{"id":70861,"date":"2020-11-04T14:44:30","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T19:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70861"},"modified":"2020-11-04T16:46:35","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T21:46:35","slug":"the-quintessence-of-the-model-and-ethos-of-the-gotabaya-rajapaksaregime-is-weaponised-jathika-chinthana-or-jathika-chinthana-militarised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70861","title":{"rendered":"The quintessence of the model and ethos of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime is weaponised Jathika Chinthana or Jathika Chinthana militarised."},"content":{"rendered":"

\nBy<\/p>\n

Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka is currently experiencing two crises which will trigger the third. They stem from a common source and therefore can be resolved only if rectification takes place at that source, that root. <\/p>\n

One crisis is the second wave of COVID-19. It is manifest and acknowledged but its dimensions are played down and the sins of commission and omission which led to it are unspoken. Another is that of our external relations. That crisis is latent, but not entirely invisible, and is completely unacknowledged. The third crisis, which is building up, is the economic.<\/p>\n

The common root of the failure to prevent or manage these crises is the error in policy perspectives, stemming from the error of policy paradigms, sourced in wrong thinking, wrong attitudes and outlook.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nPredictable, preventable<\/strong><\/p>\n

None has been more consistently accurate in print about the corona crisis than Dr. Ravindra Ranan-Eliya. In his latest article entitled \u2018Reaching the Limits of Managing the Crisis\u2019 he goes to \u2018code red\u2019 and tells us what is at stake.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a country, we\u2019re in a moment of great peril. More than at any time during this pandemic. <\/p>\n

Unless we shift course, single-mindedly focus on the critical issues, and make the correct decisions and implement them decisively, we face not only an out-of-control epidemic, but economic disaster\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

(http:\/\/www.dailymirror.lk\/news-features\/Reaching-the-limits-of-managing-the-crisis\/131-198858)<\/p>\n

He compares us unfavourably with the other places that have experienced a second wave. \u201c\u2026We should have understood that we were\u2026in a much more dangerous epidemiological position than that faced to date by the successful countries\u2026none of these other nations (sic)\u2013 China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Vietnam \u2013 have seen such a large outbreak since crushing their first waves.\u201d (Ibid)<\/p>\n

Dr. Ranan-Eliya tells us this second outbreak was entirely predictable. It was not primarily the fault of the public, as President Gotabaya charged at his conference on Sunday, 1 November. Dr. Ranan-Eliya gives a rational explanation: \u201cIn Minuwangoda, we were dealing with cases in people living in numerous different locations, living with other people, and with all the normal types of interaction with friends and family that we have taken for granted since we were told that COVID-19 was defeated in our blessed island. The subsequent rapid spread of the outbreak to numerous locations across the island, several becoming new clusters of their own, was entirely predictable.\u201d <\/p>\n

If it was predictable, it was preventable. What is most crucial is the huge hole Dr. Ranan-Eliya points out in the thinking of those in charge:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026as I wrote months ago in this newspaper, we were not in the top category of countries tackling COVID-19, whatever international agencies told us. We need to look at how the really successful countries have managed this and learn from their strategies\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n

Back in mid-May 2020 Dr. Ranan-Eliya and his team processed the data coming from Johns Hopkins and produced coloured graphs that showed the actual state of things. (\u2018\u201cEliminating\u201d … \u201ccrushing\u201d COVID is possible and these countries are the Superstars,\u2019 Daily Mirror, 15 May). We weren\u2019t among the \u2018superstars\u2019, but the regime regarded itself as right on top. <\/p>\n


\nPolarising model <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSeek truth from facts\u201d was Deng Xiaoping\u2019s motto (deriving from Mao). By contrast, the Lankan regime does not see the need to \u201clook at how the really successful countries have managed this and learn from their strategies\u2026\u201d because it is an article of faith that Sri Lanka under the present leadership is the \u201creally successful country\u201d, and it is felt to be more important than anything else to keep the faith in this postulate, whatever the empirical evidence to the contrary. Nobody dares to contradict the model, still less \u201clearn from the strategies\u201d of \u201cthe really successful countries\u201d. <\/p>\n

