Lets defeat pathological racism

Dont funk MR and accommodate peddlers

and crooks
Not enough seminal stuff to call MRs bluff!

by Kumar David-September 19, 2015, 7:54 pm

A deputy minister appointed

on 9 September is widely believed to be connected to the heroin trade. He
has not been convicted in a court, hence entitled to his rights, but what
government disinclined to suicide appoints such people to ministerial
positions? Another is said to have imported ethanol for moonshine; thugs
and crooks are alleged to be dime a dozen. Ali Baba was not the only one
with forty associates of disreputable genre! What will be the state of mind
of the police, law and order personnel, and the courts, faced with this
surrender by president, prime minister and their confidants (CBK, UNP
bigwigs, SLFP flotsam)? There were bad eggs the previous week as well;
the foul-mouthed thug who ruined higher education is now "empowering"
something or the other, there is a bookie in the House and someone made
billions from petroleum. Are slots reserved for deadly-Dougie and
debauched-Thonda?
This is neither a National Government nor a Coalition; it is a Freeloaders
Jamboree. Take one topic; the overlapping areas of finance, economy and
development, and enumerate the Cabinet, State (SM) and Deputy (DM)
Ministerial line up at the trough : Policy & Economic Affairs (PM), Finance
(Ravi), Industries & Commerce (Bathiudeen), Public Enterprises (Hashim),
Primary Industries (Gamage), Megapolis (Champika), Southern
Development (Sagala Ratnayake), Finance-SM (LY Abeywardena), State
Enterprises-DM (Eran), Rural Economy-DM (Ameer Ali), Policy & Economic
Affairs-SM (Niroshan Perera), International Trade-SM (Senasinghe),
Megapolis-DM (Alagiyawanna), Industries & Commerce-SM (Champika
Premadasa). Phew, fourteen feasting at a public funded trough! Worse, the
boneheads will be stepping on each others toes. Ranil, Ravi, Champika
and Eran should send the other ten on two-year all expenses paid furlough

and get on with the job free of vexatious interferences. Its the same in
integration & reconciliation, education & training and elsewhere.
Notwithstanding this initial outburst of spleen my purpose today is not to
vent outrage. One hears nothing much else these days but complaints of
infidelity to election promises and bewilderment at the multitude of moral
lepers in ministerial office. So I have changed track; I intend to take the
reasons given by S&R and their followers at face value and explain on their
own terms why their strategy will fail.
What reason do they give?
You wont find it in official pronouncements or speeches, but its one of
those things that can justifiably be called As everyone knows. It is no
secret that there are two reasons for including slime balls among the 90
freeloaders. First, it is said that the threat of Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR)
resurgence has to be scuttled (MR goons speak of a return to power in two
years) and the way to defuse it is to buy out blackguards with juicy
ministerial plums. The second peril is that MRs counterattack, when it
comes, will be racist inflaming of passions; burn baby, burn! Purchased
slime balls, it is argued, can be kept leashed if communal excesses erupt
This is not an exaggerated assessment of what may happen when; (a) the
economy turns down in the short-term and the screws are tightened the
balance of payments and the rupee are already much distressed; (b)
domestic investigation of war-crimes follows the damning UNHRC Report;
and (c) a new constitution offers lightly buttered crumbs to the Tamils.
These three red-flags will be waved and racist bulls goaded on by the
Wimal-Udaya-Dinesh-VasU (WUDU) djinn-quartet. Racial violence is a
worst-case, but it is a credible scenario. Then ladylike tea-parties are no
answer; lines must be crossed, alliances made and loins girded. I have no
problem with that and I wont waste effort fiddling good-governance
harmonies if Rome is about to catch fire. Now you may well ask: "So you
agree that the emerging scenario could be exceptionally dangerous, you
also agree that in this case exceptional measures are justified, so whats
your problem?" Thats the numb: These particular "exceptional measures"
adopted by the government wont work, they are the wrong ones, the
exercise will boomerang. Not compromise, it is confrontation that can
defeat treacherous politicos and disperse fascist mobs.

