The Bra, The Bar & The Brigadier
“If you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.”
~ C.S. Lewis. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Facebook meme after Sirisena’s intervention
The quasi Mahinda era has begun. The ban on social media and communication features on mobile phones has been imposed and The Mahinda himself, like The Donald on a post school shooting day has spoken. In an ironic statement to the media and a laugh inducing ‘write up’ to Colombo Telegraph, written in language and tone that is suspiciously refined and erudite to the point of using terms such as ‘demographic reality’, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the de facto leader of the Pohottuwa has been quick to wash off his political blood stains from his bigotry tainted, talisman squeezing palms.
Rajapaksa (or his able ghost writer) with displaced nostalgia laced with romanticization of the past where Muslims and Sinhala leaders supposedly lived in harmony, places the blame on the Yahapalana government for its failure to establish law and order. He distances himself and his infamous brothers from the fostering and systematic institutionalizing of islamophobia and racism during his rule. He conveniently palms off the blame, stating “what was started by conspirators who are now in the Yahapalana government, for the purpose of dislodging my government, now appears to have taken on a life of its own and mistrust between the communities is growing by the day”.
The reality is that the ongoing violence is only a representation of the resurgence of militant Buddhist groups that first emerged in 2012 to 2014 during the Rajapakse reign. Compounded by the open political patronage of the Rajapakses, particularly that by Gotabhaya Rajapakse during the second term of government, attacks on Muslims began again over a six-week period in April and May 2017 and for two days in November 2017, where militants were supplied with political oxygen and political parenteral nutrition. This phenomenon was hallmarked by the consistent ‘failure’ of the Rajapaksa regime to prosecute those responsible for violence and hate speech. Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara, infamous monk leading the Bodu Bala Sena (loosely translated as Buddhist Power Army) became an emblem of misplaced Sinhala ‘nationalism’, fed by media, nourished by the government, in short, a political python in the making. That government, also membered by the current President Maithripala Sirisena was fundamentally a failure at establishing racial harmony or national cohesion.
The nonsensical continuum
The Yahapalana government which demonstrated little will to address the collective grievances of the very electorate that voted them in spent three years of political existence that can be summarized in one word: nonsensical. Although some positive achievements were made especially with regard to superficial sense of media freedom and general wellbeing of democracy, the President, the Prime Minister and the unity government demonstrated an abysmal failure at discharging justice in the spheres of corruption, establishing law and order, breaking the vicious cycle of racism that is an insidious issue and addressing the economic issues of the poor, farmers and the private sector. Crumbling in transparency and accountability within and without the government and the administrative machinery, the Yahapalana government is truly a headless chicken. There were three telling instances where the Yahapalana government showed early symptoms of a racially complicated, violence spiced, disunited, convoluted political mess. The axis around which the President and the Prime Minister make their decisions appears to be Mahinda Rajapaksa. The fact that Rajapakse is still the man who calls shots is obvious to any rational citizen. He remains the de facto leader not only of the Pohottuwa, but of the Republic. How did we become this sick democracy?
The symptoms, however, were telling. Those with even slight glimpses in to reality, political history and quite plainly any common sense or a twisted sense of humor knew that the inevitable bungled baby of Yahapalana failure was round the corner. The unholy trinity constituted three Bs. The bra, the bar and the brigadier. The first gravid symptom was the bra. Yes. That bra.
The bra – misplaced priorities
