Putha shuns publicity

Thaththi President pays billions for same

| by Pearl Thevanayagam

(December 15, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Namal Rajapakse's proclamation that he is embarrassed by all the adulation the state media is giving his royal family is reminiscent of the late Princess Diana's tiff with the media that her image suffered due to to the paparazzi and the media.

File Photo - Mahinda Rajapakse with his Son who is go to be a "lawyer".

Princess Di courted the media when it suited her and blasted them when they revealed her clandestine affairs with several eligible men in tune with her pop-style diva image and understandably who were close to her age and intelligence (nursery teacher).Although in President's putha's case, the blighter is magnanimous and wants the state media to shower the rest of the politicians with some publicity.

Princess Di hails from a long line of aristocracy and closely related to the 24 carat English royal dynasty and Namal is but a generation away from the self-proclaimed pseudo- monarchy which replaced democracy.

Meanwhile, the government reveals that the State Media in Sri Lanka is raking in profits while the international media is in the doldrums. Remember the tale of the elephant and the mouse where the mouse asked the elephant,`did I hurt you'.

Cherubic Namal does not want the media to tell his thathi's starving middle-class and low income populace that Papa President imports Aston Martins and Porsches for sonnies and the near and the dear with our money while the majority of the population live below poverty line where siblings are compelled to share one egg among four.

Did someone say drag racing under the stars for VVIP brats to relax starts tomorrow?

And in the North and East where parboiled red rice was the staple diet they would be quite satisfied if they could get bread three times a day. Dambulla farmers can no longer sell their vegetables because they cannot afford plastic containers to send enough veggies to the capital and other towns.

Yet the kurakkan shawled President who proclaims he is the farmers' friend and who calls them the salt of the earth cannot allow them the luxury of packing their veggies and fruits in encasements intended the nature's way. In the West they would be paid one hundred times over for jute and straw packing as the world is now shunning synthetics.

Namal is Shirani's Godsend and nothing should stand in the way of his advancement and she, the former beauty queen, who managed to net a film actor cum human rights lawyer; hmmm (by the way what happened to the Hambantota Tsunami Fund which President directed)... into marrying her would move heaven and earth to protect the little darling even though his law degree was not earned through puththa's cerebral prowess but in effect through blackmailing the Law College hierarchies who did not have the spine to stand up to a bully of a President.

This brings to mind North Korea's Kim Sung 11 who while his subjects were fighting a futile war against the democratic South Korea and starving themselves to protect North Korea in the name of sovereignty was busy importing choice double malt whiskey and Hollywood blockbusters and blue films to while away his time.

Russia which is disintegrating and after the cold war is now facing a serious crisis when the suppressed people could no longer tolerate the lavish lifestyle of communist regime which overtly propagated equality to all but were in fact engaging in decadent vodka swilling and extra-luxurious banquets of choice game in their dachas as the populace stood in queues for toilet rolls, bread and meat is facing the wrath of its masses.

From Petersburg to Moscow, they are now knocking the walls down in Kremlin.and are demanding the end of an oligarchic regime which appears to be worse than the communist one under Brezhnev or his predecessors.

Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika came to an end with Putin's so called move towards democracy which splintered the Russian states and there seems to be no end to the solution of governance in the segregated states.

Could Sri Lanka learn a lesson or two from all the above cited examples or will it thwart UN war crimes probe through its lameduck LLRC to hoodwink the international community. LLRC's submissions need not come from Hansard. It is already archived in media files and ready for anyone to peruse.

There is absolutely no need to wait until December 21.

The clock is ticking fast for the kurakkan shawled president of the people and his clan will soon be eating only kurakkan and racing bullock carts once again in Hambantota and not Aston Martins and Porsches.