Tyrant And Tradesman; Gota & Dayan
By 
Sarath de Alwis
“I think Gota has changed considerably for the better since 2015, but even if he hasn’t, he is ten thousand times preferable to Ranil and his gang of traitors ….” ~ Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
That is pure poppycock. Brazen bullshit. Deplorable drivel. These musings are about political sophistry. To qualify it further, it is about Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka.
Political pundits and hair dressers have much in common. One rearranges hair. The other splits them. Given Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka’s present assignment in coiffuring, we must concede that he is an exceptionally gifted friseur. Yet, he fails to groom or dress up Gotabaya Rajapaksa as an acceptable presidential candidate.
Both Gota and Dayan are experts in abuse. Gotabya abused his power. Dayan J is abusing language in pursuit of Gota’s return to power – an evil objective.
The German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper (1904-1997) also regarded as the ‘philosopher of virtue’ has explained what Dr. D.J is attempting to do.
“ .. Abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word in the fertile soil in which to hide and grow and get ready, so much so that the latent potential of the totalitarian poison can be ascertained, as it were, by observing the symptom of the public abuse of language. The degradation, too, of man through man, alarmingly evident in the acts of physical violence committed by all tyrannies (concentration camps, torture), has its beginning, certainly much less alarmingly, at that almost imperceptible moment when the word loses its dignity.”
Now, that is what happened to us in the ten years that the Rajapaksas ruled our land. The word lost its dignity. [I am not suggesting that Sirisena and Ranil have restored its dignity. On the contrary they have made the ‘word’, the instrument of deceit. That is another subject for another day.]
In the digital age, there are lasting records of almost every word spoken or written. Chose the wrong words, and you not only share them publicly but rue the day when you are made to masticate them.
What did Dayan say? “There is something I want to reveal. A highly placed defence official has sent a SMS to me and asked me who I was to be criticising Israel. I said I was the Ambassador appointed by his brother.”
There can be no argument about who said what and about whom. The identity of the parties – the highly placed defence official, his brother and his brother’s choice of ambassador.
So, instead of fruitless fornicating with spiders let us agree that the reference is to Gotabaya Rajapaksa the then defence secretary and that he is a ‘cardboard’ Nethanyahu – committed to a Sinhala Buddhist version of ‘ Eretz Yisrael’- the ‘Singhe Le.’ Just as the Jewish nation, the Sinhalese are the chosen people and Lion land is the Promised Land.
Dr. D.J. points out in one of several rebuttals he has penned recently that the Colombo Telegraph report “proves that at a time when no one — including today’s Yahapalana heroes–had the guts to criticise Gotabaya who was at the zenith of his power, openly and on the record” he bearded the ‘lion’ in his den.” [Pun intended]
What does the Political Scientist DJ mean by the curious phrase ‘Gotabaya at the zenith of his power’? What happened when Gota was at the ‘zenith of power’? Lasantha’s murder? Keith Noyahr’s beating? Ekneligoda’s disappearance? Aluthgama pogrom? Rathupaswala carnage? The list runs long. Dayan knows what he is talking about Gota at his zenith.
Although Dayan has turned from political critic of Gota to his political marketer ‘Ranil represents Political Evil. Gota is the Exorcist.’
Ranil-CBK are administering political-ideological poison to the nation. Gota is the Antidote, Ranil-CBK-Mangala are committing sins and crimes against our nation. Gota is The Punisher. Dayan, the critic of Gota was indeed and in fact was shit scared. I don’t blame him. He knew his adversary, the exorcist, the antidote, the punisher very well. Dayan should be commended. At the zenith of his power, Gota was the antidote – the counteragent of democratic freedoms, the exorcist who rid Mahinda of the demons that haunted his conscience, and the punisher of those who dared to challenge the power hegemony of the family.
Dayan says, “I have written proof of this, and my friends also have written proof of this in case something happens to me”. So when Gota was at his zenith, Dayan did seriously consider that something may happen to him.
When Gota was in power, we did indeed enjoy freedom of speech. What we did not have was freedom after speech. Worse, we were cautious before speech. We had second thoughts before exercising free speech.
Dayan rightly points out that one cannot have the cake and also eat it. However, that is precisely what he did with Premadasa, Mahinda Rajapaksa and now with Gotabaya Rajspaksa. Premadasa was a populist tyrant. He had what was then called the Lawrence mafia which his successor D.B. Wijetunge dismantled immediately after he was sworn in. We are yet to discover the full extent of the grip of the Hendawitharana octopus that made even the brave Dayan consider the possibility of something nasty happening to him.
