Don’t blame the bishop; blame the archbishop!

by Mervyn Jayasinghe

(September 05, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) They say the bishop has put his foot in the porridge or something to that effect. The Anglican Bishop Duleep de Chickera should have sought his career in the precincts of St Thomas College, Mount Lavinia and remained as a part of the learning process there. He is immature to be a leader of a community especially at this time, a period of troublous and chaotic nightmare with terrorism in full steam in the country not just in Wanni alone nor only by the LTTE.

Apart from the bloody physical violence there is also incredible corruption that has become endemic and other forms of outrages that have virtually brought Sri Lanka on her knees.


As to what made Bishop de Chickera to call for a kind of peace zone in Wanni is imponderable for years of just that attempt including Ranil Wickremasinghe’s Ceasefire Agreement has turned out to be counterproductive. As a mater of fact all those efforts enabled the LTTE to re-form its might and forces and embark on still more violent terror actions. Terrorism has prevailed in the country too long.

The people of Wanni especially have had enough of it. They are cast between the devil but fortunately at the other end it is not so deep blue sea. They will certainly suffer a great deal with the Sri Lankan Forces moving into Wanni but what other options do they have under the circumstances? Their only hope to minimize their sufferings is to rise against the LTTE and for this, they have to be sure that the Sri Lankan Forces will live up to their expectations as a liberating force.

This is an enormous risk for them. If the Sri Lankan Forces fail, people of Wanni will be massacred and that’s for sure by the LTTE. This is the terror whip LTTE has been using for the last three decades.

There is no question of a peace arrangement with the LTTE. Prabhakaran will never honour it. Bishop Duleep de Chickera should have been aware of it.

At the time of his election as the Anglican Bishop of Colombo, there was a feeling that the Archbishop of Canterbury erred a great deal because there were certainly better and more mature candidates among the Anglican clergy for this high office. In the recent Lambeth Conference Bishop de Chickera showed himself to be a poor preacher; his theological reach was shallow. It was certainly a let down for the Anglican Church of Sri Lanka.

In the famed Disney movie “Bambi” Mother Rabbit tells Baby Rabbit that if you cannot say something good, say nothing at all.
- Sri Lanka Guardian