Mr. Gotabaya, Take My Two Cents
Dr Jagath Asoka
Most of my friends ask me, “Jagath, what do you know about Sri Lanka? You have visited your own country only twice over the last 27 years; you do not know what is going on.” Well, I agree with them, partially. As you know, I do not have to be a fish in the ocean or drink from the ocean to know its flavor; all I need is just a drop. You are that drop. You lived in the US; you enjoyed and benefitted from all the freedoms—specially the Freedom of Speech and the Rule of Law—privileges, and comforts of the this country while you were living here, and we are still enjoying them because people like Martin Luther King sacrificed their lives to give us a better life in this—our adopted—country; we came here because we were fed up with our own country; this is not a perfect system at all; but Sri Lankans live here because they have a better life here than in their own holy land. You lived here for the same reasons until your brother became President. I know that all of my friends who are professionals here in this country left Sri Lanka because we were fed up with thugs, politicians, and their goons; the best have left; now, the thugs have become our leaders.
Even though we do not live in Sri Lanka, even though we are not Sri Lankan citizens, Sri Lanka is our holy land. Sri Lanka is where our hearts reside, where our souls linger, where our roots are, the roots that are invisible to the rest of the world. Sri Lanka is the sacred center of our eternal mediation.
Mr. Gotabaya, I have been following your career; I admired your humility when you did not take credit for winning the war, instead you let Sarath Fonseka bask in the glory of that historic, indelible victory; however, when he pursued his own political life, you jailed him. Sri Lankans know that Sarath Fonseka can be a loose cannon; mercurial, unpredictable, jingoistic, and even hubristic, but that is a different story. The international community still thinks that both you and Sarath Fonseka committed war crimes; however, Sri Lankans do not think that the final assault and annihilation of Prabhakaran were war crimes. The international community has to walk in Sri Lankan shoes to see through the Sri Lankan eyes.Read More
