The Power Of Evil: Rajapaksa’s Do-Or-Die War & The Sajith Subplot
Shyamon Jayasinghe
“The chain of events that must now follow along the lines of the logic inherent in Sirisena’s first unlawful act leads to the build up of a totally new system operating outside the frame of the constitution and irrelevant to it.”
Playing Mind-games on President Sirisena
Mahinda Rajapakse and his family spotted trouble for them well in advance after their defeat at the polls in 2015. This is how the ‘Mahinda Sulanga,” meetings were organized at the outset- beginning Nugegoda. That move did not suffice and, next, they moved into a different ball game, namely to work on President Maitripala Sirisena and play mind -games with the latter. What Sri Lankans witness now is the success of that Machiavellian strategy.
With this intent, sections of Mahinda’s men – Susil Premjayanth, John Seneviratne, SB Dissanayake, Mahinda Samarasinghe etc had come to be part of the Yahapalanaya government. The latter group together with advisors like Shrilal Lakthilaka – a sworn Ranil hater – kept on relentlessly working on the mind of Sirisena. To Sirisena himself, reverting back to his old master had an advantage as he was increasingly getting uncomfortable with the ‘alien’ UNP crowd and with the yahapalanaya shackles placed on his enjoying unbridled power. The two needs conjoined and Sirisena was won over.
Lawlessness
The power of evil is at play. Rajapksas and his cohorts, who never ever expected defeat in 2015, had so many cases coming up against them over charges of fraud, financial embezzlement, money laundering, and the brutal murder of opponents. The alleged crimes were very serious. The crime operation of that regime represented plain evil. The regime never respected the fundamental right of a citizen to live and to speak his own conscience. A hit -squad took charge of dissentients-journalists and others.Having little respect for the law, Mahinda and his men and women MPs went about demolishing the democratic institutions that SrI Lankans have been enjoying since the days of the Donoughmore constitution in 1933. That is over 80 years! The regime spent the peoples’ and taxpayers money at their own will and pleasure and regarded all government property their own.If Mahinda wanted to detour a Sri Lankan plane to carry his kith and kin he would do just that.
Overcome Court Challenges
The Rajapaksa regime’s current strategies are tailored to overcome the deadly court challenges its family and cohorts imminently face before the Special High Courts.They couldn’t do that democratically. In the most recent attempt, they tried to use the money they had amassed and buy over MPs; but that attempt didn’t work.Now, they have got onto the lower road of brazen Fascist rule. They got Sirisena to commence action outside and in violence to the constitution- ignore the 19th Amendment, ignore parliamentary rule, ignore majority rule and ignore decency. As suggested above, these are politicians who by natural propensity are given to lawlessness; so this style of governance is natural to them.
Lankan Special
What we now have is a plainly illegal and fake regime appointing their own Prime Minister, appointing their own Ministers and having pretence cabinet meetings like kids playing with sand castles. The technique was to receive only the President’s illegal seal. From that point, the junta got into government establishments, government-owned media and with sheer force of physical power continue to “rule.” This is not typically how dictatorships come into being; it is a Sri Lankan ‘special’ road to autarchy. Typically, a dictator grabs military power by coup or otherwise and then proceeds. In the Sri Lanka case, the armed forces are still dazed as to what is happening and they have not put in their teeth into the illegal regime. The ultimate power-source is not yet the gun but the physical force that thugs can supply. If the armed forces succumb to the rogue government, then it will guns right along.
Sirisena
In one sense, Maitripala Sirisena is too simple-minded to know that eventually he will be victimised as the man who started all this yahapalanaya replacement and caused all unnecessary worry and headache to the Rajapakse establishment. However, I won’t credit Sirisena with being simply naive. Sirisena is a complex mixture of greed, corruption, cunningness and duplicitousness. These qualities are well expressed in his daughter’s book, ‘Janadhipathi Thaaththa.’In this instance, however, the naivety in the man emerges.
