Rajiva’s repair job
Editorial-September 7, 2013
Newspaper readers would not have been altogether surprised at UPFA National List MP Rajiva Wijesinha’s somewhat kindly way of looking at the Navanetham Pillay visit to Sri Lanka and the statement she issued at the conclusion of her mission. Perhaps Wijesinha’s liberal credentials demanded that he uses a softer approach to what Pillay said and did than the many bloggers and commentators who have been having a two-fisted go at her, stopping short of only proposing marriage to give her a lesson on this country’s history a la Vermin, sorry Mervyn, for which the government has expressed regret at various levels. However, the people have not yet been told what action, if any, would be taken against the culprit for conduct unbecoming of a person holding office as a minister. Given that he had been previously whitewashed on numerous occasions, there are good grounds to believe that history will repeat itself and nothing much will follow. We can only live in hope that something will happen at the speculated cabinet reshuffle following the provincial elections. Wijesinha has seen only ``one blot on an otherwise very balanced and potentially helpful statement’’ by Pillay prior to her departure. That related to her assertion that the LLRC had side-stepped the need for a fully transparent and impartial investigation into the conduct of both sides with regard to war crimes.
When we commented in this space last week that Nanthikadal was hardly a place for a UN High Commissioner for Refugees to scatter flowers in memory of war victims, given that Prabhakaran and the LTTE hierarchy died there, we did have some sketchy information then that the government had cottoned on to a photo-op that Pillay’s staff in Geneva had orchestrated for the high commissioner. It had been made clear that there will be no visit to the Vanni if flowers at Nanthikadal were part of the agenda. At her pre-departure news conference, Pillay was asked about this and admitted that ``we were considering it but didn’t finalize it.’’ She explained that when she visited any country she liked to honour victims, ``all victims, victims of the LTTE, soldiers, families’’ and had done so in Moscow and Guatemala. This, she said, was something she liked to do ``and I thought I could do it here.’’ Wijesinha says that the reversal of the earlier decision to lay (or scatter) flowers ``indicated that she herself wanted to be positive’’ as the gesture would have been seen as a tribute to the LTTE rather than to the victims of the long drawn conflict. While the professor has been most charitable, few will doubt that the government stance on this matter rather than a change of heart led to the backtracking.
Rajiva Wijesinha and Dew Gunasekera who chairs COPE are two National List MPs sitting on government benches who speak out on inconvenient subjects that most of their colleagues avoid. The reason for this, which is self-evident, can be best said in Sinhala – anga beraganna – literally to protect yourself. Such rare candour must be appreciated and applauded. It is necessary that Sri Lanka and its government do not delude themselves that everything is tickety boo in the post-war reconciliation scene as the songwriter had it. While there have been progress particularly in the rebuilding of infrastructure in the war-torn areas, delivery on many other areas has at best been slow. The rulers must also take responsibility for giving extremist elements, with backers in the cabinet, the leeway to create unnecessary problems. Whether Pillay noticed it herself or somebody told her, she remarked on the flying of a Buddhist flag at Independence Square during her meeting with the president. The president himself did not seem to know about it at that time. The government, it its rebuttal of Pillay’s statement said she had made much of this flag, which was not flying on the main flag post where only the national flag or other relevant flags fly on national occasions. That is well and good, but how did it come to fly on any flag post at Independence Square? Somebody had obviously permitted it and bringing it down will undoubtedly cause a furor that nobody would want. The country’s constitution does provide the foremost place to Buddhism and assures their rights to other religions, but flying a Buddhist flag at Independence Square could create friction. While this is hardly a matter one would expect a UN High Commissioner for Refugees to take up with the president of a country, the fact that the flag was flown there does not redound to the credit of the claim that all religions and ethnicities are equally treated in this country.
Wijesinha has said that but for a few matters that he had mentioned in his comment, he had found the rest of Pillay’s report ``extremely helpful.’’ He admits that this may be because she had repeated many of the things that he’d been saying himself though his advice had been consistently ignored. He hopes that the government may take Pillay more seriously ``given the possible adverse consequences of ignoring her.’’ The professor who is an unrelenting critic of the foreign ministry had not foregone the opportunity of taking a swipe at his bete noir by adding ``whether the Ministry of External Affairs understands this is another matter.’’ Those who follow Wijesinha’s articles (he is as prolific as Dayan Jayatillake) would be easily able to identify his friends and foes. The External Affairs Ministry certainly does not belong to the former category.
Despite all the Pillay bashing we have heard since the high commissioner returned to Geneva, it is necessary that what she had to say is carefully studied and remedial action taken where necessary. It is too easy to rubbish everything she said merely because you do not like some of it. In that context the balanced approach that a government MP had taken is to be welcome not least because some of his colleagues, including ministers, had chosen to be needlessly offensive necessitating a public apology from no less than the president.
