Nasty politics in the posthumous letter of Lasantha

By H. L. D. Mahindapala

(January 20, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Three revelations have taken the gloss off Lasantha Wickrematunge’s last will and testament, written in the form of a letter accusing the Mahinda Rajapakse administration of killing him. First is the report in the London Times (January 17, 2009) which quotes Lal, the elder brother of Lasantha, as saying that “30-40 per cent was written by the staff” who worked on the draft of the letter which he discovered hidden in a safe after the death of Lasantha. Even the headline, AND THEN THEY CAME FOR ME was written by the staff, he said. This casts considerable doubt on the authenticity of the document. Suggestions have been made to check Lasantha’s computer to figure out when he wrote it and what percentage came from him.

Second, is the statement made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa that Lasantha “was one of his confidential informants on many occasions,” according to Lanka Web. It added:. “This disclosure confirmed that Lasantha was actually working as a double agent …..secretly working for the government while criticising the same government relentlessly through his paper Sunday Leader.”.

The President told the media publishers who met him that Lasantha was the informant who served him with secret information of the activities going on in the Opposition run by Lasantha’s other political friend Ranil Wickremesinghe. The secret of Karu Jayasuriya crossing over to the UNP was revealed to him by Lasantha. Also a recording of a conversation between the NGO mudalali, Kumar (salary: Million rupees a month ) Rupesinghe and the American Ambassador, Blake, was also handed over to him by Lasantha. Doesn’t this make Lasantha look like a double-crosser trying to feather his own nest more than an independent journalist acting without fear or favour?

Third, he had canvassed to get a slot for him Ranil Wickremesinghe’s cabinet in the event of the latter winning the 2005 election, according to the Sunday Island. His choice was to be the Minister of Justice. But in his obituary he wrote: “Many people suspect that The Sunday Leader has a political agenda: it does not.” How can he deny he has no political agenda when he had asked for and got a place reserved in Wickremesinghe’s cabinet? Besides, this confirms that he was not averse to deriving personal benefit by backing Wickremesinghe, or whoever was in power. Getting Sonali Samarasinghe, his present wife, appointed at Ministerial level to the High Commission in Australia through Ranil Wickremesinghe is another blatant example of using his newspaper to promote his personal interests. He berates Rohitha Bogollagama, the Foreign Minister, for appointing his favourites to diplomatic missions. But Lasantha could never see the beam in his own eyes.

All three items reveal that he is not the media messiah that he was portrayed to be posthumously. He was, as I said earlier, a political animal pursuing his self-serving goals using The Sunday Leader as the launching pad for his politics. He was primarily a politician with huge ambitions of muscling his way into the seats of power to push his agenda.

This side of his political machinations was not known to those who hailed his posthumous letter as the work of a martyr to the cause of media freedom. It was this doctored letter that echoed beyond the borders of the nation. Some of the Western newspapers carried edited versions of it. His letter also helped to add some tail wind to the wave of sympathy that swept mainly among the Colombo-centric chattering class and NGOs-wallahs who were tut-tutting in the cocktail circuit. Predictably, they were comparing it to the case of Richard de Zoysa – another middle-class idol.

There were, of course, genuine outpourings of sympathy following the shock of the death. No human being deserves to be killed brutally on the road for whatever reason. However, his death was marked by an obscene rush to politicize the tragic event. Within hours of his death in Sri Lanka it became a centre piece for all and sundry – from the discredited media rogue, Sunanda Deshapriya of the Free Media Movement, who was caught with his hand in the journalists’ till, to pro-Tiger agents like Dr. Brian Seneviratne of Australia who is facing criminal charges for destroying “precious vegetation” in Brisbane, Queensland – to grab it as a handle to assail the government.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Leader of the Opposition, who was looking around for some sensational issue to attack the government, after the failure of his “toot-toot” (car protests) –“juck-muck” (bullock cart protest) politics, was one of the first to jump into the bandwagon as if he has been the lily white champion of free media all his life. His intention was to turn the funeral and Lasantha’s death into a political protest that would, hopefully, overturn the government and bring him into power.

Despite his rallying call for all to participate, the crowd that followed the cortege was around 5,000, according to media reports. Lasantha’s death did not provoke any mass movements of wide-spread sympathy purely because his political agenda was narrow, confined mainly to the Colombo-centric elite in the English-speaking professional class. Neither his anti-Sri Lankan politics nor his personality ever ran down to the grassroots. He appealed more to the diplomats, like J. Weerth, the meddlesome German Ambassador, and to his mates in the NGOs than to the people who are facing the existentialist problems arising from the grim horrors of Tamil Tiger terrorism. He built his macho image essentially as an investigative journalist and, no doubt, he excelled in that beat. But there is more to journalism than digging into the dustbins of others.

As stated by Quadri Ismail, one of his admirers, Lasantha was “irritatingly one-sided”.

For instance, he exposed his bitter bias when he prominently placed the image of a gesticulating Buddhist monk on the mast head of The Morning Leader edited by his wife, Sonali. Oddly enough his wife, Sonali, the likely successor to the editorial chair, has now put his air-brushed face next to the image of a Buddhist monk in an aggressive pose.

