patriot when he is on the government pay roll what should one call him when he condemns the very same government shortly after he leaves it? Is he the Johnsonian scoundrel whose patriotism depends on the quantum of benefits derived from the tax payers' pockets? Sri Lanka is awash with scores of so-called diplomats who defend the regime of the day - not so much the nation - when they live in the lap of luxury in diplomatic missions abroad and goes into hibernation or total opposition when they retire from the foreign service. There is nothing like a diplomatic apppointment to turn a villain at home into a patriot abroad. Most of our diplomats are patriots abroad who turn into traitors overnight after their return flight home.
The disillusionment of the SL expats was expressed unambiguously in the popular Lanka Web which headlined their outrage by demoting Perera from the zenith of a hero to "a despicable traitor". The expatriate community who promoted him as the polticial alternative in the grim days when Wickremesinghe seemed to be on the verge of capturing the presidential chair cannot yet believe that he has double-crossed them. The Australian expatriates who stood by him when he was under fire from the Tamil Tiger lobby and the ex-JVPers in Australia fired e-mails to him expressing their disgust about his unscrupulous high jump into the UNP.
When Perera came to Australia as the High Commissioner the Tamil Tiger lobby was ready to get him kicked out of Australia. The muddle-headed JVPers, frustrated by their bid to capture power in the disastrous Marxist uprisingof 1971, joined the Tamil Tigers. Together they had roped in Amnesty International, Christian Churches, NGOs, Asuain HC Human Rights Commission, media and even left-wing MPs to attack him - and attack him they did! They were lobbying collectively to send him back home.
His first reception outside Canberra was at Clayton Town Hall, Melbourne. When he came on his official visit to Melbourne he could not get out of the car without facing the Tiger mob waiting to pelt him with rotten eggs and tomatoes. The Tiger lobby was armed with a sizeable mob to humiliate him. The Sri Lankan patriots too were out in the streets challenging the Tiger-JVP front. They had prepared two plans: one to deceive the Tiger-JVP demonstrators and to keep them howling there and the other to hold the reception at a venue at Monash University for the man they believed was their hero.
The Tiger-JVP placards and slogans yelled: "Perera murderer! Perera Tamil killer! Perera Idi Amin!" It was pretty obvious that Perera had no chance of surviving that day if the Sri Lankan expats did not rally at Clayton to defend him. The main charge against him was that he was guilty of killing innocent Tamil and Sinhala civilians in the guise of suppressing JVP and Tiger terrorism. Australian Broadcasting Corporation was in full force hoping to capture Perera with his pants down. The Tamils were feeding ABC with their spiel. To counter the Tiger-JVP front the spokesperson for Sri Lankan expats was there to give the other side of the story. ABC also wasforced to take pictures of the counter demonstration. Otherwise it would have been one-way traffic for the Tiger-JVP lobby.
The Police were there to keep both sides apart. As it was a public event the Tiger lobby was ready to barge into the hall and make the event embarrassing for Perera in the full glare of TV cameras. The Sri Lankan expatriates were out to defend their hero. Before the car transporting Perera, under Police escort, could arrive at the the Clayton Hall the organizers moved into Plan B: they diverted the car to Monash University leaving the exhausted Tiger-JV hecklers to cry their lungs out against a target that was not there. The expats melted away from Clayton and reassembled at the Monash University Hall. As one speaker told Perera that night: "Mr. High Commissioner your played your part in saving Jaffna and we saved you in Melbourne!"
The expats put their necks out to save Perera because they trusted him as the man who had done the right thing and who would continue to do the right thing. Imagine their shock when he joined the UNP - the party that had betrayed the nation by signing the Ceasefire Agreement. Perera also knew the underhand dealing that Wickremesinghe had with the Tiger agents in Australia. Following the orders issued by B( )adman Weerakoon of his Prime Mininster's office, it was Perera who authorized the first class air fares to Charles Gnanakone, one of the key agents of the Tigers invited by the then Prime Minister Wickremesinghe for secret pow-wows in Colombo. Wickremesinghe was going all out to appease the Tigers. Perera knew how Wickremesinghe was selling the nation to the Tigers and he was against it at the time. Or so he told the expats in Australia.
Knowing all this, how can he explain his high-jump into the lap of Wickremesinghe? It would have been different if he joined President Mahinda Rajapakse, or the JVP with whom he claims to have a special relationship now, or anyone other party in the south other than the UNP. In fact, emboldened by the backing of the expats as a potential presidential candidate, he approached Mahinda Rajapakse on the eve of the last election and withdrew his candidature, pledging his support to him. In return he was, of course, expecting to be either the Defence Minister, or even the Army Commander - a position which was denied to him by the then Commander-in-Chief, Chandrika Kumaratunga. As he tells the story, his position was given by the corrupt Queen of Thieves to a drunkard with no record of scoring any military victories.