The current Sri Lankan model is one which is derived a priori from a sense of superiority stemming from a fusion of having won the war (falsely billed as the only or the first victory over terrorism, at least in the 21st century\u2014ignoring Putin\u2019s crushing of the Chechen terrorists and Angola\u2019s defeat of Savimbi\u2019s Unita) and the innate supremacy of the Sinhala-Buddhist culture, civilisation and way of being. To question the results on the basis of evidence, acknowledge defeats and failures, and \u201cshift course\u201d as Dr. Ranan-Eliya urges, is to question the sacrosanct model itself and verges on heresy and treason. <\/p>\n

This is evidenced by two recent controversies. The first was a joint statement by a group of women\u2019s organisations and labour organisations (including one I recall, founded back in 1984, the Dabindu collective) about the insensitive and arbitrary character of the military evacuation of women workers for quarantine. It was unexceptionable that the military contradicted the story, though it would have been a far better \u2018hearts-and-minds\u2019 civic action approach to have a (Gen. Kobbekaduwe-like) friendly dialogue with the signatories. <\/p>\n

What is potentially most dangerous is that the military statement proceeded to venture the hypothesis that the criticism could be the precursor of a conspiracy to come: \u201c\u2026apparently to suit different agendas of interested parties or those who act as forerunners of hidden plans of action\u201d. (https:\/\/economynext.com\/sri-lanka-army-dismisses-fabricated-attempts-to-tarnish-quarantine-efforts-74901\/) <\/p>\n

The danger here is that if any legitimate criticism is deemed suspect because it is critical of the guardian deity, the military, and the openly stated presupposition is that such \u2018disinformation\u2019 could only spring from subversive intent, then the response will inevitably be repression, which will not only polarise the social and political situation but impact negatively on Sri Lanka\u2019s international image, thus damaging our export markets. <\/p>\n

The upshot of the rough and clumsy handling of this matter is that it has since made the international labour publications such as Ecotextile magazine. (https:\/\/www.ecotextile.com\/2020102026880\/materials-production-news\/garment-workers-accuse-sri-lankan-army.html) Since then, it has made the mass media mainstream, Reuters. (https:\/\/in.reuters.com\/article\/us-health-coronavirus-sri-lanka-workers\/garment-workers-on-front-line-of-sri-lanka-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKBN27K08Z). Furthermore, a large number of Sri Lankan academics in universities overseas have signed a statement expressing concern about the fate of women workers during the pandemic. <\/p>\n

As a former Chairperson of the ILO who worked with the iconic Director-General Juan Somavia (comrade of the late Salvador Allende) when the ILO launched the famous \u2018Decent Work\u2019 campaign, I know how perceptions of maltreatment of labour, which simply cannot be kept hidden, impact on public opinion and legislators in those parts of the world in which labour standards and the treatment of labour matters. <\/p>\n

The second symptom of the downside of the militarist-ultranationalist model was from Welioya. It was alleged by the GMOA that a military officer verbally abused a doctor at the district hospital, and did so in utterly racist terms (reproduced in the GMOA statement). The doctors went on strike.<\/p>\n

Strange paradigm<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a growing contradiction between scientific rationality and the model. Government doctors have protested against the introduction, contrary to protocols, of the \u2018Sudarshana paniya\u2019 (syrup) by Prof. Channa Jayasumana, into State hospitals as treatment against COVID-19. Prof. Jayasumana was in the forefront of the \u201cDr. Shafi\u201d campaign. <\/p>\n

Why isn\u2019t Prof. Neelika Malavige, holder of six medical degrees\u2014five from the UK, including a DPhil from Oxford\u2014award winner for dengue research, and Executive Committee member of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID), not the head of the anti-Corona Task Force rather than an occasional participant at the President\u2019s meetings and research team leader behind the scenes? <\/p>\n

Such an eminently rational choice would be at variance with project of military-centric dominance over the citizenry, overthrowing Sri Lanka\u2019s long-entrenched democratic tradition of civilian supremacy.<\/p>\n