It is doubtful whether Lasantha who was a born-again Christian fundamentalist (he belongs to the Assembly of God) would have preferred to be juxtaposed alongside the Buddhist monk who was placed there as an object of ridicule. The image of a Buddhist monk meant to denigrate Buddhism does not sit well with the image he was cultivating as a tolerant, multi-cultural liberal. It brings him down to the level of a twisted religious extremist. It is irritatingly incongruous with his self-proclaimed political pieties.

Besides, no paper that claims to be in the league of other national newspapers has ever put their symbols of hate on the masthead, especially if it happens to be a religious figure. It would be like The Jerusalem Post displaying on its masthead a picture of a bearded mullah carrying a Kalashnikov. It is not done. Yet it is these two editors, Lasantha and wife Sonali, who preach to others on the need for tolerance, multi-culturalism and respect for the beliefs of others! They pat themselves on their back as liberals who are committed to protect differences.

Obviously they tolerate differences only as long as they are not Buddhists or Sinhalese. To exhibit unashamedly their love and hate on the masthead of their papers speaks volumes about the politics and the direction in which Lasantha and Sonali were heading.

Predictably, after his untimely death there is a tendency to turn him into a cult figure. The first editorial written by his second wife, Sonali (Sunday Leader 18, 2009) borders on hagiography. But the new revelation made by President Mahinda Rajapakse to newspaper proprietors cut him down to the size of a wheeler-dealer bargaining the best deal for his own benefit and glory.

After the initial emotional fizz subsided his posthumous letter -- or at least 60 – 70 per cent of it, according to his brother, Lal --seem to be written more out of malice than concern for media rights and rights to dissent. The more I read his letter, which is now a public document open for critical examination, particularly because of its political contents, the more I realized that he has demeaned himself by stabbing his friend Mahinda Rajapakse in the back. Though one is expected to respect the dead (de mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that) Lasantha, regrettably, cannot be spared because his posthumous letter is a politically loaded document – loaded with his own brand of animus -- that demands scrutiny.

Superficially it seems to be a document pleading for liberal values. But the naked political agenda in it is to denigrate the Rajapakse family. He (and 30 – 40 per cent of his staff’s contributions) deliberately intended it to be a political document that would denigrate the Rajapakse family who are at the helm of affairs right now. Some parts of it dealing with the media are commendable. But the unsavoury parts, revealing his hatred against the Rajapakses, expose his bitterness, if not his hypocrisy.

He leaves no doubt in the minds of the readers that he intended it to be a devastating political tool to bludgeon his friend Mahinda Rajapakse with whom he dined and twined in conversations regularly. His political intention was to do a Lazarus by rising from the grave and accuse the administration of President Mahinda Rajapakse of killing him. Being the crafty political animal that he was, he knew it would be damning. As in life, he was trying to play politics from the grave.

This to me is the most obnoxious part of his letter. He also drags in the entire Rajapakse family, including the President’s wife, Shiranthi, and accuses them in a manner that diminishes not the Rajapakses in my eyes but his own stature as a man who claims to be the God-fearing, liberal, sanctimonious champion of all cherished values of humanity. His letter was angled in such a way to draw every drop of sympathy for him by demonizing the Rajapakse family.

But before going any further into this issue let me explain the angle from where I come into this scenario. I was never close to Mahinda Rajapakse as he was. I did not dine and spend time with Mahinda till late into the night. On the contrary, I was opposed to Mahinda Rajapakse, when he was running a campaign against President Ranasinghe Premadasa, on the lines similar to the one conducted by Ranil Wickremesinghe against him.

Then as now, my sympathies were with the democratically elected government of the day (however flawed it may be) battling implacable enemies who offered no viable liberal, or multi-cultural political alternative that was acceptable to all communities. The primary objectives of the lumpen Marxists in the south and the mono-ethnic extremists of the north, pursuing unrelentingly the violence endorsed in the Vadukoddai Resolution of 1976, were to impose their will in the name unattainable Marxist or racist utopias.

In both cases, an armed minority opted out of the democratic framework to violently suppress, oppress and persecute the people who refused to fall in line with their organizations which failed to gain power through the popular consent of the people. The survival of the state and its ability to withstand the seemingly overwhelming Pol Potist forces shines as a monument to the democratic, multi-cultural and tolerant spirit of the Sri Lankans.

It is a remarkable political achievement that stands out in annals of the developing countries some of which have caved in under the violent pressures battering its gates. Mahinda Rajapakse faced in the north what President Premadasa faced in the south. They both faced implacable, ruthless terrorists. In their own separate ways they ended the violence of these two irrational political maniacs. Their achievements will go down in history as successful contributions to end terrorist violence but also because they triumphed within the fragile democratic framework which could have easily collapsed under the pressures of overwhelming violence.

Lasantha was never a believer in the positive side of Sri Lankan political culture. Every Sunday his paper predicted the end of the world for Sri Lanka. He must have been the most surprised journalist to find Sri Lanka alive and kicking on Monday mornings and jogging along, in its own flawed way, to achieve goals that were declared unattainable.