Eventually, thanks again to Mangala Samaraweera, the side-kick of Kumaratunga, he found himself without a job after he was recalled from Jakarta. Ever since then he has reacted viciously against the Mahinda Rajapakse regime. At every given opportunity he bad- mouths the Army Commander who has outgunned, outmanouevred and outdone the Tigers on a scale far greater than that of Perera's achievements. He just can't accept that his juniors like Fonseka and Gotabaya Rajapakse are setting new records which have overshadowed his records.
Perera, for all his achievements in Jaffna, is yesterday's man. The pity is that he is aspiring to be tomorrow's man by joining "Maj-Gen" Wickremesinghe. There is no heroism in it because (1) it is against all the principles of patriotism proclaimed by him in fighting the Tiger terrorists and (2) it is a spiteful act to get even the Rajapakses for it is apparent that he would not be attacking the Security Forces and the Rajapakses if he was kept in government service. At a time when thousands of humble but heroic soldiers are fighting for mere survival Perera who got the best deals for his services is expecting the government to reward him with more high-ranking jobs. But, of course, he will not admit this. He has put a spin on his motives to claim that he has joined Wickremesinghe "to serve the people."
It is laughable when he says that he proposes "to serve the people" by joining - of all people! -- Wickremesinghe. His plan is to get from Wickremesinghe what he can't get from the Rajapakse government: the portfolio of the Minister of Defence in the most unlikely event of Wickremesinghe forming a government in the near future. In the meantime, the people rallying behind him now are arms dealers, who are wining and dining him now hoping to get their cut later.
Wickremesinghe also promised this post to Maj-Gen. Lucky Algama, the brave soldier who won the east for the UNP under his command. Perera was a junior officer serving under him at the time. The Maj-Gen.(retd) Algama joined Wickremesinghe in his electioneering campaigns. One evening while he was seated at an election meeting, waiting for the arrival of Wickremesinghe (he was unusually late that evening) the Tiger terrorists got close to him and blew him up.
Wickremesinghe has long since forgotten the sacrifices made by soldiers like Lucky Algama. Such remembrances are irrelevant to his political agenda. He even scoffs at the gains by the Security Forces fighting in the east and the north. He deliberately downgrades the great sacrifices made all Security Forces to stop the war. His greatest claim to fame is his surrender to Prabhakaran's demands by signing the Ceasefire Agreement without informing his party, the Parliament, the President and the people of Sri Lanka.
Though Wickremesinghe says that he will no longer go back to the idea of federalism or the CFA again it is doubtful whether his word can be trusted. His critics believe that he did that as a political gimmick to win the backing of the Sinhala-Buddhist electorate. Even that trick has not worked for him to win the confidence of the electorate. His last desperate act is to throw in Maj-Gen. (retd) Perera like they way he threw in Maj-Gen. Lucky Algama into the fray. Wickremesinghe doesn't care whom he sacrifices as long as he can keep on dragging the nation with him into the precipice waiting for him. But should Maj-Gen. Perera march with him into that hole from which he can never return?
( H.L.D.Mahindapala: Editor, Sunday and Daily Observer (1990 – 1994). President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (1991 -1993). Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1993 -1994). He has been featured as a political commentator in Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special Broadcasting Services and other mainstream TV and radio stations in Australia. He read for his degree at Melbourne University and resides in Melbourne, Australia.)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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by H.L. D. Mahindapala
July 02, Melbourne , Sri Lanka Guardian: Maj-Gen (retd) Perera joins "Maj-Gen" Ranil and arms dealers It took the Sri Lankan expatriates by total surprise when Maj-Gen-(retd) Janaka Perera, former Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Australia, joined Ranil Wickremesinghe, more so because he kept denying that he had any plans of joining any political party. Looking back, it seems appropriate for Perera, who was always allied ot the UNP, to join Wickremesinghe – a politico who has earned the rank of a Maj-Gen in his own right by being a "major" disaster to the nation and is in a "general" mess of his own. So the UNP now has two Maj-Generals, quite an unusual record for any political party!
