Ceylon Today Editorial

GOVT SITTING ON A POWDER KEG

18 January 2017

Western Province Chief Minister Isuru Devapriya had castigated the JVP alleging it was responsible for the aborted violence at the launching ceremony of the Chinese Development Zone Project in Hambantota. The UPFA's General Secretary went one better, claiming that the objective of the violent protest demonstration was to trigger "a Killing" as quoted in a daily last Friday.

If we are to go by what these two men, who know what's going on inside these political parties, claim as first-hand knowledge, can we link the two and come up with the conclusion that the JVP is a partner in this alleged process of trying to provoke a clash between mobs, (led by at least two Joint Opposition MPs) and the Police in which the organizers of this anarchy hope one of their men will be killed and thus give them 'reason' for wider anarchy.

These people were led by sitting members of Parliament to violate a Court Order, MPs who have sworn to uphold the Constitution and promote law and order instead of making attempts to spread anarchy by hoping to provoke killings and use that as a launch pad for anarchy in an attempt to break the back of the government.

This is beginning to look very much as though opposition forces which were rejected by a majority of the people in this country have begun implementing a decision to unleash extreme mayhem, to provoke the Police and security forces into responses which will result in at least collateral deaths and thus rouse the baser instincts of the easily misled masses who will then respond to their calls to anarchy, to become monsters bent on unleashing the pent up tyranny that was the hallmark of the previous regime, now a veritable pent up catastrophe waiting to explode out of control.

The government needs to get serious about the impending violence and chaos intended by the collective opposition and ensure that a legitimate and effective State response is put in place immediately to ensure these destabilization forces are not allowed to push through to fruition their tyrannical objectives by appealing to the baser instincts of the common man, turning them into monsters and unleashing them against peace, law and order.

Friedrich Neitzsche rightly observed that "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster." The faces of those captured on camera at the violence in Hambantota showed traces of monsters.

On Monday, Police arrested another 20 men who had been persuaded by their political 'leaders' to flout the Court Order in an open show of illegitimate civil disobedience. But where are the ring leaders? Are we not missing something here? Are we not as usual, as the President put it a month ago, simply making a mockery of the law by going after the sprats and letting the sharks go free? Until and unless the government reveals the name of the man to whom the IGP gave an undertaking, seen and heard by the country on TV, that he would not arrest a particular individual, the entire nation will have no option, but to have doubts about the integrity of the entire Police force. What's peculiar still is the fact that the Police Commission has also to date not seen it fit to order this issue being ironed out with a believable public statement. Was it a once powerful leading opposition figure that phoned the IGP and asked him to not arrest that individual? Who, really, was that man and what is he guilty of? The people have the right to answers to these questions if they are expected to place their personal physical security in the hands of the Police force, especially when it has a question mark over its integrity.

This is especially important in the context that we do not know whether this powerful person, as discussed in some Sinhala newspapers, is the most probable Opposition's presidential candidate at the next election. If that be the case, the government needs to overhaul the Police force before we find ourselves dragged down in the now planned tyranny that's euphemistically called anarchy.

The next President, if he is not from government ranks, will obviously be from Opposition ranks and can and will implement a radically different foreign policy should the Unity Government lose clout at the next general election. In such a scenario, we will witness a return to racial/religious supremacist ideas and a witch hunt against the government's members of an unprecedented level. One can also expect a socio-political upheaval of enormous proportions and that's an observation made on the basis of what happened to freedoms in this country post-2015.

The government needs to get serious about the appalling gravity in today's oppositional political thinking.

Daily News Editorial

Ven Athureliye's contradictions

18 January 2017

Ven Athureliye Rathana is not a monk who makes political waves like in the case of the late Ven Maduluwawe Sobitha, who, throughout his ordained life, made great efforts to transform the national polity and resurrect it from the pits it had fallen into. However as a member of the Jathika Hela Urumaya, which is the first Bikkhu body that entered parliamentary politics, the Ven Athureliya gained prominence for his strong sentiments on behalf of the country's Buddhists and his advocacy of a righteous Sri Lanka.

But the JHU, along with the Ven Rathana, was soon to learn that parliament was not exactly the right forum to carry out its reforms mission. The party was subject to a baptism of fire, so to speak, on its very first day in parliament where the Bikkhu members of the JHU were roughed up, ending with the Ven Kotikawatte Sri Sumangala being admitted to hospital. None of this setbacks were to deter the Ven Rathana though, who continued to be a strong voice in parliament against injustice and oppression of the state and what he perceived to be internal and external threats to Buddhism. It is on the basis of the latter and what he saw as Indian expansionism that the Ven Thera and the JHU decided to throw in their lot with Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2005.

The JHU, though, when it saw that Rajapaksa was deviating from the policies and undertakings agreed to, decided to throw in its lot with the Common Candidate, with the exception of a few monks such as the Ven Ellawela Medhananda, who stayed put with Rajapaksa.

Much water had flown under the bridge since then and today the Ven Athureliya appears to have adopted the same stance he took with regard to Rajapaksa in 2005, holding the government to its pledges to the people and opting to sever ties with the regime after admitting to be disillusioned by the path pursued by it. Noble as the Ven Thera's intentions are for the country, some of his demands are not in sync with what is good for the country in terms of its economic health and future progress.

One of Ven Thera's demands is for the cancellation of the Hambantota port project and to stay the ECTA agreement with India. Strangely, Ven Athureliya is against the government antagonizing India by the influx of Chinese investments to the country. This, by a movement which was openly hostile to India not so long ago and its raison d’ etre for supporting Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2005.

