Waiting For The Government To Collapse; A Pipe Dream Of Political Scavengers
“Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the back either. Just refuse to bear them.” ~William Faulkner
The official website of the President of Sri Lanka, reporting on a statement recently made by Maithripala Sirisena says thus: ‘even though some sections of the society entertain the thought that the present government would collapse today or tomorrow, he would not allow any room for it and he further stated that the Government will fulfill its duties and responsibilities within the appropriate time frame in accordance with the mandate of the people’. For a fantasy promoted by the defeated set of political vagabonds of the last regime, the collapse of the present administration remains just that, a fantasy, a pipe dream of huge magnitude- sometimes too sweet from which the dreamers refuse to wake up.
Power is a great aphrodisiac. Its lure is irresistible and amateurs blunder in its presence and blunder again and again, for without it, those who had it, once lost, look undressed and helpless. That is exactly how Basil Rajapaksa, who was once reckoned as the savior of Sri Lanka’s economy, behaved when he was the de facto second-in-command in the last regime. His fantasy collapsed overnight and when power departed from him, within forty eight hours of that monumental downfall of his pipe dream, he departed from the country and the people who gave him that power. The man was primarily responsible for the infamous impeachment of the then Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayke. When the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice ruled that Basil’s pet project Divineguma could not be implemented as he wished, the corrective measure was not aimed at the project. Instead they pursued the Supreme Court and its Head who ruled that the contents of the Bill could not be put into effect as per the draft presented to the Court. Vengeance born out of indignity imposed by the Supreme Court’s decision was too strong for Basil to ignore. Hence, he managed to persuade his brother-President and his cohorts in Parliament to impeach the highest judicial officer in the country at the time.
Basil had too much at stake in the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, both personally and officially. He was dubbed the architect of the election victories in 2005 and 2010. He operated from the Temple Trees, the official residence of the Prime Minister. During the 2005 Presidential election Campaign, he actively worked for his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory and became an advisor to the President. In 2007 he was appointed as a National List MP for the Sri Lankan parliament. When the 2010 parliamentary election was announced, Basil contested the Gampaha district at which he secured a resounding victory.
Prior to his entry into Parliament, Basil claims to have worked for the late Gamini Dissanayake when Dissanayake was the Minister of Mahaweli Development and Lands and Lands Development. However, according to a very trustworthy source close both to Gamini Dissanayake and the Ministry of Mahaweli Development, this claim is grossly exaggerated. According that source, the story is thus: in the early nineteen eighties, when the Ministry of Mahaweli Development was in full swing, Mahinda Rajapaksa had approached Gamini Dissanayake and solicited assistance for Basil to be gainfully employed someplace. Gamini had placed him under a major sub-contractor in Mahiyangana as a coordinating officer. He did not have any office in the Ministry nor did he have any official channel to Minister Gamini Dissanayake.
Contemporary history being distorted by those in power is one of the commonest practices in any society. That distorted history about Basil Rajapaksa apart, it is unmistakably palpable that his elongated ego has played a crucial role in the way he conducted himself whilst in power. He was operating between more than two offices. In the Presidential Secretariat itself, he had an office immediately next to that of President, large enough to entertain even a party of visiting diplomats. What follows such egoistic longings is personal avarice and greed for more and more comforts. Resorting to whatever means, both. legal and illegal, legitimate and illegitimate, right and wrong, ethical and unethical, moral and immoral, as was exhibited by the President’s brother who was responsible for a sizeable chunk of the country’s annual budgetary allocations, would ultimately entail unsavory results. A manifestation of such unsavory results was Basil’s departure from the country within 48 hours of the elections- according to reports of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s own account Basil had not kept him informed of this sudden departure to the sunny Los Angeles, USA.
