Vishnuguptha

“Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that’s what.”
~ Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

The regime has made a very serious error; an error in judgment, an error in governance and this time an error in politics too. But this is a regime that is known to be well-versed in politics where it excels, even at the expense of good governance and far-sighted policy-making, in manipulating local politics to the miserable extent that the Opposition and its leading partner, the United National Party, must be questioning its own rationale as to why it invited Navi Pillay at all.

United Nations Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay during her first visit to Zimababe-the first ever such visit by a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, where she raised issues of sanctions, food and land rights. She met Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe-May 2012-Pic: UNHRC

The body language of the Minister of External Affairs is pathetic; a university professor reputed to be one of the best among legal minds in Asia who has seen through hundreds of brilliant students passing tough law exams with great distinction, he is finding himself failing the most crucial test of all in his ‘adopted’ profession of politics: timing your moves. He must be spending many a sleepless night. He is indeed a pathetic figure, a walking dead as they say when all chips are down and nowhere to look to.

This happens when one chooses to wander aimlessly on barren sands of ill-governance surrounded by sharp tongues of cactus ever so ready to sting the most innocent of hands that come its way. While availing himself of all the glories and comforts that come with holding a Cabinet Portfolio as Minster of External Affairs, Minister Peiris has deliberately set aside all his education, socio-political etiquette, steadfastness and his very fiber that keeps every man, woman and child straight and upright.

Instead he has opted to play the game the way it has been played by rank amateurs, delegating the advisory capacity of the Foreign Ministry to a Parliamentarian cum henchman of the ruling cabal. Politics has overridden the conduct of complex intricacies of geopolitics; arrangements between nations are reached based on the fastest way to make an extra buck; appointments to the diplomatic corps and staff are made not on merit but on political whims and fancies. The famous saying that “those who choose to lie down with dogs will wake up with tics” was really meant for this category of people into which, most unfortunately, Professor Peiris has fallen willy-nilly.

It is into this madhouse that Navanidham Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights was invited. The government overestimated itself and underestimated Pillay and they did so to the great peril of the country and her people. Pillay is no amateur and a professional to the core and she came here with her brief fully-read and prepared to confront any adversary with equal zeal and sincerity of purpose. Although some say that she came, she saw and she did not conquer, it is redundant in that conquest of any nature didn’t seem to be anywhere in her mind and nor would it have been in her agenda.

The Government did not bargain for the bombshell of a statement that Pillay released at the end of her visit. If the Government did not expect that, then that again tells a story of utter incompetence and lack of right kind of political assessment on the part of the Government. An all-congruent approach to a potentially explosive situation was not adopted by the Government; instead it let its diverse forces free and Mervyn Silva of all people held the stick by the wrong end and made a ‘marriage proposal’ to Pillay. What surprised most observers was not the ‘proposal’ by Mervyn- for it is well within his realm of realities to do so- but the deafening silence observed by the highest of the land in this regard.

The Weliweriya fiasco happened just days before the arrival of Navi Pillay and it did not help the country either. Those who control the switches of administration and execute Government policies should have made preparations to forestall such situations and taken extra care and caution to prevent the armed security forces from opening fire against unarmed civilians whose only sin and cry was to call for cleaner water. The escalation of agitation, especially when such an agitational protest was directly related to the daily existence of every man, woman and child of the area, is quite easily detectable. And the authorities failed to see it or they refused to see it or they may have thought that their military might could be the answer to each and every issue that explodes every now and then.

The war is over and it’s almost five years since its closure, yet the might of those armed soldiers which targeted the Tigers who themselves were armed to an equal or even a superior level is not the answer to an unarmed protest march. The trigger-happy nature of the army and their ‘commanders’ came out most conspicuously in the Weliweriya fiasco and its closeness in dates to the visit of Navi Pillay worked to the disadvantage of the Government. Bad planning coupled with even worse anticipation supplied the weapons to the hands of Navi Pillay and her entourage.

In the meantime, India – Sri Lanka Society had its Annual Dinner to celebrate India’s Independence at the Taj Samudra Hotel on the Saturday following Pillay’s departure and the Guest Speaker was Shekar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Express, which boasts of the largest circulation among all daily newspapers in India. Shekar Gupta’s address was one of the most fascinating after-dinner speeches that one would have the good fortune to listen to and the pin-drop silence that was observed by more than two hundred guests who attended the function was ample testimony to the engaging nature of his prowess as a speaker of the highest caliber and the substance was no second.

While proposing the vote of thanks, the Society’s President, K. Neelakanthan, attorney-at-law, made some reference to India’s involvement in the recent past in our national question. However, a totally distorted version of Neelakandthan’s ‘vote of thanks’ had been reported in some of the newspapers and these reports, apparently written at the behest of some disgruntled element that attended the Dinner and who was not very happy with his seating position, was done with total malice and lack of journalistic ethics so much so, the editor of the said newspaper had to issue a correction the following day.

One could understand if this came from a state-controlled newspaper but when it appeared in a privately-owned media outlet, the misdemeanor turns into a misdeed and the motive becomes even more evident. It is the ghost of Pillay that has been haunting these Government sycophants so that they resort to the meanest possible. Pillay is gone but the ghosts are still hovering over the pillars of power.

It is also speculated that United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanidham Pillay, is expected to highlight possible reprisals and attacks on human rights defenders, journalists and communities she met up with during her visit to Sri Lanka, when she makes the opening statement at the 24th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.

If Pillay’s report to the UNHRC is as damning as it is speculated to be, then the wisdom of inviting her to Sri Lanka when all was not so hunky-dory comes for serious questioning. But Sri Lanka simply could not ‘disinvite’ Pillay either, for the ghosts of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) seem to be even more haunting than that of Pillay.

All this gives our ‘laptop-critics’ a compelling reason to speculate, gossip and then write about. Pillay might make a very compelling case against Sri Lanka but whether it’s promising to be persuasive is the question. That is the burden of every diplomat worthy of his or her salt.