{"id":66447,"date":"2019-11-24T00:40:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-24T05:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=66447"},"modified":"2019-11-24T00:40:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-24T05:40:24","slug":"six-days-in-november-after-the-swearing-in-of-gotabaya-rajapaksa-as-the-seventh-executive-president-of-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=66447","title":{"rendered":"Six Days in November After The Swearing in of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the Seventh Executive President of Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

Sanjana Hattotuwa<\/strong><\/p>\n

T<\/strong>he day after the 7th President was sworn into office, racism celebrated a new birth on Facebook. Across many pages that played a key role in President\u2019s electoral bid, the message was simple and clear. Sri Lanka was for Sinhalese Buddhists only, and his victory ensured the country would remain thus. All Tamils were labelled terrorists. An electoral map of districts that voted for the President\u2019s opponent was juxtaposed with a map of Eelam.<\/p>\n

The implication, explicitly noted or implicitly projected, was that the opponent\u2019s bid was to divide Sri Lanka and give the Tamils what the LTTE wanted. And because of this ingratitude, the suggestion was that the Sinhalese should inhabit these areas as well since nothing good would ever come from Tamils. The Sri Lankan flag was replaced by the Lion flag next to the Buddhist flag. Lions, in fact, dominated the images across these pages. In other pages, the Lion covered the entire map of Sri Lanka. \u2018Lions are back\u2019 proclaimed a notorious page supporting the new President, with an image of him and his brother on two ends, with a Lion in the middle. <\/p>\n

In the background to the images of both men, maps of Sri Lanka covered by the Lion symbol. In more explicit posts, Hakeem, Bathiudeen and Sampanthan were called the f word, reminding them that the electoral result was an indication the Sinhala race wasn\u2019t dead. Many pages congratulated the new President as the representative of the Sinhala Buddhists. <\/p>\n

Hyper-conscious of public optics, the new President tweeted that \u201cI am the President of not only those who voted for me but also those who voted against me and irrespective of which race or religion they belong to.\u201d And yet, the racism on the pages continues in the same vein. All the posts are hugely popular.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On Day 3,<\/strong> Major General Kamal Gunaratne was appointed as the new Secretary of Defence. I last wrote about Gunaratne in October 2017, after encountering a speech of his at a Viyathmaga public meeting, made in front of the man who is now President. The video of his speech is still on YouTube. Gunaratne\u2019s comments were directed at those like myself who remain deeply committed to a new constitution. The translation of the comments made in Sinhala, noted in my column, are worth repeating in light of the position he now holds.<\/p>\n

Gunaratne wants those who support a new constitution dead, because he proposes they are in fact traitors. He normalises death to traitors as something natural, and inevitable. He wants a return to the height of the JVP\u2019s violence in the late 80\u2019s in order to create the context to deal with those who support a new constitution. His desire to punish traitors extends post-mortem. Mirroring the humiliation the JVP meted out to its political opponents even after being murdered, he wants those who were in favour of a new constitution to not even be given a proper burial. He doesn\u2019t want Buddhist priests to bless them or even to visit their homes.<\/p>\n

The Viyathmaga audience claps loudly and enthusiastically at Gunaratne\u2019s comments. As noted in the Hansard and reported in international media, Gunaratne is alleged to have murdered an employee at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Brazil. Other news reports capture his time at a leading international school in Sri Lanka, and the terror to both parents and children that ensued. <\/p>\n

Gunaratne joins the Commander of the Sri Lankan Army, Shavendra Silva \u2013 a man whose bulky frame serves primarily to carry the weight of allegations of war crimes against him \u2013 as the chief architects of national security, aided by state intelligence services and a deep or dark state entirely partial to the Rajapaksas.<\/p>\n

On Day 4,<\/strong> the new President was framed in a set of extraordinary photos at the Dalada Maligawa in Kandy. Flanked by Buddhist monks, Nilame\u2019s and the ornate, ostentatious regalia of Kandyan pomp and pageantry in full display, the new President, dead centre, projected himself, comfortably, as a King. The same day, Shani Abeysekara, till that day the Director of the CID, was demoted as a personal assistant to a DIG, one of the lowest ranks in the Police force. Abeysekara was in charge of cases involving the Rajapaksas, including the murders of Lasantha Wickrematunge, Thajudeen and the disappearance of Eknaligoda.<\/p>\n