The root of regime unreason lies in a long post from the Facebook of one of the most influential figures in the Gotabaya camp, a Gotabaya confidante and an architect and of the successful GR presidential project. I refer to someone with whom I have enjoyed a most cordial acquaintance, the youthful media magnate and charming corporate personality, Dilith Jayaweera. <\/p>\n

In October he delivered a speech and posted a long tribute on the 75th birthday of Prof. Nalin de Silva, currently (and most appropriately) Sri Lanka\u2019s Ambassador to Myanmar and one of the two founders of Jathika Chinthana (\u2018National Thinking\u2019) which shapes the \u2018Gestalt\u2019 of the GR camp\u2019s collective mindset. <\/p>\n

Dilith\u2019s longish post has a key sentence referring to his first encounter with Prof. Nalin de Silva\u2019s ideas: \u201cIt [the lecture] was titled \u2018Vidyaavey Kalaava\u2019 and you so convincingly imparted the idea that modern Western science cannot inspire new thinking. It just encouraged one to by-heart subjects to pass exams.\u201d (https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dilithjayaweeralk\/posts\/2811612132404554)<\/p>\n

This illustrates why the universalist outlook and methodology of science is not the guiding light of the Gotabaya camp and regime. Their guiding doctrine is that there exists such a thing as \u201cmodern Western science\u201d which \u201ccannot inspire new thinking\u201d. Jathika Chinthana is an intellectual version of QAnon.<\/p>\n

While there is such a thing as \u2018modern science\u2019 and there are Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern contributions to science, some of which, quite unfairly, are ignored or downplayed sometimes, there is no such thing as \u201cWestern science\u201d. There is science. Which is universal. If anything is universal\u2014and universalist, as well as universalising\u2014it is science.<\/p>\n

What is so-called \u201cWestern science\u201d counterposed to? Eastern science? And what is the superior alternative to \u201cmodern Western science\u201d? \u201cAncient Eastern science\u201d? Though justly proud of their own contributions to science, China, Japan, India and Vietnam certainly do not use the category \u2018Western science\u2019 to distinguish it from any other brand of science, and they do not regard \u201cmodern Western science\u201d as one in which you are \u201cjust encouraged one to by-heart (sic) subjects to pass exams\u201d\u2014which is why top Asian, and especially Chinese, scientists have been educated at elite Western universities, institutes and centres.<\/p>\n

Russia, which has produced a vaccine against COVID-19, has done so through \u201cmodern Western science\u201d. Cuba, which has made contributions to advanced medical science, has not done so with a notion which rejects or is critical of \u2018modern Western science,\u2019 which is why, in the midst of the US embargo, US medical institutions are in Cuba, working on joint projects. <\/p>\n

There is no country which has rapidly modernised and developed while holding such absurdly negative notions of a construct they call \u201cmodern Western science\u201d.<\/p>\n

As for its alleged inability \u201cto inspire new thinking,\u201d the three most respected (and widely disparate) thinkers in the world today, Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek and Jordan Peterson, are products precisely of \u201cmodern Western science\u201d in the broadest sense and in their respective fields.<\/p>\n

Inspired by Jathika Chinthana \u2014a perfect example of what Nietzsche extensively described and denounced as expressions of \u201cressentiment\u201d (resentment)\u2014no wonder the regime does not do the scientific thing of studying the lessons of those anti-Corona \u2018superstars\u2019 so as to apply these \u2018best practices\u2019 in Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n

The quintessence of the model and ethos of the Gotabaya regime is weaponised Jathika Chinthana; Jathika Chinthana militarised. <\/p>\n

USA-China-Gota<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is an extract from the report on Mike Pompeo\u2019s South Asia and the US interaction with Sri Lanka and its President, which appeared in Nikkei Asia, a mass media giant which actually bought up the iconic Financial Times (London) and has a vast and influential audience from North America to the Far East: <\/p>\n

