The Expensive Tragicomedy That Is Lankan Foreign Policy
“Be very credulous; be very persevering; reject all past experience, and do not listen to reason.”Advice given to those who seek healing through magnetization
( February 8, 2014, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Neither convincing, nor interesting, it falls between several stools. The moustachioed president who flashes a wide grin in the most inappropriate places and waves his hand (conspicuously clasping a gold-talisman) as he looks around for the next word; his brother, the defence secretary, whose attempt at presenting a benign mien is as convincing as a barracuda at its Sunday-pleasantest; the glib bureaucrats performing the most amazing verbal-gyrations to keep up with their political masters – the 28-minute documentary ‘Sri Lanka: Reconciling and Rebuilding’ evokes the vision of a far away tropical land misruled by an oriental version of Charlie Chaplin’s dictator.
