by

Tisaranee Gunasekara

“The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
William Faulkner (Requiem for a Nun)

On May 5, 2013, Rohitha Rajapaksa, the youngest son of president Mahinda Rajapaksa, assaulted rugby referee Dimitri Gunasekera at Havelock Grounds, in full public view. His older brother, Yoshitha, intervened to stop the attack.

The referee’s crime – not qualifying the Navy team, captained by young Rohitha, to enter a rugby tournament.

After the attack was over, the covering up began.

Most mainstream media opted not to report the incident or dwell upon it too much. That, after all, was a time when the spectre of Lasantha Wickrematunga haunted every media organisation. Silence was the norm

Social media was less compliant. Enter denial/obfuscation. Asked on Twitter about the incident, brother Namal simply said, “It was a misunderstanding.” The head of the rugby governing body, Rajapaksa acolyte Asanga Seneviratne, went a step further, telling the BBC that “he didn’t believe there had been a physical assault,” only “unnecessary words” and promised an inquiry (BBC – 31.5.2013).

Orville Fernando, one of the few referees willing to speak up said many referees were retiring “because the governing body is not taking any steps that everyone is retiring” (Ibid)

Three days after the incident, The Daily Mirror carried an interview with young Rohitha sans even a passing mention of the assault. In his introduction, the interviewer claimed that Rohitha “had the artistic skill to write a heart-warming poem or even to paint a breath-taking picture…a true romantic.” Not the sort of thug who attack referees, but a poet, a painter, a sensitive soul. (Incidentally, the interviewer was careful not to ask Rohitha, the budding poet, about his poetic influences and Rohitha, the budding painter, about his painting style.

Asked to describe himself in two words, Rohitha said, “Just Right.”
Assaulting a referee was not in the same league as murder, torture or abduction. Yet, it was symbolic of Rajapaksa rule precisely because of its relative low weight. Denying the abduction of Prageeth Ekneligoda or responsibility for Lasantha Wickremetunga’s murder made sense, for they were serious political crimes.

The assault was not a political crime but a brattish outburst. The regime could have afforded an impartial inquiry, an apology, a rap across Rohitha’s knuckles without suffering any political fallout.

But that would have meant admitting that Rohitha Rajapaksa was not always ‘Just Right’, that he could be, like the rest of us ordinary mortals, wrong, at least occasionally.

An impossibility. For under familial rule, not just the ruler but also his family has to be blameless, innocent of all wrongdoing, infallible.

Just Right.

Egyptian sociologist Saad Eddine Ibrahim combined Arabic words for republic (gumhuriya) and kingdom (mamlaka) and came up with a new term: ‘gumlukiya’ – a hybrid-state which is half republic, half monarchy.
That was Sri Lanka during the Rajapaksa years.

In November 2010, commenting on the second presidential investiture of his brother, Basil Rajapaksa told The Economist that the era of ‘ruler kings’ has begun (A Coronation in Sri Lanka – November 2010). He dismissed transparency, accountability, and limits on presidential powers as ‘Western values’ alien to us, Asians.

So that was Rajapaksa rule, but by design and intent – opaque, unaccountable, extremist.

When Namal Rajapaksa invites Sri Lanka to return to the Rajapaksa fold, this is the paradise he promises.

Family Planning

Political humour can say much, especially in places where words are unfree.
Like the phrase coined by Arab resisters: sexually transmitted leadership.
According to British historian Robert Owen, the phenomenon of lifetime presidents, “began as a result for a necessary drive for sovereignty and independence”; it became institutionalised into “something best described as a ‘mirror state’ in which its presidents were encouraged not only to see what they wanted to see but also imagine themselves as omnipotent, indispensable and well loved by a grateful people in whose name they professed to govern” (The Rise and the Fall of Arab Presidents for Life).

The transformation of Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency from a UPFA government into Rajapaksa familial rule was born out of the Fourth Eelam War (made inevitable by Velupillai Pirapaharan’s unwillingness to accept a negotiated political solution to the ethnic problem, and his insistence not just on a Tamil Eelam but also a Tiger Eelam).

Winning that war cemented Rajapaksa ‘right to rule’. In the fairy tale, the hero is gifted with kingship of the kingdom he saved. The Rajapaksas regarded familial rule and dynastic succession as their right for defeating the LTTE.

According to a popular Egyptian joke, when President Mubarak was told by his advisors not to follow in the footsteps of his brother autocrats, he responded, “Egypt’s traditions are thoroughly democratic; I will let the people choose between my sons.”

When the 19th Amendment to the constitution prevented Mahinda Rajapaksa from contesting the presidency for the fourth time, there was no question of any other SLPP leader becoming the candidate. It had to be a Rajapaksa.

Since Namal was not old enough, the mantle fell on Gotabaya. It didn’t matter that his knowledge of governance was near nil, his experience below zero. Kinship by blood was all that mattered, the open sesame for every door.

Namal Rajapaksa and his brother Yoshitha formed Tharunyata Hetak in 2005. Carlton Sports Club, the sports wing of the organisation, held a race, Carlton Motocross in Hambantota in February 2008. Though this was not a state/government event, 1,800 policemen and 800 soldiers were deployed to provide security for it.

“The highlight was the stalls that represented the military depicting their weaponry and achievement in the war against Tiger guerrillas. They were transported to the venue after being hurriedly dismantled from the Deyata Kirula exhibition” (The Sunday Times – 24.2.2008). All this in the midst of the final Eelam War.

In just two+ years, President Rajapaksa had all but obliterated the dividing line between the Lankan state and his family. Serving the Rajapaksa family was rapidly becoming the state’s raison d’état.