\u201cUS Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has laid the groundwork for an ideological contest in Sri Lanka and the Maldives that Washington is spoiling to wage against the Chinese Communist Party\u2014between democracy and tyranny. \u2026The tone Pompeo struck has put the elected governments of Sri Lanka and the Maldives on notice regarding global diplomatic currents\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has been ratcheting up its security strategy by closing ranks with India, Japan and Australia\u2014influential democracies along the Indian and Pacific oceans\u2026The ideological choice that Washington is asking Sri Lanka and the Maldives to make comes with both countries beholden to China\u2026In Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa pushed back against Pompeo\u2019s China-bashing\u2026Sri Lanka is not caught in a Chinese debt-trap, the hawkish Rajapaksa said…\u201d (\u2018US counters China in Sri Lanka and Maldives by driving a wedge\u2019, Nikkei Asia, 30 October).<\/p>\n

This is as good as it gets for the GR presidency in the relationship with the US. It sure isn\u2019t going to get any better anytime soon. If things are this difficult with a Trump administration which President Gotabaya and his base identify with, it sure is not going to get any better anytime soon. The Secretary of State of the Republican administration that the GR camp supports, has decided to make the cut along the lines of democracy vs. \u2018the Chinese camp\u2019 as defined by a tilt to the Chinese model\/doctrine. A Democratic administration would broaden the democracy vs authoritarianism issue far more than did Mike Pompeo, and add ultranationalism to the target list. <\/p>\n

The contemporary US foreign policy thinker I find the most interesting, Ben Rhodes, President Obama\u2019s former Deputy National Security Advisor, a progressive Democrat and critic of the Hillary Clinton foreign policy establishment he famously and derisively dubbed \u2018The Blob\u2019, writes that \u201cChina is expanding its influence and selling its techno-totalitarian model of government as an alternative to liberal democracy.\u201d (The Democratic Renewal, Foreign Affairs Sept\/Oct 2020)<\/p>\n

Thus, on the issue of China\u2019s \u2018expansion\u2019 of its ideological and systemic influence, there is a bipartisan consensus in the USA, which in turn is in an upgraded alliance with India, Japan and Australia. The ideological-systemic choice that Sri Lanka is being asked to make will remain an issue and sharpen. So how is Sri Lanka placed?<\/p>\n

The most recent Banyan column of The Economist, a magazine read by almost all world leaders, is dedicated to the Gotabaya presidency after the 20th Amendment, and would influence the perception of the global elite however fractured and paralysed it currently is. The Economist\u2019s Banyan column is entitled \u2018Gotabaya, caudillo\u2019 and anyone who knows anything about Latin America knows that in the bad old days, Latin American \u2018banana republics\u2019 had dictatorial \u2018strongmen\u2019 called \u2018caudillos\u2019. <\/p>\n

The strap under \u2018Gotabaya, caudillo\u2019 says \u201cSri Lanka\u2019s President is amassing personal power\u2019 (which is the title carried in the link). Another edition of the same issue (31 October) of The Economist runs the column with the caption \u2018Sri Lanka\u2019s President is amassing personal power\u2019 while the strap reads \u2018Constitutional amendments make Gotabaya Rajapaksa\u2019s authority almost absolute\u2019. The Banyan column\u2019s first paragraph ends with \u201c\u2026creating a near-absolute presidency with the 20th Amendment\u201d. The column itself concludes with a de-coding of the Gotabaya ethos, and a projection of the coming Constitution, as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Mr. Rajapaksa has made explicit the link he sees between an all-powerful state and the centrality of Buddhism, whose more chauvinist priests he courts. Of the 66 ministers only three are Tamils and just one is a Muslim (there is only one woman, too). The message is stark: in the ethno-nationalist state, everyone must know their station.\u201d (https:\/\/www.economist.com\/asia\/2020\/10\/31\/sri-lankas-president-is-amassing-personal-power)<\/p>\n

Given our geopolitical relevance, most world leaders may have read that. Obviously Sri Lanka\u2019s President and his inner-circle were utterly unmindful about how the 20th Amendment would play on the global screen. Doing so would transgress the involuted, narcissistic Jathika Chinthana faith of the new Establishment.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:Daily FT<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka Sri Lanka is currently experiencing two crises which will trigger the third. They stem from a common source and therefore can be resolved only if rectification takes place at that source, that root. One crisis is the second wave of COVID-19. It is manifest and acknowledged but its dimensions are played down …<\/p>\n

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