Ceylon Today Editorial

OF ADJECTIVES, UNDERSTANDING AND VIOLENCE

 07 September 2016

Known as the Transatlantic Horace, that intellectual Josef Brodsky once said, "What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. As the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective."

And the old Jewish saying has it thus: "There are none so blind that having eyes do not yet see, nor having ears, still hear not". In the Brodsky-an cultural and political meme, we need to jar the reader back to UNSG Ban Ki-moon's visit last week lest the all-transcending national relevance and import of his visit is left to become today's and to tomorrow's fish'n chips wrappings. Brodsky was wont to detest cold and devoid-of-passion literary, political and philosophical punditry that merely filled the pages of a book or newspaper, or kept you briefly enthralled via a film as is common today. Writing for writing's sake versus writing to prod passionate nationalistic fervour and motivate positive action by government and society at large are two entirely different forms of writing.

Ban Ki-moon, as we said last week, came here riding a high horse to appease the Tamil polity while at the same time making weak gestures suggesting the Lankan Government, to wit, the President and Premier, will possibly be given time, more time to settle the war crimes issues against the Rajapaksa's. You read it right there: "The Rajapaksa's". It's time that the local media stopped referring to war crimes issues, "AGAINST SRI LANKAN GOVERNMENT", and begin defining it in its truest essence: A witch hunt against the Rajapaksa brothers and their JO camp.

This is basically what's motivating the fear-driven Joint Opposition's endless assault on the government, barely short of physical violence, as despite assurances of 'more time' to prosecute war crimes and other crimes against humanity, time inexorably draws near to the day of reckoning at the next UNHRC sessions. There, at those sessions, the Tamil Diaspora and men of the calibre of Wigneswaran and those in the TNA, will ensure that the fullest powers of the UN System are arraigned in a manner aimed at, lynching the JO's leaders and all others deemed to be tarred with the same brush of war crimes and HR violation allegations.

When President Sirisena last Sunday said in Kurunegala that the new SLFP will be one devoid of criminal elements, he had this in mind and as perhaps a last resort, a gesture of his gentility perhaps, issued a plea to SLFP members in the JO to return to the party fold and help him rebuild an SLFP that can bring back the Party's glory days before leftist forces infiltrated and polluted that Party under the guise of socialist democracy. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Hebrew proverb quoted above becomes relevant here. How many hear and understand? How many see and perceive what they see?

In effect, Sirisena threw out a final olive branch, and those watching him deliver his speech would have been struck by the mixture of pensive, worried, even pained fears as he perhaps wondered how many sheep that have been led astray to save the guilty will in fact return to the fold.

Sirisena well knows that the best long term option for a balanced and 'politically right' Sri Lanka is a medium term partnership with accommodating elements in the UNP. I say, medium term; because future leaders waiting in the wings such as Sajith Premadasa might not remain silently tolerant of the Unity Government for much too long. While all eyes are on the SLFP split, that could be another potential political split waiting to happen. When that happens it's left to conjecture as to how far a new leadership will fit in with Ranil Wickremesinghe's and Sirisena's new western-weighted foreign policies.

It's very possible that as things are moving in the mainstream Tamil socio-political realms, here and abroad, that an US very possibly under Clinton, India, the UK and EU will, at the UNHRC sessions, drive home the objective of pushing through with what will essentially...despite all the confusion injected into the issue on purpose...ensure the setting up of a war crimes tribunal and get the OMP to play a major role in that pursuit.

This is the stark reality behind the facades of playing for time, reconciliation and the political hyperbole.

The President's seemingly innocuous speech at the SLFP's 65th Anniversary celebrations will without any doubt goad the Rajapaksa camp into action beyond adjectives. To them Sirisena's words would have sounded like apocalypse now!