Devadatta quoting sutta

File Image: External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris

by Namini Wijedasa

(December 12, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Over the past two decades, External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris has shown no difficulty in adapting himself and his politics to diverse situations. Having grasped early on that one must necessarily sing for one’s supper without being the least shy about it, the learned professor has glided smoothly from one mantra to another without any heed to consistency, principle or, indeed, reality.

But even for Peiris, quoting Voltaire to the British is a bit much. It isn’t the use of Voltaire per se that is jarring to the nerves. It is Peiris’s deployment of this specific quote from Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Flair and condescension

Now, this was cited in London with such flair and condescension as if to say that Sri Lanka is a model of free speech. That people everywhere in this country could utter what they want and nobody would care; that the government would indeed applaud and welcome varying or conflicting viewpoints in a spirit of goodwill; that the state media and other mouthpieces would not assassinate the characters of those that dare cast aspersions on the government.

Obviously, Peiris lives in an alternate universe... or one that doesn’t extend beyond the fortified gates of Temple Trees. In Sri Lanka, there is nobody in the learned professor’s camp today that would defend to the death (or otherwise) anybody’s right to say anything but what the government wants said. Here, international journalists till recently were not allowed to travel freely to the North and may still require defence ministry permission in future. So quoting Voltaire to the British when the BBC was repeatedly shut out of Sri Lanka’s North is, to put it mildly, kind of rich.

Sri Lanka today is a country where voicing one’s disapproval of the status quo is identified as ‘dissent’. People that hold or propagate positions and perspectives that are unpalatable to the government — or, in short, deemed to be politically harmful to the continuity of the government or rulers — are labelled traitors, if not to the nation, then to the president. There has to be something wrong with the health of a democracy when opposition comes to be called ‘dissent’.

Meanwhile, what did Peiris (who loves his Voltaire so) do not long after his return from London? He quickly sank his teeth into the pleasant and rewarding business of lampooning Karu Jayasuriya for issuing a statement encompassing opinions that were contrary to those held by the government.

Among the matters raised in Jayasuriya’s statement was this: “It might be a point to ponder for the president whether he (president) and his administration has held the right to free expression in the same esteem that he expects the Oxford Union to.” He also said - and no doubt there are others who agree with him - that “it will serve us well to introspectively reflect on what our own government has done or in many cases not done to attract such sanctions in the international arena”.

Jayasuriya was promptly labelled a traitor for his submission. Wimal Weerawansa (President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s trusty “kokatath thailey”) criticised everything from the national dress Jayasuriya wears to the Sri Lanka pin he sports. Meanwhile, Peiris threw his Voltaire to the wind and hinted broadly that Jayasuriya a Tiger supporter. This is, of course, one slur the government repeatedly relies on because it remains marketable among the public. If you criticise the regime, you are somehow a Tiger supporter... never mind your message.

But now there are new developments in the case of the Oxford debacle. Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena is quoted in state media as saying Sri Lanka’s diplomats abroad should have done a better job. The London protest, he deems, was carried out by pro-LTTE elements because Sri Lankan diplomats attached to Sri Lankan foreign missions abroad “were inactive, lazy and ignorant.”

They may be all of those things but they are also this: “Predominantly handpicked and selected to foreign missions by the president and his henchmen with little or no prior training in diplomacy” and “more beholden to the appointing authority than they are to the country they represent or to the people whose taxes they scavenge off”.

But none of this matters. As long as you play your cards right, you’ve got it made for life. Ask Peiris. He might tell you... if he finds time in between singing for his supper and defending to the death our right to exalt on high his government.