Concessions to Ali Babas forty+ crooks and peddlers will fail. The dirt is
angering the public (listen to Sobitha Hamuduruwo or the Asgiriya
Mahanayaka) and it is pushing ordinary folk back into MRs fold. "Whats
the difference?" people ask. Secondly, playing with fire is a gift to MR. S&R
are blind not to see that this fifth-column will mine the ship, set off the
explosives and sail back home to MR waters when opportunity is ripe. A
national government put together to develop and heal is one thing; a den
of self-seeking vipers is another. To summarise, there are tough challenges
ahead, my (a) to (c); one needs strength to address them. But the way
S&R have set about it will disillusion and drive people away and expose the
government to a lethal undercut at its weakest moment. Let me remind
you, I said my case would not be moral, but refutation of the strategy on
pragmatic grounds.
The end-game of racism
This country, at the moment, is at a conjuncture where with the right
approach (I have in mind not only R&S but also TNA, JVP and democratic
and left civil-society, the most important of the four) it can inflict a
crushing defeat on racism and proto-fascism. It can be a permanent rout
which will invert the hegemony of race politics of the last six decades and
crush the proto-fascism of the last ten years. The time has come when we
can make racism suffer a Waterloo from which it will not recover. We can!
But will we? That depends on leadership, strategy and perspicacity.
Why is there a possibility that Lanka has turned a corner; to be precise,
has the potential to turn? Racism has run its course; consciousness has
advanced a few steps; my evidence is that fewer Sinhalese buy the Tiger
behind every bush fairytale, more pluralism is evident, and it seems to be
more difficult to whip up a race mob the anti-Muslim riots fizzled out
despite Gota; even the JVP intervened against it, a sign of the times. On
the Tamil side the rejection of Wigneswaran-Gajan primitivism in August is
a signal event. A much larger signal was 8 January and 17 August though
President Sirisena still promotes army commanders accused of excesses in
the closing stages of the war.
A factor that expedited change was the end of the war and elimination of
the LTTE. Pro-LTTErs note; I am not passing judgement on the LTTE; I
have my oft stated views, but its another matter. What I am asserting is
the bland fact that the end of the LTTE wrought changes in the Sinhalese
psyche. To put it another way, most Sinhalese are no longer deluded that

the TNA wants to divide the country, the LTTE is biding its time to rise
again, or India is sharpening a scalpel to amputate Lanka. Educated
Sinhalese say: "Those silly village buggers, or backward locals etc think
such and such ha, ha, haa". (The speakers themselves of course were no
different a few years ago!). I am driving the point that there has been
some relaxation of long held prejudices. All who fought long and hard on
the ideological front can take credit.
The bigger background is a transformation of the world. Globalisation,
technology, thousands of kids studying for all sorts of external diplomas
and degrees, the Internet, easier travel, Middle East and diaspora money;
in a thousand ways the world has shrunk. The minds of the local petty
bourgeoisie, the aspirations of the middle classes, and the expectations of
the new working class which outnumbers the old working class, have
occupied new spaces. It is now a little more difficult to incite race violence
because it goes against this grain. Nothing can be ruled out given MR and
WUDU incitement, but the influence of racism and the highhandedness of
military seem to have abated to a degree. I am cautious in making these
assessments; lets see how the domestic war-crimes inquiry and devolution
in constitution making progress before getting more excited.
Racism has two roots,
material-social self-interest
and deep psychological ids in
group-collective minds. The
former is easy to
understand; business
competition, advancement at the workplace, personal jealousy "The boy
next door was admitted to university my son was not, damn those cliquey
examiners who doctored the marks". This material side of racism has
eroded to a degree in the ways I described.
The other root is deep-buried pathological irrationality in mass mentality.
For example there is no other way to describe the killing, torture and
sexual violence precipitated on Tamil civilians by the Sinhalese Army at the
end of the war (see Channel 4 "Sri Lanka Search for Justice" and the
UNHRC Report*). Primitive crowd-psychology is better understood in
anthropological than dry logical categories of coherent discourse. This is
even truer of religious extremism (ISIS for example) which seeks
justification in ancient texts, sanction in traditional social practices and
sanctification in the divine.

[*See http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/OISL.aspx]
Some of this irrational obscurantism will never disappear. If it does not
entail hegemony, intolerance, and oppression of others, just shrug your
shoulders and let it pass as endemic to the human condition. But a residue
of this dross is grouping itself into a MR phalanx and WUDU djinn-band
intending action. It has to be opposed and defeated as I was at pains to
point out last week (13 September). There I emphasised the importance of
confrontation and added that I had scant faith that R&S would face the
goons head-on.
However I concede some government leaders have numbers; obviously
Ravi Karunanayake, also maybe Ranjan Ramanayake, Harin Fernando,
Rajitha, Duminda Dissanayaka, Arjuna and others. If they have guts this is
their chance. If goons and djinn-bands spill on to the streets, civil society
will take the lead and the small left parties are solid; the JVP, maybe?
Confrontation in public, unrelenting prosecution of crooks and killers in
courts; thats the way to go. Namby-pamby coalitions and compromises
have led the public to fear a hidden agenda to let crooks and killers off the
hook. Mollycoddling racists is a blunder; they must be resisted and if they
incite violence, directly subdued by mass mobilisation.
Posted by Thavam