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Mahinda, Ranil and The Big Picture
Mahinda, Ranil and The Big Picture
There is an ancient Chinese saying about missing the big picture by focusing on
the trivial. This is about the big picture.
The Mahinda Rajapaksa phenomenon is not unique. In human history such men
have existed. The French Political Philosopher Étienne de La Boétie spent a
lifetime studying tyrants of the type of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Tyrants whose
tyranny was with popular consent. He produced the classic- ‘Politics of
Obedience: The discourse of voluntary servitude.’
“The despot subdues his subjects, some of them by means of others, and thus is
he protected by those from whom, if they were decent men, he would have to
guard against himself; just as, in order to split wood, one has to use a wedge of
the wood itself.
“Such are his archers, his guards, his halberdiers; not that they do not suffer
occasionally at his hands, but this riff-raff, abandoned alike by God and man, can
be led to endure evil if permitted to commit it, not against him who exploits
them, but against those who like themselves submit, but are helpless.”
Countering the cynical realism of Machiavelli of his time and perhaps Dr. Dayan J
of our time, the French philosopher offers us a taste of juridical idealism that is
now lost on our failed or nearly failing Yahapalanaya expedition.
The deception, the grand looting of democracy occurs in cases where the people,
during wartime emergencies, “select certain persons as dictators, thus providing
the occasion for these individuals to fasten their power permanently upon the
public.” Once on track, the train hurtles through. The commonwealth is no more.
Everything belongs to the master.
Emperor Caligula made his horse Incitatus a Consul. Some thought him mad. He
wasn’t mad. He was making a political statement to the senate. He could do what
he damned well what he wished. Three years into the Yahapalanaya now turning
sour, we forget that we too had someone who ruled as Caligula did. He did better
than the Roman emperor. He made cousin Udayanga ambassador to Moscow and
cousin Jaliya his envoy to Washington.
In order to understand the big picture, we must not allow ourselves to become
mentally clouded and obsessed with one small part of the truth.
We need to see the big picture and not become obsessed with the small section-
the no confidence motion against the Prime Minister.
The sum and substance of the big picture is the return of the Rajapaksa family
centric kleptocracy either under the premiership of Mahinda or a presidency
under Gotabaya.
The purpose of 8 January 2015 change was to restore the rule of law. Have we
done that? The ordinary folk are confused. A General was jailed. He was then
made a Field Marshal. How do we explain that in terms of the rule law? Did the
court-martial that tried him observe natural justice? The Supreme Court held that
a court-martial is a part of the land’s justice system. Can the Rajapaksas, if they
get hold of the cookie jar, put our first Field Martial back in jail jumpers?
Have we restored the rule of law? There is a thin trace of doubt on the matter.
We have made some progress. But in which direction?
Investigations are made. Those investigated are free to move court for injunctions
and writs to safeguard their fundamental rights. Alleged offenders are indicted
and await trial. Unlike before, the alleged wrong doers are enlarged on bail. Some
fall sick and claim that their maladies are treatable only in foreign climes. Nobody
is guilty until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. This business of reasonable
doubt needs some explanation.
A lawyer once told a jury that the person his client stood accused of having killed
was about to walk through the courtroom door. When the jurors looked startled,
the lawyer asserted that if those jurors had wondered, even for one second that
the victim might appear, that belief constituted enough reasonable doubt for
them to find his client innocent. Now that should please our BASL president.
It only serves to endorse the truism of that great sage in journalism H.L. Menken.
“Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of
grotesque caricatures of himself.”
The Man who appointed the two who now refuse to return home for fear of
prosecution is yet to tell us why he did it or what the nation gained by his doing it.
Don’t blame Mahinda. Nobody has bothered to ask him. By not signing the no
confidence motion he is acknowledging a debt he has to repay.
There is indeed honour among thieves, bankers and politicians. They have one
thing in common. They deal with what belongs to us and they are all agreed that
we are suckers.
Ranil’s plight is different. Everybody wants him to explain about bonds. Added to
that, he now stands accused of not doing enough to prevent the boiling over of
the tribal cauldron in Kandy.
Here again Mahinda has proved to be the better tactician. He has abandoned
moral high ground and now occupies the commanding heights of Sinhala
supremacist nationalism.
In the age of digital communication, visual imagery matters more than intent,
purpose and even the end result. Mahinda Rajapaksa did not sign the no
confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. But there he
was all smiles oozing with confidence, submitting it to the Speaker at the head of
JO delegation of Parliamentarians.
Man is not what he thinks he is. He is what he hides. Mahinda hides what he is
with consummate skill. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in
a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that
authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it.