Tuesday, July 14, 2015

State Terror In Sri Lanka: Why Did The Future President Go To A Coconut Estate?

By Darshanie Ratnawalli –July 14, 2015

Darshanie Ratnawalli

A recent article by Dharisha Bastians in Daily FT titled ‘Revolution Betrayed’ begins with an evocative paragraph.

“On 8 January 2015, once he had cast his vote in Polonnaruwa, Maithripala Sirisena and his family made their way to remote coconut estate in Kurunegala. The movement occurred at dusk, when the waning light helped to hide the small convoy of vehicles carrying the future first family to their refuge for election night. When he made the decision to contest Mahinda Rajapaksa for the presidency, Sirisena knew he had placed his life and the lives of his family in the gravest danger.”

Not only the first paragraph but the entire article aims at poignancy. My article intends to explore whether it achieves that or merely ends up generating hypocritical schmaltz. One thing has to be made clear. If Sirisena thought at that time that he and his family were in danger, no one, not even his worst critic would have been justified in dismissing his fears as unfounded and ridiculous. Politically motivated killings had started in post independent Sri Lanka way before the LTTE or the JVP. Even in the relatively halcyon and innocent days of 1959, stalwarts of his own party and government were charged with and convicted of conspiring and bringing about the assassination of Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike. Even now that the LTTE and the JVP had been eliminated from the equation as armed bodies, Sri Lankans continue to be plagued by fears of political assassinations.

I heard one such ‘fear’ anecdote from Malinda Seneviratne, the Editor of The Nation. It is associated with the 2010 Presidential Elections and the ‘fear’ in it emanates from Sarath Fonseka, the common candidate of the UNP led coalition against the incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa. In Malinda’s own words, this is the story;