| by Shanie
( August 11, 2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Alan Paton, best known for his political novel Cry, the Beloved Country, was a South African anti-apartheid activist, political liberal, writer and poet. He began life as a teacher and was later in charge of a Reformatory for young African offenders where he introduced many progressive reforms. In 1948, Cry, the Beloved Country was published. Soon after, he resigned his job and took to full-time writing and to politics. In 1953, he founded the Liberal Party of South Africa. By then, the National Party, the architects of apartheid, had come into power and in the late sixties, Paton’s Liberal Party had to its dissolved because its membership comprised both blacks and whites which was against the apartheid laws. About this time. Paton also lost his devoted wife of forty years Dorrie Francis. A couple of years later, Paton married Anne with whom he lived in their home in Botha’s Hill until his death in 1992. In 1962, Paton had given evidence for Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately, Paton’s evidence was not enough to save Mandela from conviction under South Africa’s apartheid laws. Mandela had to serve twenty-seven years in prison before he was released. Paton died two years before South Africa’s first democratic election, following which Mandela was installed as the first elected President of democratic South Africa.
Mandela becoming the President of South Africa in 1994 had some parallels for us in Sri Lanka. That same year, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga was elected President of Sri Lanka after twenty-six years of Executive Presidency under UNP administrations. Like Mandela, she also came with a vision to ensure democratic governance, a plural society where all communities, including ethnic and religious minorities, would enjoy equality and justice, where the rule of law would prevail and where the poor and the marginalized in society would be treated with dignity. For a time, everything seemed on the right path both in South Africa and Sri Lanka. But over the years, the ground situation has deteriorated: there is widespread lawlessness, the Police in both countries, maybe for different reasons, seem unable or unwilling to enforce the rule of law and there is disillusionment among many that there is no real commitment within the political leadership for democratic governance.
Loving and Hating
Over ten years ago, Anne Paton, the widow of Alan Paton, wrote a letter that was published in the Sunday Times, London that she intended quitting South Africa to live in England. She loved South Africa with a passion, she wrote, but was terrified by the descent into lawlessness. She herself, then in her seventies, had been hijacked, mugged and nine of her acquaintances had been murdered. Mandela had referred to those leaving South Africa as cowards but one must have sympathy for an old woman living alone having to face the trauma of armed robbers using violence with the Police unable to provide effective protection. In her letter to the Sunday Times, Anne Paton had referred to a character in Cry, the Beloved Country who prophetically says, "I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating."
That is a fear that can become very real in many countries that emerge from decades of violence and hate. It is a fear that a country’s leadership, at all levels and in all spheres, must be aware of and consciously attempt to eliminate in society. It is this danger that we see growing and clearly showing itself in the correspondence columns of our newspapers. But deplorably it appears to be manifesting itself in those who wield power. What else are we to make of those sick minds who authorized and carried out the defacement of the meaningful street mural on Kynsey Road at the spot where an LTTE suicide bomber killed Neelan Tiruchelvam in 1999. It was a sick mind that ordered the senseless assassination of an intellectual who devoted his political life and scholarship to bringing about peace and harmony among all the people of this country. And it is only another sick mind that could have ordered the desecration of this memorial for peace. Immediately following Tiruchelvam’s assassination, his friends and associates conceived of the idea of a street mural that would symbolize peace and celebrate life.
Defacement of the street peace mural
It appears that permission was sought and readily given by all the relevant authorities for the mural to be painted on the road in 1999. The mural was a symbol of peace. It had colourful peace motifs created by artist friends of Tiruchelvam together with the slogan "Secure the Sanctity of Life’ in the three national languages. Twice each year on Tiruchelvam’s birth and death anniversaries, the mural was touched up. This year, it is reported that a group of volunteers with the help of the well known artist Chandragupta Thenuwara touched up the whole mural on 29th July. On 1st August, a group of about 15 men in civilian clothes, some in track suits, came in the night in two vehicles and defaced the mural. They returned over the next three days to make sure that not a trace of the mural was visible. Eye witnesses are reported to have seen two persons in military uniform inside one of the vehicles. It is also reported that eye witnesses have reported all this to the Police, including the numbers of the vehicles. But, so far, no statement on this deplorable incident has come from either the Police or those in political authority.
When Dr Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, President of FUTA, was intimidated at his house some weeks ago by persons claiming to be from the defence establishment, the Defence Secretary is reported to have told Dewasiri that he should have apprehended the intimidators and handed them over to the Police. One supposes that the same would be told to the widow of Tiruchelvam. She should have apprehended the miscreants and handed them over to the Police! What price law enforcement in our country?
Arrogance of Power
A few weeks ago the woman editor of a Sunday newspaper telephoned the Defence Secretary reportedly to get his side of the story regarding the intended switching of an aircraft on a regular flight to accommodate the pilot boy friend of the Defence Secretary’s close relative. That switching of aircraft would have meant the off-loading of over fifty booked passengers. In the end, no switching of aircraft took place. But the editor’s telephone call resulted in abusive and violent language being used on the woman editor. This column has commented on this before but we need to re-state the facts as a background to the recent statement issued by Friday Forum, a group of concerned citizens which includes Jayantha Dhanapala, the respected international civil servant, and Professor Savitri Goonesekere, a former Vice Chancellor of two of our Universities. The Friday Forum has been issuing statements on matters concerning better governance and decency in public life.
In this instance the Friday Forum commented: "We are all aware that there has been an incremental decline in the standards of public life, including the standards of conduct of some public servants. Many politicians are increasingly ignoring the law, and encouraging public servants to violate laws and regulations through questionable politicised decision making. We now have a senior public servant who is a close kinsman of the President, behaving with a politician’s arrogance and disrespect for the norms and standards that should be followed in public service and in administrative decision making. This is setting a dangerous new trend that can culminate in another level of abuse of authority, also encouraging the public to break the law."
Maintaining standards in public life
The Friday Forum’s intervention on this issue was editorially commented upon by the Sunday Island last week. The Editor said:"The Friday Forum comprises a group of much admired and respected persons whose standards are as high as their attainments. Theirs is labour aimed at improving the norms of governance and conduct speeding rapidly down the pallan that must surely be admired. The very fact that President Rajapaksa arranged a damage control dinner meeting at Temple Trees between his brother and some editors clearly indicates that the vituperative exchange is regretted even ex post facto. Given the facts of life, we do not see any development beyond allowing the whole episode to fade away from public memory as it soon no doubt will. But we do applaud those who strive to improve standards, however deaf the ears that refuse to hear them or blind the eyes that will not see."
We cannot agree more with The Island’s Editor. We need not just to applaud the Friday Forum’s efforts, but must put our collective efforts behind that group’s endeavour to raise the norms of governance and conduct in public affairs in our country.
 Alan Paton, best known for his political novel Cry, the Beloved Country, was a...){kind=link}
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