Mahinda And The Monk
By Kusal Perera -October 24, 2014
Kusal Perera
“There are people who now say, I cannot contest for the third time. They say it at different places. But why bother? It’s the people who decide. Let the people decide that. Otherwise they can go to Courts.”
President Rajapaksa was quoted so, at a meeting of health sector employees called to Temple Trees a week or so ago. The Court that he says the people can go to is not that in Bengaluru which delivered a verdict on TN CM Jeyalalithaa. The Court he says the people could go to is next to “Saanchi Arachchie Watte”. That’s where political stooges ruined the system. Over the past decade or two, nefarious men and women with personal greed for power and position, ruled the nest at Hultsdorp, went into deals with the ruling head and had ditched the same too. Also on deals, with the next in line. To this Court Rajapaksa says, anyone can go for a ruling.
This country, to be precise the part of the country politically called the “Sinhala South”, lives to accept Sinners from high posts as heroes and heroines. Sinners that in any decent and civilised society would have been indicted for saying, “Pardon me. I did a wrong. If not for me, he would have even been in prison”. A public acceptance, a ruling was knowingly and intentionally given that went against the people. Given on the strength of the position held that goes unquestioned. It’s plain abuse of a powerful position, against the people. Yet the Sinhala South is there to applaud him and treat him as a hero. The Sinhala Opposition is naive and frustrated. It is opportunistic too. It provides red carpets to these Sinners to have their dirty linen laundered publicly and with admiration. Here is a Sinhala Buddhist society any sinner, any dirty crook could swap characters overnight and move on as heroes by simply opposing the Rajapaksa regime.
UNP will have to address the nagging social insecurity instead, if they want to outflank this “Mahinda and the Monk” combination, publicly and rhetorically opposed to each other, but not so in real politics – Picture courtesy: Reuters/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
The JVP does it, after installing the Rajapaksa regime and defending it right through war. It defended the Rajapaksa regime as patriotic and venomously labelled everyone who opposed the Rajapaksa regime as “traitors, LTTE informants” or as “NGO dollar crows”. For the JVP, there was no crime committed, no democracy curbed, for it was a necessary “humanitarian” war that was waged to eliminate “Eelam terrorists”. What then is wrong with this regime for the JVP to oppose it now? Only thing wrong in this regime for the JVP is that a single family takes home the whole booty.
