A visionary leader

President Mahinda Rajapaksa celebrates his 64th Birthday today. He was born in Weeraketiya on November 18, 1945.
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By Wijitha Nakkawita

(November 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A young man in a bush shirt and white slacks came into my office to meet one of my colleagues Obadaarachchi, a young graduate working with us. The year was 1970 and we were working for a senior SLFP Vice President, buddy to Premier S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the legendary Badiudin Mahmud, then Education Minister of the United Front government of 1970 of Premier Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

The young man was Mahinda Rajapaksa, then only 24 years, elected to Parliament from the Beliatta electorate of the Hambantota district, the rural hinterland written about by Leonard Woolf in his famous work Village in the Jungle described in poignantly touching detail of a long suffering milieu of villagers whose woes were taken up by the Rajapaksas of Medamulana, first by D.M. Rajapaksa.

Farmers’ protest

The Lion of Ruhuna who defied the colonial Government Agent when he led a march of farmers’ protest demonstration to the Hambantota Kachcheri, then Bastille of provincial colonial power. The farmers came in their loin cloths.

The English government agent had told D.M. Rajapaksa ‘Get out of my office.’ and he had retorted: “Get out of my country.”

The Rajapaksa family was the nuclear political family of the south but this young man of 24, just elected to Parliament, was a genial person that from then on always recognised people he had known earlier even when he reached the exalted office of Executive President.

Soon young Mahinda Rajapaksa started following the example of his uncle, the Lion of Ruhuna and his father D.M. Rajapaksa who was a very close associate of the SLFP leader Premier S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. For this nuclear political family of Ruhuna still holds the record of the largest number of members elected to the State Council and Parliament.
D.M. Rajapaksa, D.A. Rajapaksa. George Rajapaksa. Lakshman Rajapaksa, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Chamal Rajapaksa and Nirupama Rajapaksa were all elected from the same family.

Mothers Front

During the autocratic UNP regimes and especially during the 1989-93 R. Premadasa regime, no one dared to protest in public against the ghastly and bloody suppression of youth, corpses of tortured and killed youth tied to lamp posts or fences on the roadside, single or groups of youth killed and burnt often alive on tyre pyres.

At that time the young Mahinda Rajapaksa organised the Mothers Front to go to places of worship and ask for retribution for killing their offspring, mostly youth, even when lawyers like Wijedasa Liyanarachchi, who filed habeas corpus actions in the Supreme Court on behalf of compulsorily disappeared persons, were tortured at the notorious Batalanda housing complex where a minister of the Premadasa Government also occupied a house. Mahinda Rajapaksa dared to collect information about a large number of missing persons.

He took those documents via the Bandaranaike International Airport to Geneva but was intercepted by a senior police officer Kudahetty at the airport and was not allowed to take the documents.

Rally

No other parliamentarian dared to protest against the killings and disappearances but Mahinda Rajapaksa next organized a march from Colombo to the Kataragama shrine, Padha Yathra.

Surprisingly, hundreds and hundreds of the common people lined the Colombo-Matara road to view and cheer the marchers. There were two others who joined Mahinda Rajapaksa on his Padha Yathra march, the stormy petrel of the NLSSP Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Mahinda Abeykoon, an SLFP parliamentarian from Kandy.

As the march progressed more and more people joined it and finally when it reached Matara a public rally, with thousands attending, was held to protest against the killings and disappearances of youth.

No other politician or opposition parliamentarian had the courage to oppose Premadasa whose regime saw the most horrendous and large-scale killings other than those killed in the terrorist attacks over three decades. The years 1989, 1990 and 1991 were to see the worst bloodletting in recent history and to have the courage to stand up and protest against the imperious and often sick Premadasa regime was something no ordinary person could have done.

I had watched the progress of that young man who came into my office in 1970 as I too shared the views he held and I was most impressed by him not merely for his courage but also for his tenacity of purpose in all the political programs or events he initiated.

Then in 1994 came the People’s Alliance Government led by Chandrika Kumaratunga ending the disastrous political rule one of the worst in history. When he was appointed Labour Minister, he had worked with trade unions and the common man’s amelioration that he sought always was now at his reach.

He formulated a Labour Charter but the powers that be frowned on it and he could not enact laws to implement his proposal to guarantee the rights of the working class.

At the cabinet reshuffle, he was given the Fisheries Ministry and once again he proved that he was capable of reaching out to the hardworking and often poor fisher folk.

He started the Diyawara Gammana fishermen’s housing program and implemented several measures of improvement including the restoration of the fresh water fishing industry and proved his ability to serve the people of all walks of life.

Both as a student of politics and a journalist writing political affairs, I have had the opportunity to know four SLFP leaders and among them the present leader over many decades.

Courage

The first, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who became known as the Common Man’s Leader, set in motion the policies that were followed by the party. I also knew Wijeyananda Dahanayake who succeeded as Premier in 1959 after the assassination of Premier Bandaranaike but reversed all the policies of his slain leader.

Mrs. Bandaranaike, like President Mahinda Rajapaksa, pursued the policy of serving the rural people and the common man and both of them share the courage to face up to pressure from various international forces.

To have the strength of one’s conviction to make decisions about one’s country is what differentiates politicians from statesmen. To yield to pressures is the sign of weaklings.
National leaders are made of sterner stuff. President Mahinda Rajapaksa belongs to that category of leaders and his political decisions and leadership helped to defeat terrorism and it would also win – and was already winning the economic war.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo)

-Sri Lanka Guardian