| by Tisaranee
Gunasekara
“This is what
happens when men decide to stand the world on its head”.
Hannah Arendt
(Responsibility and Judgement)
( December 20,
2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Their greed, our apathy; their fanaticism,
our indifference; their brutal aggression, our embarrassing cowardice: such are
the basic ingredients of the baleful concoction which is seeping into almost
every aspect of Lankan life, undermining Lankan stability and destroying Lankan
security.
The unnatural
and repeated earth-tremors affecting Ampara and the (mercifully unsuccessful)
attempt to divide the Bar Association, the attack on the President of the
Colombo Magistrate Court Lawyers’ Association, Gunaratne Wanninayake and the
dangerous babblings about a ‘Hulftsdorf coup’, the disgracefully trite decision
to withhold funds from the UNDP-sponsored Annual Judges Conference and the road
bisecting the Yala National Park which has become a death-trap to the wildlife:
these are some of the many disasters generated by Rajapaksa-absolutism, in the
enabling atmosphere created by our indifference.
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The Rajapaksas are absolutists. Nothing less than total power and complete control can satisfy them. They abhor independent spaces. They are distrustful of and hostile to any institution which is not under their complete control. They work actively to undermine, divide and, if necessary, destroy anyone and anything standing in their way. No political corner or societal cranny is beyond the reach of their power-grab.
Miracles are occurrences which fall
outside/violate the natural order. In that sense, Rajapaksa Sri Lanka is
rapidly becoming a land of daily miracles. The tremors in Ampara, often
accompanied by massive noises variously described as ‘explosive’ and ‘booming’,
are not caused by natural seismic activity, according to the Chairman of the
Geological Survey and Mines Bureau: “These earth tremors are unusual, as they
occurred several times in one day, and some people claimed they heard an
accompanying loud noise…. That’s too unusual to be natural. That’s why we are
suspecting these tremors are manmade” (The Sunday Times – 16.12.2012).
In Ampara (like
in the rest of the East and the North) large-scale economic operations are not
possible without Rajapaksa involvement/sanction. Ampara is also the chosen
location for the next Deyata Kirula extravaganza. So the tremors shaking Ampara
cannot but be of Rajapaksa provenance, as much as the impeachment is or the
white-vans are.
Manmade tremors,
if ignored, can grow in intensity and destructive-power. Given Sri Lanka’s
minute size, the earth-shattering activities in Ampara can eventually impact on
the rest of the island. Will we wake up from our self-enforced slumber at least
then?
Commenting on
the Connecticut elementary school massacre, John Lee Anderson asked, “What does
it take for a society to be sickened by its own behaviour and to change its
attitudes?” (The New Yorker – 16.12.2012). That question would not be
inapposite in today’s Sri Lanka, caught between the hammer of
Rajapaksa-absolutism and the anvil of our collective indifference. We Lankans
have ample reason to be concerned about the present state and the future
trajectory of our country. Even if we do not care about politics, we should be
bothered by the erosion of the rule of law. Even if the mass arrests of Jaffna
students do not move us, we should be affected by the damage done to our
environment, to the point of creating unnatural earth tremors. Even if we feel
that the assault on lawyers and judges is not our problem, the arbitrary price
hikes and the wanton waste of public funds should outrage us.
We must realise
that none of us can remain islands of comfort and safety, when all around us
the skies are darkening and the seas are heaving.
The Absolutist
Project
The Rajapaksas
are absolutists. Nothing less than total power and complete control can satisfy
them. They abhor independent spaces. They are distrustful of and hostile to any
institution which is not under their complete control. They work actively to undermine,
divide and, if necessary, destroy anyone and anything standing in their way. No
political corner or societal cranny is beyond the reach of their power-grab.
Their victims vary from civilian Tamils to the war-winning army commander, from
Lasantha Wickremetunga to the weekly-dead at unprotected railway-crossings,
from the CJ to the pregnant leopard and the baby elephant killed by
speedo-maniacs on Yala’s ‘Death Road’.
To complete
their absolutist agenda, the Rajapaksas need the judiciary to commit hara-kiri
and be reborn as a Familial tool, as the military and the bureaucracy have
done; and the parliament is doing.
As the
impeachment travesty raced towards its prearranged conclusion, many a UPFA
legislator hurled verbal thunderbolts at the judiciary and proclaimed their
readiness to uphold parliamentary supremacy at any cost. But these same
ministers and parliamentarians unanimously approved a bill which would erode a
key power conceded to the legislature by Sri Lanka’s presidential system – that
of financial control. Denying the all-powerful executive president the control
over finances was one of the few balancing acts contained in the lopsided
constitution of 1978. This is why a three-judge Supreme Court bench (headed not
by Shirani Bandaranayake but by Shiranee Tilakawardana) “expressed reservations
over allowing the Minister of Finance to withdraw funds allocated for specific
purposes”; the bill which facilitates such a power-transfer “presents a direct
challenge to the onus of parliament to have full control over public finances”
(The Sunday Times – 9.12.2012). Instead of embracing this judicial decision
reinforcing legislative supremacy in financial matters, the UPFA majority in
parliament decided to the opposite. These self-proclaimed defenders of
parliamentary supremacy voted for a bill which undermines parliamentary
supremacy by allowing the executive to poach on legislative control of
finances.
The UPFA
legislators can contort themselves into veritable corkscrews to suit Rajapaksas
purposes, in the hope of safeguarding their powerless-positions; but the
Siblings are fickle towards all but their own kin. For instance, while ordering
UPFA legislators to attack the CJ and accuse the judiciary of plotting a
pro-Tiger coup, the Rajapaksas are taking pains to publicly distance themselves
from the impeachment travesty – obviously in an attempt to evade international
opprobrium. Mahinda Rajapaksa says he did not see the impeachment motion until
it became a done deal. Basil Rajapaksa says he too did not see the impeachment
motion until it was tabled in parliament. Namal Rajapaksa says he is not happy
with the impeachment. If the Rajapaksas are to be believed, the impeachment was
done without their knowledge, let alone approval.
The Rajapaksas’
‘Chinese Monkey’ act regarding the impeachment demonstrates yet again their
essential untrustworthiness. They will not hesitate to sacrifice anyone and
anything, from the SLFP to the Sinhalese to maintain themselves in power. Any
bureaucrat, military officer, judge or lawyer who succumbs to the Rajapaksas
today can face betrayal and abandonment tomorrow. They do not even have to
oppose the Rajapaksas a la Sarath Fonseka or Shirani Bandaranayake. Like the
serfs who signed and investigated the impeachment, they can be turned into
scapegoats and thrown to the wolves of national/international public opinion,
whenever necessary.
(Interestingly,
this inherent Rajapaksa unreliability and untrustworthiness seems to have been
grasped accurately by Beijing. A new Chinese loan of Rs 8.9billion for the
power sector will not be released until and unless Colombo pays a fee of Rs
627million to a Chinese insurance company).
When will we
understand that the Rajapaksas, left to their own devices, will do to Sinhalese
in particular and Lankans in general what the Tigers did to the Tamils? What
will make us shed our mantle of apathy and open our eyes and our mouths?
White-vans pursuing judges and lawyers? Yala denuded of wildlife? A manmade
earthquake which kills? A devastating financial crisis, surpassing the ongoing
(modern-day) Greek tragedy?
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