| by Nilantha
Ilangamuwa
In case of fraudulent agreements,
only such shall be valid as are entered into by spies.
–
Arthashastra by Kautilya
( October 13, 2012, Colombo, Sri
Lanka Guardian) She was an icon who gave her energy to develop Sri Lankan
cinema. Perhaps it was the era in which the country was searching for meaning through
cinema to find and assert its uniqueness. However, she later joined the
government as a part of popular ‘patriotism’, eventually being installed as a
national list Member of Parliament by the President. Time passed. On many
occasions she has enjoyed the fruits of ‘patriotism’ and tried justify whatever
the government has done. She literally sold everything she earned in the field to
stand up for popular political trends. Then, suddenly, she resigned. However, her
resignation was refused by the executive President. There was nothing she could
do but obey what the executive urged her to do, which meant she was sworn in
again before the President, back to the same position. And, it is just another
example of the curse of ‘power’ and the behaviors of the persons who manipulate
it and are manipulated by it. Freedom beats freedom; She beat herself. When you
open Pandora’s Box no matter who you are you will be a victim.
There is no doubt, as is
continuously proven by history, of the destruction of the social system when an
autocrat is in power, as is happening in Sri Lanka. In the name of democracy,
we veiled the autocrat through elections, creating exalted “lovers of democracy.”
The bitter truth is that concepts such as ‘democracy’ create dilemma when
reality gives us a different taste. Elections in Sri Lanka are nothing but
fraudulent agreements between many parties who are cynically manipulating and
being manipulated by power.
The recent political evolution in
Sri Lanka can be understood as one in which one monster defeats another monster
to get rid of his personal difficulties. Once he accomplishes his game against his
counterpart, eventually, the monster enters other part of society to eliminate the
other layers, to establish “absolutism” and total elimination of dissent. Autocracies do not need to see the functioning
social system. Perhaps its main object is to eliminate the functioning system
to strengthen an ego-centric power, which is exactly what has happened to the
country. The 18th amendment to the constitution only took this
further.
Thus, the `leaders' of the people
could survive only by making people powerless and denying them any control over
their lives, thanks to the incompetence and brutality of the state. These developments are not accidents or
mistakes (Rajan Hoole, Tamils in Sri Lanka: A nation in limbo), but
were done deliberately. It was a major strategy used by the monster to control
and put the entire society in limbo.
To do conduct such felonious activities, effective methods had
and have to be propagated. To create trust in an autocratic system, one has to
destroy the trust of the existing system. That is why we are seeing huge
propaganda machinery conducted by the government while disabling access to the
voluntarily funded dissent of media outlets.
But few people are able to understand and daring to question how public
taxes have been used to wash our brain to further a political agenda. The
autocratic juggernaut and its rabid insecure supporters, has, on the other
hand, the task of buying ‘curtains’, so multitudes can be influenced, to change
something as common as common sense. This is the real motive behind
actress/actors, sportsmen, certain sections of the academia and others engaging
with the President Rajapaksa - not social service or politics, but expanding personal
wealth by appearing on stages of cheap political missions. And, this way they were able control sections
of society having an influential power for social change.
This idea has been used effectively in
many places all over the world. The regimes have urged certain individuals who
have power to change public belief to join in their consolidation of autocracy,
so then the regime can make the country into a blindness nation, not just a
blind folded one. I can do no better than quote the sage words of Noam Chomsky,
“….. State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no
deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned
by Hitler and many others, and it has;” (Noam Chomsky - Media Control - The
Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda)
In this situation, as Chomsky informs
us, “An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be
barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be
kept narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of
democracy, but it's important to understand that it is the prevailing
conception. In fact, it has long been, not just in operation, but even in
theory.” (Ibid)
Here again we can recall a character
named Arthur Abdel Simpson, in Eric Ambler's novel Dirty Story, regarding the
advice he received as a child from his father; "Although I was only seven
when my father was killed. I still remember him very well and some of the
things he used to say… One of the first things he taught me was, "Never
tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through". (‘On Bullshit', by
Harry G. Frankfurt). The present regime is not only going to tell a lie
but will continue to bullshit its way through. This social phenomenon is instantly
recognizable when one carefully considers the false fictional stories surrounding
the recent attack on the Secretary of the Judicial Service Commission that have
been spread by the regime.
