{"id":81896,"date":"2023-05-06T01:11:18","date_gmt":"2023-05-06T05:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=81896"},"modified":"2023-05-06T23:15:27","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T03:15:27","slug":"will-mahinda-rajapaksa-his-family-or-the-rajapaksa-patronage-networks-ever-learnwill-they-ever-acknowledge-that-sri-lanka-toppled-into-the-abyss-as-a-result-of-their-cumulative-gr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=81896","title":{"rendered":"Will Mahinda Rajapaksa, his family or the Rajapaksa \u2018patronage networks\u2019 ever Learn?Will they ever acknowledge that Sri Lanka toppled into the abyss as a result of their cumulative greed, ignorance and racism?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBy<\/p>\n

Kishali Pinto -Jayawardene<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly twelve months ago to the coming Tuesday, state goons led by key Rajapaksa Ministers attacked peaceful protestors at Galle Face Green leading to the incendiary flaming up of what was perhaps, the single most potent peoples\u2019 uprising in Sri Lanka since independence.<\/p>\n

May Day musings on Rajapaksa wrongs<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Rajapaksa mansions and museums were set alight by once adoring followers in the deep South, the cry of \u2018system change\u2019 was in the air. Former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and members of his family sought refuge in an Eastern naval base long rumored to be where bitter critics of the regime had \u2018disappeared\u2019 when \u2018Rajapaksa magic\u2019 held the Sinhala heartland in thrall.<\/p>\n

May 9th 2022, one year ago set the trend for the coming events of the succeeding months when former President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa would hurriedly leave his presidential house. This was later to be invaded by the madding crowds who would dance on his bed and riffle through his belongings, making global headlines. Mounds of cash were found by the delighted invaders to be handed over to the police and still held in the grip of a court case on its orgins.<\/p>\n

This Monday, stirring songs were sung at the Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP)\u2019s May Day rally where Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa said that, \u2018we know where we went wrong.\u2019 But did he? <\/p>\n

Will he, his family or the Rajapaksa \u2018patronage networks\u2019 that have entrenched themselves deep into the bowels of Sri Lanka\u2019s legal and political systems much like a poisonous growth, ever \u2018learn\u2019? <\/p>\n

Will its Ministers \u2018learn\u2019, now sitting under the protective umbrella of the Ranil Wickremesinghe Presidency?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The myth of \u2018stability\u2019 of the Wickremesinghe Presidency<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some of these worthies are yet to be held accountable for the violence unleashed on May 9th 2022. Will they ever acknowledge that Sri Lanka toppled into the abyss as a result of their cumulative greed, ignorance and racism? <\/p>\n

On May Day this Monday, with the former President, his younger brother conspicuously absent, Mr Rajapaksa warned with only a touch of his former fire, that power cannot be gained through \u2018undemocratic means.\u2019<\/p>\n

This was taking clear aim at the \u2018red comrades\u2019 of the National Peoples Power party (NPP) and its frontline leadership of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which, in Sri Lanka\u2019s \u2018post-aragalaya\u2019 phrase, has attracted far more than the usual numbers of voters disillusioned by the politics of the major parties. Today, the country is shakily on the road to economic recovery or so we are told by the Wickremesinghe Presidency.<\/p>\n

In tandem, the term \u2018aragalaya\u2019 has become somewhat of a controversial word, people tend to look askance at one when it is pronounced. Captains of industry and well-heeled Colombo folk who flocked to the Galle Face Green when the \u2018aragalaya\u2019 was in its heyday last year, now shake their heads and mutter sadly, \u2018but it all turned so violent.\u2019 But this is to miss the point.<\/p>\n

Bitter \u2018cause and effect\u2019 of our actions<\/strong><\/p>\n

To believe that a youth fed for decades on the poisoned propaganda of violence, whether to quell the \u2018Tamil terrorists\u2019 or the \u2018Sinhala insurrectionists\u2019 will respond naturally to the call of non-violence in the face of extreme state violence directed at them, is a pipe dream. <\/p>\n

That \u2018aragalaya\u2019 lawyers would rubbish the Constitution with impunity, was predictable, a direct result of the Constitution being rendered to a dead letter by political machinations for decades.<\/p>\n

To expect that wild eyed factional leaders of the \u2018aragalaya\u2019 would not storm into state television houses and threaten its staff to broadcast \u2018only our\u2019 programmes is as much illusionary as to think that the Rajapaksas would have \u2018learnt\u2019 where they went wrong. <\/p>\n

Both of these actions are perpetual \u2018cause and effect\u2019 framing the sad trajectory of this troubled land and forming a classic truth as the country marks Vesak Day.<\/p>\n