Consider, for instance, the last paper he edited (January 4, 2009). The following abbreviated headlines and summaries reveal his anti-Sri Lankan venom more than the realities of the day:

1. “Total anarchy in the east…”

2. “Economic gloom.”

3 “Nation’s last hurrah”

4. “Karu Jayasuriya’s cross-over short lived” (Read this in the light of his leaking the news to President).

5. Diplomatic kingmakers of the past – Indian High Commissioner and the American Ambassador – have been shouted down and reduced to abject subservience (I would say “Hurrah”! but not Lasantha) and NGOs dispatched (I would say “Three cheers”! but not Lasantha.)

6. Even a letter writer concludes saying: “Where else can the country go but into the abyss of anarchy. God save Sri Lanka. –Arun, Dehiwela.”

Item 5 is a typical example of where he cat4egorically declares his preference for the alien forces to win, defeating the national interests. Perhaps, he must have been influenced by the doom and gloom that haunts the congregation in the AOG. His religio-political blinkers prevented him from acknowledging the remarkable politico-military gains on the battle field which is the key to the re-making of the future.

He substituted his biases and wishful thinking in the place of objective/independent analysis. He failed to interpret the trends of the times because he was bent on driving the nation into the failed politics of Wickremesinghe. For instance, he wanted the nation to go with Ranil Wickremesinghe when the nation was eager to go with Mahinda Rajapakse. Just before he was assassinated he ditched Wickremesinghe and raised pious “Alleluias” to Mangala Samaraweera as the next political messiah. More bizarrely, he wanted the whole world to hail the Tamil Tigers as a “liberation movement” – somewhat akin to the Second Coming of Jesus -- when the global judgment had declared them to be brutal terrorists.

Obsessed with his blinkered vision he was sinking in his self-created confusion. He did not know how to reconcile the contradictions facing him. He wrote: “The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have infested the planet. There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated.” He should have known that there is no way of eradicating the Tigers except with matching or superior force applied with commendable restraint to protect the civilians. And when President Rajapaksa applies that force he cries foul.

Furthermore, Lasantha accused the Army of being an “occupation force” in the north and the east. His political vocabulary consisted of borrowings directly from the hard core Tiger propagandists. Only they used the phrases of “occupation force” and “liberation movement”. What gainful incentive was there for an editor who claims to be independent and liberal to repeat Tiger propaganda in his editorials? What motivated him to rave and rant against the “crushing of the liberation movement” when he admits that it is “the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organization ever to have infested the planet”?

Clearly, he too was infected with the common virus that has ravaged the minds of the goody-goody saints of our time: the inability to distinguish between good and evil. This failing, among other things, does not make him the knight in shining armour that he is made out to be posthumously. It is his inability to comprehend rationally the nature of evil haunting our times that could lead him to categorize “the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organization ever to have infested the planet” as a “liberation movement”. The only other explanation could be that he was either morally confused or he was off the planet!

In his letter he was seeking martyrdom at the expense of the state he loved to hate. He walked the media stage flamboyantly as if he was the God-given answer to the problems of Sri Lanka. He thought that degrading Sri Lanka in each page of The Sunday Leader was the way to go. He got a kick out of it – particularly by hanging around sources of power -- because it made him look good. But, it is sad to say, that he was more obsessed with the theatricalities than with the essence of power that he craved to possess. He missed the bus every time he tried to get on it.

Events moved speedily away from him leaving him in the wilderness. All the politicos he backed – from those in “the liberation struggle” to Wickremesinghe and his side-kick Mangala Samaraweera – were all losers.

Once in Geneva, where we gathered to cover first session of peace talks between the Mahinda Rajapakse government and the LTTE, he shocked us by giving thumbs up to Anton Balasingham, the Tiger theoretician who was leading Prabhakaran’s delegation.

Bandula Jayasekera, who was the then Editor of the Daily News, was livid. If I remember correct, so was Dushy Ranetunga The Island correspondent. When I asked him why he did that he gave a lame excuse which referred, if I remember correctly, to his personal relationship with Balasingham. After that he returned and wrote reams under Sonali Samarasinghe’s name (she was never there) making out that the Tigers had outsmarted the Government delegation.

That was Lasantha – the man who gave first preference to his personal agenda and not to the historical dynamics shaping the events of his time. He had utter contempt for the nation, particularly Sinhala-Buddhists. Perhaps, his anti-Sri Lankan politics and his religion of Christian fundamentalism combined to make him what he was. Personally, he was an amiable man with a thundering ego though. From the accounts I read he must have been a loving father, good husband, and a kind Samaritan. But this account is of the man who stepped on the public stage to set an example to the fallen man. He was the moralist who wanted to correct the world without having the grasp of realities or the vision to undertake such a massive task. In the last analysis he seems to have been nothing more than a moth who was attracted instinctively to the flames of destructive power and got his wings burnt in the process.

I hope he found in his death the peace which his restless spirit could never find in his life time. - Sri Lanka Guardian