The President’s Name And Face
Malinda Seneviratne
President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that if anyone has done anything wrong that person needs to be punished, whether or not the concerned individual carries a picture of the president on his or her person. He pointed out that under cover of his photograph there are people who produce moonshine, operate buses without permit.
It is perhaps an indication of the power vested in the office of the Executive President in the 1978 Constitution that Mahinda Rajapaksa is called upon to resolve all matters big and small. This could also mean that relevant officials are either incompetent or scared to be found ‘erring’ in the presidential eye. The flip side, either way, is that if the all-powerful can right wrongs (and wrong rights too!) then the shortest cut to getting anything done (right or wrong) is obtaining presidential approval or endorsement, or else feigning to have got it.
We can blame J.R. Jayewardene for this state of affairs; after all the use and abuse of name and image is not a feature particular to this regime. We saw it during the tenure of Chandrika Kumaratunga and that ofRanasinghe Premadasa as well. If in the case of Mahinda Rajapaksa, name and image appear to have greater weight, it can be attributed to his signature achievement, that of freeing the country of terrorism.
On the other hand, the natural add-on of that victory has been enhanced in the process of stating and re-stating that obvious edge over predecessors, in and out of context, by friend and foe alike; the former for purposes of self-preservation and career-advancement and the latter in the rush to paint him into a larger-than-life monster. Both types have carefully avoided riders, qualifiers that offer the true dimensions of the man, that which is praiseworthy and that which is not. Read More