One year later, those who perpetrated the violence against peaceful protestors on Galle Face Green have \u2018not learnt\u2019 as much as those who engaged in \u2018counter-violence\u2019 and justified that by saying that the \u2018aragalaya\u2019 had \u2018many faces.\u2019 <\/p>\n

That arrogance and entitlement of never admitting mistakes, of refusing to engage in course correction, to envision things differently and to disengage from the ego of \u2018I, ours, mine\u2019 is common to one as much as to the other.<\/p>\n


\nA \u2018system change\u2019 that is \u2018more of the system\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

In short, this is why the powerfully unifying and peaceful thrust of the \u2018aragalaya\u2019 in its early and formative months ebbed away, to be replaced by a force that was controlled easily by the JVP\/NPP and its avatars. Hence, the opening up of the \u2018aragalaya-ists\u2019 to the \u2018fascist label that Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe so deftly pinned on them. All of these shifts, in the power games of the political players on the national stage, are not wins for the country.<\/p>\n

They have not enabled \u2018system change\u2019 one year later. And to be clear, those who may cross over to the \u2018red side\u2019 believing that this is the only hope for redemption despite the stark absence of clearly thought through policy and legal frameworks on almost all levels of governance are as much mistaken as the Wickremesinghe faithful\u2019s belief that this Presidency is the last bastion of \u2018stability, moderation and temperance\u2019 holding the gates strong against the unwashed barbarians.<\/p>\n

It is not \u2018stability\u2019 when the President presides over a Government \u2018as corrupt as usual\u2019 while parading new laws on anti-corruption and the recovery of stolen assets as panacea. These are good for children\u2019s fairy tales, none other. <\/p>\n

A few days ago, Sri Lanka\u2019s Minister of Justice informed Parliament blandly of a gargantuan bribe of USD 250 million paid to an individual in order to block the effective claiming of damages for unprecedented harm caused to the marine environment by the X-Press Pearl disaster.<\/p>\n

\u2018Homegrown crooks\u2019 running rampant<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Minister then refused to take responsibility for that statement, speaking to the stark absence of ministerial accountability, no more and no less. The Minister\u2019s statement was that he was saying this \u2018on information received and cannot take responsibility\u2026the police should conduct investigations in this regard.\u2019 Since then, it appears that the ministerial disclosure of the name and the account number were so much hot air blowing in the wind.<\/p>\n

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has stated that its inquiries for this mysterious customer who had received the bribe to a London bank account had yielded no results. Some cynics have rightly speculated that this was all a momentary distraction, to divert attention from the singular failure of the local marine and legal departments to prosecute the case successfully without pussyfooting till (literally) the last minute as it were.<\/p>\n

Whether money exchanged hands or not in this process, we will probably never know. It will go the way of all depressing investigations into multiple gross corruption allegations in Sri Lanka. Perhaps it should worry us that this is the same ministerial hand energetically pushing out a raft of supposedly \u2018new\u2019 anti-bribery and corruption laws. Or perhaps it should not.<\/p>\n


\nGoing beyond law reform<\/strong><\/p>\n

In that same breath, a whistleblower former head of the Consumer Affairs Authority who fled overseas after speaking of multiple corrupt rackets resulting in poisonous food products being released to the domestic market, has been releasing documentary evidence of his allegations. There is little indication that political (ministerial) heads will roll however.<\/p>\n

To \u2018change\u2019 all of this, a newer form of critical thinking must emerge, beyond the political sloganeering, which strategically confronts state authoritarianism. <\/p>\n

Certainly liberal reformers who earlier argued that the focal point of change was enlightened law reform, must concede that this, by itself and for itself, is insufficient. Necessarily, our thinking has to delve much deeper into fundamental problems with the State\u2019s political, legal and governance order.<\/p>\n

If these be the singular lessons that the triumphs as well as the failures of the \u2018aragalaya\u2019 teaches us, so be it.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:Sunday Times<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Kishali Pinto -Jayawardene Exactly twelve months ago to the coming Tuesday, state goons led by key Rajapaksa Ministers attacked peaceful protestors at Galle Face Green leading to the incendiary flaming up of what was perhaps, the single most potent peoples\u2019 uprising in Sri Lanka since independence. May Day musings on Rajapaksa wrongs As Rajapaksa …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Will Mahinda Rajapaksa, his family or the Rajapaksa \u2018patronage networks\u2019 ever Learn?Will they ever acknowledge that Sri Lanka toppled into the abyss as a result of their cumulative greed, ignorance and racism?’ »<\/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\/81896"}],"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=81896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81897,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81896\/revisions\/81897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}