Psychiatric Disorder: An Analysis Of Gotabaya Rajapaksa
A Possible Psychiatric Disorder At The Top Of The Government, An Analysis Of Gotabaya Rajapaksa
Dr. Brian Senewiratne
This is a serious analysis of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary, effectively the de facto President of Sri Lanka, brother of the elected President Mahinda Rajapaksa who is only the de jure President.
A country with two Presidents
It is erroneously claimed that Mahinda Rajapaksa is the most powerful person in Sri Lanka. There is evidence that Gotabaya Rajapaksa is the most powerful (and certainly the most feared and ruthless) person in Sri Lanka.
A single (but crucial) example will suffice. With mounting international pressure to devolve some power to the Tamil areas (North and East), President Mahinda Rajapaksa initiated the All Party Representative Council (APRC) to look into a constitutional political settlement. The APRC limbered on from 2006-2009 and submitted a Report. This was never published. It was buried, as have so many Reports of Commissions of Inquiry and the like, in Sri Lanka.
With increasing pressure, particularly from India, the President initiated (yet another) ‘Committee’ – the Parliamentary Select Committee – to look into a constitutional settlement (that had just been done by the APRC).
In stepped de facto ‘President’ Gotabaya Rajapaksa. On 16 August 2012, in an interview to India’s Headlines Today television, he said that Sri Lanka would not devolve any more powers to the minorities in spite of the promises it made in the past. He said:
“The existing constitution is more than enough…..Devolution-wise I think we have done enough. I don’t think there is a necessity to go beyond that”.
And it has not gone “beyond that.” Q.E.D (quod erat demonstrandum – a Latin phrase which translates as “which was to be demonstrated”. The phrase is placed in its abbreviated form at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument when what was specified in the enunciation has been proved.
There are numerous other examples of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a mere Public Servant, telling the President and the Government to go to hell. What will be done is what he wants done. If that is not a de facto President, I do not know what he is.
Several people/groups, in and outside Sri Lanka, have expressed concern. Col R Hariharan, an Indian specialist on South Asian military Intelligence, in his “Sri Lanka: Gotabaya larger than life” (9 July 2012) said, “President Rajapaksa would be well advised to distance himself swiftly from his brother…. on sensitive issues that are not his business”. Yes, indeed, it is not his business.
The Head of the Centre for Policy Alternatives – a human rights group in Colombo– in an article, “Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Too full of power to exercise it”, has called for his resignation or dismissal, not once but three times.
Friday Forum, a group of much respected members of civil society in Colombo, which includes Jayantha Dhanapala, an internationally respected diplomat, in a damning indictment, “Arrogance of Power”, asked, “Is it acceptable for His Excellency the President to keep in high office a person who demonstrates an incapability to control his temper?”
Interview with a senior journalist
One of the serious incidents (among others) which merit careful analysis, was his recent response to the senior editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, Frederica Jansz. To dismiss Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s language and the contents of what he said as, “he is crazy”, is neither accurate nor appropriate. On the contrary, I think it is an important interview which sheds light on his psychopathology. I will analyse it sentence by sentence and give it the importance it merits.
I will not deal with his other outrageous statements such as the one on British TV. He said, with a straight face, that it is acceptable to bomb hospitals (in violation of the Geneva Convention). I have dealt with this in detail in my dvd, “Sri Lanka: Genocide, Crimes against humanity, Violation of International Law” (which is on the net),
The recent Incident
