Ceylon Today Editorial

OF POLITICS, MORALS AND CONSCIENCE

30 April 2017

We have consistently articulated the fact that an overwhelming percentage of the population in this country has, since the immediate post-independence period, been consistently inveigled by opportunistic politicians, as well as sections of the anti-establishment clergy, into apparently legitimate expressions of dissent, ostensibly in the exercise of democratic rights.

We have also warned that dissent of late has had overt features in them which in effect make a mockery of that democratic right. Subversion against legitimate and creditable national development initiatives can hardly be called legitimate dissent.

Egged on by politicians lacking even an iota of political morality and social concerns, we've been treated to a surfeit of near violent, disruptive and destructive forms of dissent from peasants, farmers, trade unions, student unions, professional organizations et al with all of them sans exception being used by politicians deranged by their loss of power. Back of all the destabilizing slew of strikes, walk-outs and sundry protest demonstrations has been the objective of overthrowing this government. The reasons given have been mere excuses of parochial political ploys resorted to by politicians who themselves plunged this nation into a decade of an unparalleled rape of all our democratic rights and privileges. Dissent, legitimate and morals-based, especially from the media, was met not with restraint but with gun and sword as the country's best journalists were done to bloody death as they drove to work or returned home. Politicians daring to cry out for justice were gunned down within minutes of leaving TV studios after chat shows or attending some religious festival with loved ones. Men of dignity were hounded by scum, flown out to the streets of London to humiliate our envoy there. Others, multiple scores in the BASL, were beaten up by thugs for demanding the removal of dirty hands from interference in and humiliation of the judiciary. The armed services were brought to the gutters with lackeys ever willing to sign up for motorcycle or white van duty, to kill with brutal efficiency, anyone who dared speak up for truth and morality.

All of that hellish era came to an end when the government now in power was favoured by an electorate that was sick in its soul of the hideous monstrosity that the government of that day had become.

Let's make no bones about it: It is to regain that lost altar of power at which those narcissists strutted that all these strikes, protest demonstrations and sundry acts of socio-economic and political destabilization are all about.

We editorially though out aloud less than a month ago whether the government had abdicated its authority and mandate to rule, to secure the peace , development and prosperity of the nation, to restore its lost sense of morality, to restore to the nation every vestige of self- respect that it had lost.

In the face of this unending stream of efforts to destabilize the entire nation and the government that's masquerading behind a mask of legitimate democratic dissent, the government has to date shown a far from impressive performance in stemming the rot.

Dissent is a right to which one only has a rightful claim if and when the cause is justifiable and reasonable and when the objective in bona fide. This is far from the truth of what has generated the past two years of political mayhem masquerading as legitimate dissent. All the players in this dissent have clearly demonstrated the fact that they operate under the same law: socio-economic-political destabilization before the slew of murder, bribery and corruption cases against their handlers are proved and they are marched off to jail permanently. A leading academic, a legal luminary of sorts though lacking in moral fibre, recently had the temerity to question the legal and moral validity of the Office of Missing Persons, raising objection to the possibility that service and political leaders could under Constitutional changes be dragged before an international court to answer for proven crime. The argument is that murder and pillage are 'patriotic' actions when such crimes were committed under State impunity. He seemed to forget that men of integrity and moral substance who fought for all things pertaining to human dignity, for truth and justice, were gunned down like dogs on the streets for committing no crime. Those were the years when the government in power, not truth, law and justice, deemed a man a criminal and a "Desha Dhrohi" if he called a crime by its name and had the integrity to call criminals to justice, instead of extending that impunity into today's socio-political mainstream also.

Will the government relinquish its mandate?