The official news of Perera joining Wickremesinghe was a disappointment to the Sri Lankan diaspora, particularly those in Australia, because he was presenting a different face to them
when he was the High Commissioner in Canberra. Then he needed them to survive as the High Commissioner facing the formidable Tamil Tiger lobby. He won the hearts of the disapora in Australia by posing as an anti-UNPer patriot. The Sinhala Cultural Foundation led by Dr (Mrs) Olga Mendis and the active Society for Peace Unity and Human Rights with its national and international network threw their weight behind him trusting his anti-Tiger and anti-UNP stance. They even sponsored him as the alternative presidential candidate to Wickremesinghe when it seemed that he was set to the formidable presidential candidate.But Chandrika Kumaratunga who blocked his promotion into the Army Commander's chair kicked him out of Canberra into Jakarta to make way for her crony, Kusum Balapatabendi. His career came to an abrupt end when Wickremesinghe's No. 2, Mangala Samaraweera, the then Foreign Minister, gave him the marching orders to leave Jakarta without even a roof over his head to stay out the last few days. Mangala Samaraweera recalled him a few months before his term expired in Jakarta. During the brief period Wickremesinghe was he Prime Minister he tried to creep into the Army Commanders's chair. But Wickremesinghe asked him to stay abroad for the good of the country. Without any qualms he has now joined the ranks of Wickrremesinghe, Kumaratunga and Samaraweera (the WIKUSAs).
Nevertheless, he has no reason to grumble because, unlike the poor soldiers who sacrificed their legs, arms and even their lives to make him a great soldier that he claims to be and got a pittance in return, he was given two comfortable postings abroad, And as ambassador to Indonesia he was defending Mahinda Rajapakse and his administration to the hilt. Now he has joined the WIKUSAs and is running down the administration which he praised a few months ago.
If he calls himself a patriot when he is on the government pay roll what should one call him when he condemns the very same government shortly after he leaves it? Is he the Johnsonian scoundrel whose patriotism depends on the quantum of benefits derived from the tax payers' pockets? Sri Lanka is awash with scores of so-called diplomats who defend the regime of the day - not so much the nation - when they live in the lap of luxury in diplomatic missions abroad and goes into hibernation or total opposition when they retire from the foreign service. There is nothing like a diplomatic apppointment to turn a villain at home into a patriot abroad. Most of our diplomats are patriots abroad who turn into traitors overnight after their return flight home.
The disillusionment of the SL expats was expressed unambiguously in the popular Lanka Web which headlined their outrage by demoting Perera from the zenith of a hero to "a despicable traitor". The expatriate community who promoted him as the polticial alternative in the grim days when Wickremesinghe seemed to be on the verge of capturing the presidential chair cannot yet believe that he has double-crossed them. The Australian expatriates who stood by him when he was under fire from the Tamil Tiger lobby and the ex-JVPers in Australia fired e-mails to him expressing their disgust about his unscrupulous high jump into the UNP.
When Perera came to Australia as the High Commissioner the Tamil Tiger lobby was ready to get him kicked out of Australia. The muddle-headed JVPers, frustrated by their bid to capture power in the disastrous Marxist uprisingof 1971, joined the Tamil Tigers. Together they had roped in Amnesty International, Christian Churches, NGOs, Asuain HC Human Rights Commission, media and even left-wing MPs to attack him - and attack him they did! They were lobbying collectively to send him back home.
His first reception outside Canberra was at Clayton Town Hall, Melbourne. When he came on his official visit to Melbourne he could not get out of the car without facing the Tiger mob waiting to pelt him with rotten eggs and tomatoes. The Tiger lobby was armed with a sizeable mob to humiliate him. The Sri Lankan patriots too were out in the streets challenging the Tiger-JVP front. They had prepared two plans: one to deceive the Tiger-JVP demonstrators and to keep them howling there and the other to hold the reception at a venue at Monash University for the man they believed was their hero.
The Tiger-JVP placards and slogans yelled: "Perera murderer! Perera Tamil killer! Perera Idi Amin!" It was pretty obvious that Perera had no chance of surviving that day if the Sri Lankan expats did not rally at Clayton to defend him. The main charge against him was that he was guilty of killing innocent Tamil and Sinhala civilians in the guise of suppressing JVP and Tiger terrorism. Australian Broadcasting Corporation was in full force hoping to capture Perera with his pants down. The Tamils were feeding ABC with their spiel. To counter the Tiger-JVP front the spokesperson for Sri Lankan expats was there to give the other side of the story. ABC also wasforced to take pictures of the counter demonstration. Otherwise it would have been one-way traffic for the Tiger-JVP lobby.
The Police were there to keep both sides apart. As it was a public event the Tiger lobby was ready to barge into the hall and make the event embarrassing for Perera in the full glare of TV cameras. The Sri Lankan expatriates were out to defend their hero. Before the car transporting Perera, under Police escort, could arrive at the the Clayton Hall the organizers moved into Plan B: they diverted the car to Monash University leaving the exhausted Tiger-JV hecklers to cry their lungs out against a target that was not there. The expats melted away from Clayton and reassembled at the Monash University Hall. As one speaker told Perera that night: "Mr. High Commissioner your played your part in saving Jaffna and we saved you in Melbourne!"