The Ven. Thera's professed mission to steer the government on the correct path, through a National Council he intends setting up, should not impinge on the economic strategies of the government that would benefit the country. In no way should this Council play the role of a pressure group to stymie the government's economic plans. Policy decisions affecting the economy should be strictly the province of the government.

Be that as it may, Ven. Rathana is still an advisor of the President and while being so he cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hound. He is, after all, a member of parliament nominated on the National List and as such has no moral right to make statements that would embarrass the government. The Ven. Thera is also full of contradictions. While saying that his movement is not a political party he says they have not yet decided on contesting the Local Government Elections. A Presidential Election will be an entirely different ball game, he asserts. Also while saying that Mahinda Rajapaksa was a spent force, the Ven Thera nevertheless invites all political forces to join his movement which he asserts is not a political entity.

Which begs the question. Can President Sirisena hope to have, as his special advisor, an individual, a Bikkhu notwithstanding, who has deemed that his (President's) Government is on the wrong path, failed to fulfill its promises and that he (Ven Athureliya) has decided to leave that self same government and sit as an Independent in parliament since the government has not taken steps to mend its ways? Can he also afford to have, as his adviser, a person who has all but attacked the government's economic policies by calling for the scrapping of the Hambantota port project and the proposed ETCA agreement? Can the President also have Ven Athureliya as his advisor after the latter had decided to leave his government and sit as an Independent MP in parliament, where, in time to come, will permit him the opportunity to make common cause with the Joint Opposition?

What is the legal position of Ven Rathana's exit from the UNP, from which party he was appointed as a National List MP? Will the UNP seek legal recourse to unseat the Ven Thera, which is unlikely, given the backlash this would invite? Or in the case of legal action being taken, will the Ven.Thera resort to the beaten track and claim he is still a member of the UNP though sitting as an Independent?

The Island Editorial

Obama’s swansong

18 January 2017

 

President Barack Obama has, towards the latter part of his second term, shown a tendency to get increasingly maudlin. Tears welled up in his eyes the other day while making his farewell speech. Last year, he refused to speak at his daughter Malia’s graduation lest he should get too emotional. In 2015, he was seen wiping away tears during a fascinating performance by Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.

It is toe-curling to see grown up men, especially political leaders, cry over seemingly innocuous matters.

The question is why Obama was not so sensitive when US military campaigns and regime change operations on his watch left thousands of civilians, including children, dead and maimed in countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. He had no problem with exporting missile-mounted democracy, as it were, slap bang to target states much to the shock and dismay of civilians there.

Obama is scheduled to give his final media briefing as the US President, in Washington, today. Questions he will have to field are not difficult to guess. There will be glib answers to curve balls. The hardest part of his final act will be handing over the White House to a person he has never missed an opportunity to vent his spleen on. It wouldn’t have been so difficult for him to leave that mansion of grandeur if Hillary Clinton had been able to succeed him.

Obama continues to betray his antipathy towards President elect Donald Trump. He has given some gratuitous advice to the latter; the White House should not be run as a family business! He has also told Trump, "After you have been sworn in, you will be in charge of the largest organisation on Earth". Obviously, Obama is still smarting from Trump’s baseless claim that the former was not born in the US.

In 2011, Obama stooped so low as to ridicule Trump before a distinguished gathering at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, described as the annual gathering of Washington political establishment and glitterati. Even a mock-up video was flashed to embarrass Trump, who looked on, stone-faced. Humiliation he suffered at the hands of Obama that day is believed to have given him the strength of purpose to run for president.

Obama is lucky that the US too big to be held accountable for its actions. Had the numerous human rights violations his administration is responsible for in other countries been committed by a smaller nation, its leader would have been tried by an international court for war crimes. Norway made a mockery of its Nobel Peace Prize by awarding it to Obama even before he had properly settled down in office. Anyway, that prize lost its meaning the day it was denied to Mahatma Gandhi.

The US as well as the world is lucky that American Presidents cannot seek a third term. But, some outgoing presidents find it difficult to come to terms with the term limit just like their counterparts here. President Obama declared a few weeks ago that if he had been able to run for President again he would have been able to secure a third term. If so, he should explain why he could not ensure the victory of his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who presented herself to the electorate as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer and ran mostly on his agenda, pledging to continue with his pet projects. He went so far as to describe the 2016 presidential election as ‘a choice about democracy and moral values that went way beyond politics — about the country coming together to reject a dangerous, self-centered cynic without the basic honesty that a president needs and the party that nominated him’. Has America rejected democracy and moral values by electing Trump?

While listening to President Obama for the last few weeks, one may have wondered whether he was an American of Sri Lankan extraction. For, he hasn’t been able to reconcile himself to the fact that he failed to foil his bête noire’s presidential bid and Americans elected Trump President. He now blames the Russians for having had a hand in Trump’s election. The last few days of his stay in the White House have seen the induction of US boots in Poland, a move widely seen to be aimed at riling Russia.

Speaking of a CIA report on alleged cyber attacks by Russia to influence the last US presidential election, Obama has said he underestimated their impact initially. It is a supreme irony that he says, "I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation ... and so forth to have an impact on our open societies." This exactly is what the US uses to engineer regime changes in other countries. If what Obama says is true then Russia has beaten the US at its own game!

Contrary to Obama’s claims, America’s biggest problem won’t be Trump. There are several unfinished wars the US has to contend with on all fronts. Obama may have got rid of Osama, but terrorism continues to threaten the US. Trump won’t be able to tame China by bringing American factories home or recognising Taiwan as an independent state. Economic prowess is the be-all and end-all of super power status. The biggest challenge before the US is to revitalise its economy. That is a tall order for any president.