\nOn Day 5,<\/strong> a day after the new President\u2019s brother was sworn in as Prime Minister, the entire website of the PM\u2019s office was wiped clean. Nothing remains of the old site as a vital repository of public records linked to the former incumbent\u2019s years as PM. Exactly a year ago, during the constitutional coup, the then illegal PM did precisely the same thing. When the coup failed, the site was restored. This disturbing proclivity to completely delete history, erase public records, wipe clean government sites of any and all material framing or focused on political opponents informs the new President\u2019s approach to governance.<\/p>\n

On Day 6,<\/strong> I woke up wondering what the multi-billion rupee investments on surveillance, through bilateral agreements with China, Israel and Russia \u2013 now entirely in the hands of the new President and his team \u2013 would lead to. Counter-intuitively, the new President\u2019s time in office could well be the most peaceful Sri Lanka\u2019s seen yet. The disbanding of extremist Buddhist groups, self-censorship of journalists, abject fear felt by all minorities and the very real fatigue of civil society to fight against however many years or even decades the first family will remain in power almost guarantees that opposition to the Presidency will be muted, at best, within the country. Pervasive surveillance spanning human, communications and digital media, aided and abetted by all telcos present in the country, will result in a public sphere were inconvenient truths and dissent will be controlled, contained or censored. Coordination amongst and collaboration of any opposition to the Presidency will be tracked.<\/p>\n

At the same time, because the new President\u2019s PR is a cut above anything else in the country, vast sums of money will be spent on propaganda for consumption within the country, and marketing campaigns to promote the country abroad. With markets rebounding, investor confidence returning, tourism promotion, branded content, sponsored ads, paid tours of celebrities and a country without any visible manifestation of internal strife, the new Presidency stands to be marked by what in common parlance the people wanted \u2013 a leader who took care of garbage and made a city look clean.<\/p>\n

On that score, the President will deliver. Entirely lost will be a focus on rights and accountability. Any focus on these, and the barbarians no longer at the gate, but inside Temple Trees, will be let loose silently, to devour their prey in the dead of night, so that the carcasses in the morning are a reminder of how little dissent means in a country moving forward, with intellect, meritocracy and Buddhism at the helm.<\/p>\n

All this is more the failure of Wickremesinghe and Sirisena than the success of the incumbents. Shavendra wasn\u2019t appointed by the new President. One wonders if the former government was waiting for an astrologically sound hour to release the findings of Shani Abeysekara\u2019s investigations. None of the allegations made in public about the corruption of the Rejapaksa regime by the leading lights of the former government were backed up by investigations that led to indictments. The Parliamentary Select Committee report\u2019s capture of the former President\u2019s ineptitude and the PM\u2019s lack of leadership are criminal in nature and negligence. The public had had enough, and understandably so. The inheritance of incompetence though is shared, and therein lies the rub.<\/p>\n

Not everyone who voted in the new President is a racist, or even close. But the vote to place him in power will result in a renewed reign of racism. Many see 2005-2015 as what Sri Lanka will return to. I do not subscribe to this. <\/p>\n

White vans may not need to come back, and journalists will not need to be murdered. Knowing the nature of the beast and the popular support it enjoys at present, no one will dare say or do anything to upset it. The result of this will be the entrenchment of the Rajapaksas and the normalisation of everything that is abusive, corrupt, violent, exclusive, authoritarian, sexist, communal or majoritarian.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The shift of popular discourse and the public imagination to embrace the tenets of authoritarianism as essential to and inextricable from stable governance is a legacy future governments will not be able to roll-back, or even want to. The Rubicon crossed on the 16th was more than an electoral victory for the incumbent. It is the end of a Sri Lanka as we know it, and the birth of something else in its place, which shares a name, but little else.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Courtesy:sanjanah.wordpress.com<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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By Sanjana Hattotuwa The day after the 7th President was sworn into office, racism celebrated a new birth on Facebook. Across many pages that played a key role in President\u2019s electoral bid, the message was simple and clear. Sri Lanka was for Sinhalese Buddhists only, and his victory ensured the country would remain thus. All …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Six Days in November After The Swearing in of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the Seventh Executive President of Sri Lanka’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66447"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66448,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66447\/revisions\/66448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}