Over To God Tirupati
By Shyamon Jayasinghe –December 19, 2016
Shyamon Jayasinghe
“Loudest voices will dominate, irrational, ill-motivated decisions will be made and the complex arena of politics will turn into a crazy circus”~ (Anja Steinbauer-Philosophy Now, March-April 2014)
Even a sensible, balanced and informed personage like our Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has fallen into what I call the ‘Tirupati Mental Trap.’ We used to observe how, time and again, former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa rushed to the Tirupati Deyyo in South India-causing a measurable consternation among the Sinhala nationalists who formed the core of his political support. After all, Mahinda was not as strong as good old Tirupati. However, I had all along borne the opinion that Ranil was more strong-minded than even Tiru.
No leader in the prosperous, modern part of the world believes in God, or Gods, auspicious times, charms or pirith nool. Imagine our Malcolm Turnbull tying charms on his person! Or Merkel in Germany, for instance! Some of them might mouth ‘God,’ but that is to be politically correct among a deferential population.
The Sri Lanka case is totally different. The machine of governance is like Plato’s ‘ship of fools.’ The country is simply capricious for good rulers with a knowledge of statecraft. The best equipped to govern will have to fight hard to stay in power. “Loudest voices will dominate, irrational, ill-motivated decisions will be made and the complex arena of politics will turn into a crazy circus.”
Here’s the relevant news story from today’s (19/12/16) Daily Mirror: “Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will visit the Lord Balaji temple at Tirumala in Andh ra Pradesh, on December 22, an Indian news agency PTI reported today. ‘Wickremesinghe will arrive here (Chennai) on Dec 21 for the visit,’ it said quoting officials referring to the Sri Lankan Prime Minister’s tentative itinerary. He will take a chopper from Chennai to reach Tirupati airport (Renigunta) which is about 130 kilometers from here and proceed to the temple by road from there, they said. Wickremesinghe is set to return to Sri Lanka on the same day after offering prayers at the hill temple, they added. He was in India in October last, for an official visit and had last year offered prayers at the Sri Krishna temple at Guruvayur in Kerala.”
Why do Sri Lankan leaders rush to Tiru and pray to the latter? I thought they had more of the grey matter given to them from the elephant-nosed “Lord Gana.”
Again, when I reflect, who else can save our miserable Paradise? The lot that it has fallen to over decades of ‘Avapaalanaya.’ (bad governance). As things are, Yahapaalanaya will always be a dream until Tiru steps in. Tiru didn’t help Mahinda probably because there was blood in the latter’s hands and enough cash in his pockets to help himself. Even Tiru has a moral code
Just look at the state of our country: We used to have a decent and civilised constitution before the watershed year of 1971. The evil British Empire was really responsible for that constitution although Kalu Suddas (Black-Whites) passed it in the new independent Parliament. The Constitution we had over those brief years was inspired by Lord Soulbury. Persons acceptable to their areas of inhabitance were nominated by the political parties to contest Parliamentary Elections. So we had decent MPs from the different electorates-be it Devinuwara, Galle, Baddegama, Hanguranketa, Matale,Pelmadulla, Jaffna and Chavakachcheri and so on. The simple reason for this was that these candidates had passed the first test of local popular acceptability. Only, basically good men could gain such popular clearance.The Constitution of JR in 1971 changed that with proportional representation. Party bosses and the corrupt political elite within parties did the picking of candidates. Upon election, these men and women (overwhelmingly men in a misogynistic society) wouldn’t care about a local population as they represented a ‘District,’ and a District was large enough to ignore local people and to pass the buck.