“Our eight years shows (sic) more than sixty since Independence,”
boasted President Rajapaksa. He was right, though not quite in the way he intended.
Two incidents from Rajapaksa Rule I provide a foretaste of what a Rajapaksa Rule III, under Namal Rajapaksa, would entail.

The principal of Law College implicated in Namal Rajapaksa’s law exam controversy, WD Rodrigo, was accused in 2012 of another case of ‘examination irregularities’, this time favouring his own son – allowing him to sit for an exam in a room apart, with internet facilities. Eventually Mr. Rodrigo was compelled to depart. Within weeks, he was appointed Legal Director of the Presidential Secretariat. A delighted Mr. Rodrigo called himself ‘the most educated lawyer in the country’.

In 2014, a student was admitted to a national university, outside the normal procedure, due to political influence in the form of a letter by Namal Rajapaksa. The minister of higher education defended the admission and the presidential father decided to say nothing.

By 2014, Sri Lanka had become a quintessential familial state. No institution, no tradition, no practice was safe from Rajapaksas’ benighted influence. The familial nature of the state became nearly complete, the state’s prioritising of Rajapaksa needs/whims also increased.

In his Daily Mirror interview, young Rohitha Rajapaksa said, “I have seen the world, the only thing remaining is out of (sic) space, which I believe I will see in a few years.” In 2012, that dream seemed just a hop and a skip away, thanks to paternal power and Chinese influence.

A company named SupremeSAT came into being (with the same miraculous suddenness as the Bodu Bala Sena did) aimed at taking Lanka to space age. Rohitha Rajapaksa became this company’s Chief Technical Director.

In the same year, the first Lankan satellite was launched in a gala state ceremony. Later, it came to light that Sri Lanka never owned a satellite; SupremeSAT merely rented one from China for the show. China also promised Namal Rajapaksa to build a Formula One race track in the Colombo port city.

That glorious future was cut short by Lankan voters in 2015. It resumed in 2019, but was cut short again, first by Aragalaya, then by elections.

Now the Rajapaksas are practicing for the third comeback. Unlike in 2015, when Mahinda Rajapaksa gained almost 48% of the vote, in 2024, the rejection of the Rajapaksas, by an electorate that revered them not so long ago, was complete. Rajapaksas cannot return on their own steam. They will need other help to open doors for them.

Unwitting enablers

During the Ranil Wickremesinghe presidency, 43 politicians received millions of rupees as compensation for houses damaged/destroyed during the Aragalaya.
During the Anura Kumara Dissanayake presidency, the AG made an arbitrary decision to release three key suspects from Lasantha Wickrematunga case.
Both deeds might be, probably are, legal in the strict sense. They also reek of moral corruption, political partisanship, and rank injustice.
Politicians obtaining millions of rupees in compensation, at a time when ordinary Lankans were struggling to make ends meet, was not quite surprising. It was what the public expected Rajapaksa acolytes to do. That was why the people rejected the Rajapaksas and most of their followers, not just once but twice.

The NPP/JVP government’s silence about the AG’s decision is quite another matter. Bringing Lasantha Wickrematunga’s killers to justice was a promise the NPP/JVP made during the campaign and after victory. Now, they cannot even find few simple words, condemn, outrage, grieved.

The SLPP has come swinging in the AG’s support. Characteristically. The Rajapaksas are doing what they always did, and always will: covering up and defending those who help in covering up.

What is the government’s excuse?

During their rule, the Rajapaksas also enthroned a radically new common sense. Indifference to injustice, apathy instead of outrage in the face of wrongdoing was an important component of it.

Looks like that same common-sense is addling minds in the highest places of the land. Whether the government was taken by surprise by the AG’s decision or was complicit in it does not matter. Inept or immoral, the result would be the same.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government began to fail only in its second year. The NPP/JVP government seems to be losing its lustre in less than half a year.

The SJB is forming unofficial alliances with the Rajapaksas. The NPP/JVP, while criticising the SJB, is doing something even worse – allowing its top legal officials to kill the faint hope of justice that still flickered in the land.

Both the government and the main opposition are helping to normalise Rajapaksas and their crimes, thereby easing Namal Rajapaksa’s road to victory, if not in 2029 then the next time.

In ‘Why Nations Fail’, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that when a clique of people monopolises a state, the economy is turned into ‘an extractive backwater’ and nations fail. A state which is enslaved to a family is incapable of acting in the best interests of the country or people. Such a state would give precedence to the partisan political interests of the rulers over and above issues which are vital to the people.

For instance, the 2013 budget gave a 300% tax break to super racing cars. That trend of pampering a tiny sliver of the politico-economic upper crust continued in the 2014 Budget. Designer pens, ties and bows were made Cess-free. Branded consumer items received a tax relief, to be taxed at 7.5%, the lowest rate possible.

That same budget imposed a special commodity levy on sprats, chickpeas, green grams, canned fish, sugar, Maldive fish, dried fish, orange, coriander, cumin, turmeric, ground nuts, mustard seed, palm oil, salt, yoghurt, butter and margarine.

That economic injustice, under cover of patriotism, too will be a part of the future Namal Rajapaksa promises us.

Since Namal Rajapaksa’s main qualification by far for ruler-ship is his paternity, keeping Mahinda Rajapaksa in politics, alive or dead, is absolutely essential. Thus a proposal by former Deputy Speaker Ajith Rajapakshe (no relative) to create a Mahinda mausoleum, someday, to preserve Mahinda Rajapaksa’s body, at whatever the cost, so that future generations too could honour him. Perhaps a Gratitude Tax, to build and maintain the great pyramid of Colombo?

With a government stumbling over its own feet and an opposition all at sea, such a future does not seem all that impossible.

Courtesy:The Island