The Island Editorial

Subservience at its worst

10 September 2016

 

It is being argued in some quarters that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s recent comment, in Colombo, drawing a far-fetched comparison between the Vanni war and acts of genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica has inflicted severer damage on Sri Lanka’s image than anything else. We are convinced otherwise.

True, the UN Chief should have acted responsibly without making such statements. Had he dared say anything of that nature about the US or any of its allies, he would have been made to rue the day he was born. But, we believe the inability of Sri Lankan politicians to understand what the UNSG said in plain English and the servile manner in which they leapt to his defence have damaged the country’s reputation more than the ill-conceived remark at issue.

The UNSG himself must have lost whatever regard he may have had for this country when he saw the vain attempts being made by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to justify his ‘most unkindest cut’. He may not have expected the government worthies to be so subservient and take it lying down; he may have thought they would comprehend the gravity of what he said and respond to it. He must be thinking this is a land of morons or, more appropriately, a land governed by a bunch of morons.

Not even Minister Dr. Harsha de Silva and Deputy Minister Karunaratne Paranavithana—two of the few politicians thought to be unaffected by retarded cognitive development, which is common among Sri Lankan politicians—have been able to figure out what the UNSG has actually said. Sadly, they, too, have sought to defend the indefensible in the most unspeakable manner. Is it that they are acting dumb as they believe where ignorance is bliss ‘tis folly to be wise? Or, are they going out of their way to ingratiate themselves with the western governments and the UN bigwigs for reasons best known to themselves?

Both Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and Deputy Minister Paranavithana have sought to have us believe that the UNSG’s remark should not be taken seriously, much less reacted to, because it is not in the script of his speech. We are intrigued. If so, will they explain why the government transferred Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration and Management J. Dadallage on the basis of a verbal statement he made. He said he saw no difference between the Samurdhi handouts and the distribution of sil redi, for which some grandees of the previous government have been hauled up before courts. The top bureaucrat was subsequently hounded out of his job though he had not expressed his views in writing. The Supreme Court once reacted to a nasty remark Minister S. B. Dissanayake had made while speaking at a political event about one of its judgments, deemed it an affront to the dignity of the judiciary and threw him behind bars. What would the government pundits, defending the UNSG, say to this?

Paranavithana has said the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration is wary of confronting the UNSG on the remark at issue as it does not want to antagonise the UN. This kind of skewed logic reminds us of a foreign judge who had the audacity to say something to the effect that if rape was inevitable the victim should stop resisting and come to terms with it; he got into trouble for saying that, and quite rightly so.

Unless the government plucks up the courage to impress on the so-called international civil servants that they must not trifle with a member state in this despicable manner, there will be many more of them who want to take a leaf out of the UNSG’s book.