The expats put their necks out to save Perera because they trusted him as the man who had done the right thing and who would continue to do the right thing. Imagine their shock when he joined the UNP - the party that had betrayed the nation by signing the Ceasefire Agreement. Perera also knew the underhand dealing that Wickremesinghe had with the Tiger agents in Australia. Following the orders issued by B( )adman Weerakoon of his Prime Mininster's office, it was Perera who authorized the first class air fares to Charles Gnanakone, one of the key agents of the Tigers invited by the then Prime Minister Wickremesinghe for secret pow-wows in Colombo. Wickremesinghe was going all out to appease the Tigers. Perera knew how Wickremesinghe was selling the nation to the Tigers and he was against it at the time. Or so he told the expats in Australia.
Knowing all this, how can he explain his high-jump into the lap of Wickremesinghe? It would have been different if he joined President Mahinda Rajapakse, or the JVP with whom he claims to have a special relationship now, or anyone other party in the south other than the UNP. In fact, emboldened by the backing of the expats as a potential presidential candidate, he approached Mahinda Rajapakse on the eve of the last election and withdrew his candidature, pledging his support to him. In return he was, of course, expecting to be either the Defence Minister, or even the Army Commander - a position which was denied to him by the then Commander-in-Chief, Chandrika Kumaratunga. As he tells the story, his position was given by the corrupt Queen of Thieves to a drunkard with no record of scoring any military victories.
Eventually, thanks again to Mangala Samaraweera, the side-kick of Kumaratunga, he found himself without a job after he was recalled from Jakarta. Ever since then he has reacted viciously against the Mahinda Rajapakse regime. At every given opportunity he bad- mouths the Army Commander who has outgunned, outmanouevred and outdone the Tigers on a scale far greater than that of Perera's achievements. He just can't accept that his juniors like Fonseka and Gotabaya Rajapakse are setting new records which have overshadowed his records.
Perera, for all his achievements in Jaffna, is yesterday's man. The pity is that he is aspiring to be tomorrow's man by joining "Maj-Gen" Wickremesinghe. There is no heroism in it because (1) it is against all the principles of patriotism proclaimed by him in fighting the Tiger terrorists and (2) it is a spiteful act to get even the Rajapakses for it is apparent that he would not be attacking the Security Forces and the Rajapakses if he was kept in government service. At a time when thousands of humble but heroic soldiers are fighting for mere survival Perera who got the best deals for his services is expecting the government to reward him with more high-ranking jobs. But, of course, he will not admit this. He has put a spin on his motives to claim that he has joined Wickremesinghe "to serve the people."
It is laughable when he says that he proposes "to serve the people" by joining - of all people! -- Wickremesinghe. His plan is to get from Wickremesinghe what he can't get from the Rajapakse government: the portfolio of the Minister of Defence in the most unlikely event of Wickremesinghe forming a government in the near future. In the meantime, the people rallying behind him now are arms dealers, who are wining and dining him now hoping to get their cut later.
Wickremesinghe also promised this post to Maj-Gen. Lucky Algama, the brave soldier who won the east for the UNP under his command. Perera was a junior officer serving under him at the time. The Maj-Gen.(retd) Algama joined Wickremesinghe in his electioneering campaigns. One evening while he was seated at an election meeting, waiting for the arrival of Wickremesinghe (he was unusually late that evening) the Tiger terrorists got close to him and blew him up.
Wickremesinghe has long since forgotten the sacrifices made by soldiers like Lucky Algama. Such remembrances are irrelevant to his political agenda. He even scoffs at the gains by the Security Forces fighting in the east and the north. He deliberately downgrades the great sacrifices made all Security Forces to stop the war. His greatest claim to fame is his surrender to Prabhakaran's demands by signing the Ceasefire Agreement without informing his party, the Parliament, the President and the people of Sri Lanka.
Though Wickremesinghe says that he will no longer go back to the idea of federalism or the CFA again it is doubtful whether his word can be trusted. His critics believe that he did that as a political gimmick to win the backing of the Sinhala-Buddhist electorate. Even that trick has not worked for him to win the confidence of the electorate. His last desperate act is to throw in Maj-Gen. (retd) Perera like they way he threw in Maj-Gen. Lucky Algama into the fray. Wickremesinghe doesn't care whom he sacrifices as long as he can keep on dragging the nation with him into the precipice waiting for him. But should Maj-Gen. Perera march with him into that hole from which he can never return?
( H.L.D.Mahindapala: Editor, Sunday and Daily Observer (1990 – 1994). President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (1991 -1993). Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1993 -1994). He has been featured as a political commentator in Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special Broadcasting Services and other mainstream TV and radio stations in Australia. He read for his degree at Melbourne University and resides in Melbourne, Australia.)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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