Shooting ourselves in the foot

by Shanie

"I saw a jolly hunter

With a jolly gun

Walking in the country

In the jolly sun.

In the jolly meadow

Sat a jolly hare.

Saw the jolly hunter.

Took jolly care.

Hunter jolly eager –

Sight of jolly prey.

Forgot gun pointing

Wrong jolly way.

Jolly hunter jolly head

Over heels gone.

Jolly old safety-catch

Not jolly on.

Bang went the jolly gun

Hunter jolly dead.

Jolly hare got clean away.

Jolly good, I said.

(December 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Charles Causley was a popular English poet who died a few years ago. The above was included in a collection of poems he wrote for children. But, as W H Auden once commented, there are no good poems which are exclusively for children. A poem may appear simple in language and style but it can contain ideas and meaning that are rich, complex and profound. Causley himself once wrote in a preface to a collection of his poems: "All poetry is magic. It is a spell against insensitivity, failure of imagination, ignorance and barbarism." ‘I saw a jolly hunter’ is one such.

One is reminded of this when we hear and see the many apologists who try to explain away the fiasco around President Rajapaksa’s recent visit to Britain. Apart from the disgraceful scenes in Parliament in which even senior ministers who should have known better were involved, it showed the level to which the political culture in our country has descended. It now appears that officials concerned with overseas visits of the President had advised against his undertaking this trip. Ignoring this professional advice, political opportunists and other sycophants wanted the visit to go ahead arguing that it would be a public relations triumph for the President. Maybe even the President himself was taken up by this angle to his visit. One sometimes wonders if the professional advice from our Foreign Service professionals actually ever reaches the President; or dies it stop with the political intermediaries.

A public relations triumph was probably the reason why the President decided to take a large delegation with him. This was not an official visit but a private one. The only official he was meeting, though in a private capacity, was the Conservative Party’s Secretary of State for Defence Dr. Liam Fox, an old friend of Sri Lanka, who had been visiting Sri Lanka regularly from time of the Cease-Fire agreement, as a guest of the Sri Lanka government. This meeting took place in the Sri Lanka High Commission. Apart from this private meeting, President Rajapaksa had no official commitments. Yet a near 100-strong delegation accompanied him to London at state expense.

President Rajapaksa also gave an interview to two journalists – James Harding and Ben MacIntyre – from the Times, London the day before he was scheduled to address the Oxford Union. That was also perhaps part of the public relations exercise, probably arranged by the well-paid public relations firm Bell Pottinger, hired by the Sri Lanka government. But even this interview does not seem to have turned out well. The journalists have written, no doubt with tongue in cheek: "For almost an hour in a suite in the Dorchester, Mr. Rajapaksa had painted a picture of his government and country that was as white and spotless as his traditional garb… His large entourage, ranged on sofas around the room, nodded in rapt agreement at every word."

Disgraceful Scenes in Parliament

Back in Colombo, President Rajapaksa’s fawning supporters had to find scapegoats to divert attention from the fiasco in England. Dinesh Gunawardene, a senior parliamentarian and Cabinet minister, made an allegation that opposition parliamentarian Jayalath Jayawardene had been present at the Heathrow airport demonstration protesting against President Rajapaksa – an allegation that has been shown to be unfounded. Dinesh Gunawardena did not stop at making this wild charge. He marched across the well of the House during the parliamentary sittings accompanied by some of his colleagues in what appeared to be an attempt to physically assault the opposition Member of Parliament. That was unpardonable conduct and it is encouraging to hear reports that the Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa is taking action in this regard. This type of unacceptable behaviour has happened before in Parliament as when the monk parliamentarians of the JHU were subject to disgraceful assault at the time when W. J. M. Lokubandara was elected Speaker in a previous Parliament; and no action was taken. This is why any firm action by the Speaker against the seniors would be welcome now so that it would both serve as a lesson to the junior parliamentarians as also serve to restore some dignity to the House.

It was Lord Acton who said power tends to corrupt and absolute power to corrupt absolutely. William Pitt the Elder, a politician and Prime Minister, refined that statement when he said power corrupts the minds of those who possess it. This is the only explanation that one can give for another senior parliamentarian and cabinet minister Susil Premajayanth’s diatribe this week in Parliament against UNP’s deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya. An unnamed journalist had given a banner headline in The Sunday Island to statement issued by Jayasuriya, which cleverly seemed to indicate that Jayasuriya was in favour of a war crimes probe. Based on that, Premajayanth makes out a claim that Jayasuriya was working against ‘the motherland’ and that his statement was issued to coincide with the report of the UNSG’s panel on Sri Lanka. He refers to a news item in The Island about the panel and it showed the clear connection between the two. In fact, The Island news item stated that the UN Secretary General’s panel was expected to submit a report in a month’s time. How Jayasuriya’s statement issued last week and the UNSG’s panel report to be released next month could coincide only Minister Premajayanth can explain.


"War Crime" Allegations

Any reader of Karu Jayasuriya’s statement, not the headline, can clearly see that Jayasuriya was not saying anything different from what many non-political and genuinely patriotic leaders of Sri Lanka have said before. It was in the national interests that there should be an independent probe into the allegations so that such allegations could be put to rest. For instance, the Bishop of Colombo Duleep de Chickera and the Vicar General of Kurunagala Kumara Illangasinghe in their joint submissions to the Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation have stated: "The military happenings during the closing stages of the war in April/May 2009 have received adverse publicity in Sri Lanka and the world. Serious allegations have been made about the violation of humanitarian law. Reported denial of access to a cross section of the media to this area of the war has deprived the public of information from a source that is independent of the state and also blurs these allegations. This is a sensitive issue that threatens the integrity of the state and the image of the nation and needs to be addressed in a participatory and transparent manner."

Senior ministers, indeed the government itself, must stop behaving as if they could do no wrong and cannot be subject to any criticism. The country can flourish only where dissent is encouraged. We need a strong Opposition not least because governments must necessarily make mistakes and such mistakes need to be exposed and corrected. History has shown that authoritarianism and intolerance are the first steps towards self-destruction. Politicians enjoying power must not be like the jolly hunter who, without the safety-catch on, end up shooting themselves; and for the people to say, ‘Jolly Good!.’ That safety-catch is tolerance and receptiveness to criticism, however bitter that criticism may seem.