There IS A Difference Between “Due Process Of Law” & “Dereliction Of Duty”
Emil van der Poorten
How long the people of this country are going to keep “tightening their belts,” “grinning and bearing” etc. Etc. before there is another explosion like the first Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) uprising of 1971 is anyone’s guess. The fact that such as Rohana Wijeweera’s Che Guevarists could emerge from the ranks of the Rajapaksa Horde shouldn’t be cause for surprise if one were to examine the history of Sri Lanka in the latter part of the 20th century. Any student of that time or even those who were simple onlookers will recall that those who took up arms against the Sirimavo Bandaranaike regime were those, in fact, she had readied to rise against Dudley Senanayake if he had won the 1970 election or had chosen not to hand over power in the event of his defeat. These were to be her storm-troopers in the event of either of those eventualities and I distinctly remember the events after the I970 election,
particularly since it was my first experience of being politically “targeted.” Given that history, there is every likelihood of the young and disenchanted of this country turning against a United National Party (UNP)-led government that is very obviously playing “footsie” with the Rajapaksa Remnants and from which it is getting more and more difficult to differentiate it. The not-insignificant minority that is still clinging to the MARA satakaya, is, with relatively few exceptions, doing so in the sincere belief that MR is representative of some form of social justice. Every person at the well-attended rallies for MR wasn’t paid for with a “bath packet” and an “arakku bagey.” When that element of the current Rajapaksa supporters realise that MR is part of the problem and certainly not part of the solution, the fun is going to begin! Once the government of the day – United Front for Good Governance – or whatever other multi-initialled conglomeration claims to be in “opposition” to it – is exposed for what it is, they will try to “do something about it!” In fact, the chances are that history will force them into some form of rebellion. The fact that uprisings of that kind were met with ruthless cruelty in the past is not going to be any real deterrent. If one compares the two JVP-led rebellions – that of 1971 and the subsequent one in the mid- to late-eighties – it will be patently obvious that the cruelty, inclusive of the bodies of youth being incinerated on tyre pyres in 1971 did not deter those who took up arms in the subsequent rebellion. In fact, the second time around the JVP gave better than it got in 1971 in the matter of torture and wanton killing of the cruellest kind, by all accounts. Read More