{"id":84727,"date":"2024-09-11T02:22:24","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T06:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=84727"},"modified":"2024-09-11T04:50:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T08:50:54","slug":"84727","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=84727","title":{"rendered":"National Peoples\u2019 Power (NPP) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake\u2019s proclamation that his party is the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 party and he is the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 Presidential Candidate is a claim that must be taken with a whole sack full of skeptical salt."},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBy<\/p>\n

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

When NPP (National Peoples\u2019 Power) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake proclaimed unblushingly during election campaigning in the North a few days ago that his party is the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 party and he is the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 candidate in the coming presidential poll, that claim must be taken not only with a pinch but also a whole sack full of skeptical salt.<\/p>\n


\n\u2018Not to cringe in the face of bigotry\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reams have, of course, been written about the peculiar \u2018Sinhala ethnic chauvinism\u2019 (circa Bruce Mathews, 1989) of the NPP\u2019s driving force, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) when under the iron thumb of its late unlamented founder Rohana Wijeweera. A much later reflection (\u2018The JVP and the Sinhala voter\u2019, Kumar David, Colombo Telegraph, 2020) contains a kinder assessment on the lines that, this \u2018roughness\u2019 has mellowed and that the de-radicalized JVP is no longer \u2018racist.\u2019<\/p>\n

Even here however and coming from an empathizer at that, there is an important rider that the JVP taking a principled\/progressive stand on the \u2018national question\u2019 will be \u2018electoral suicide\u2019 for the party given its affinity with the \u2018Sinhala petty-bourgeois and the Sinhala working class.\u2019 David\u2019s 2020 reflection contained a ringing call to the JVP to abandon playing \u2018peek-a-boo\u2019 with Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism and not to \u2018shrivel up and cringe in the face of bigotry.\u2019<\/p>\n

Fast forward four years later with all the dirty water of the Gotabhaya Rajapaksa (GR) Presidency under the bridges, it is apparent that the JVP has not heeded that call. This is precisely why the Sinhala-Buddhist voting brigades of the GR fanbase have allied themselves firmly behind the NPP\/JVP banner, ranging from sizeable pockets of the urban working class to the disaffected Sinhalese in the village, furious at being left to wilt in the despair of post-bankrupt Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Racist riffraff of the Rajapaksas<\/strong><\/p>\n

So when the NPP candidate declares himself to be the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 political contender for the post of the most powerful office in the land, that absurd boast cannot go unchallenged. What Dissanayake should do is, to set out the premise on which he makes that affirmation. The fact that he will be hard put to do so, is evident. In fact, and to give the devil his due, President Ranil Wickremesinghe would probably have been a better contender for that title if he had not allied himself with the racist riffraff of the Rajapaksa tide to claim the Presidency on a vastly problematic elected platform.<\/p>\n

It is certainly not enough for the NPP to point to the fact that the racist frontrunners of the Rajapaksa team have split in three with one faction going to the side of President Ranil Wickremesinghe, some drifting to the SJB and others remaining with the Rajapaksa core. \u2018We are the only party that has not accepted these break-aways\u2019, the NPP\/JVP leader says and he is correct on that count. But that, by itself, is far from being sufficient to lay sole claim to the boast of being the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 party in town when wooing the minorities as he does.<\/p>\n

And when Dissanayake pledges to \u2018eradicate racism\u2019 as he does frequently to local media, that must be buttressed by a solid record of what the JVP\/NPP has done so far to demonstrate that commitment rather than pointing to elusive promises in election manifestos. Current realities are not all that promising to say the least. Recent social media images (un-refuted up to now) of the \u2018meeting of minds\u2019 of JVP trade union czar KD Lalkantha and Sri Lanka\u2019s controversial monk, Gnanasara are a case in point.<\/p>\n


\nThe NPP\u2019s \u2018misunderstandings\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gnanasara\u2019s less than dharmishta record features communalistic tirades that have been the direct cause of race riots in Sri Lanka as well as serving jail terms for insulting the court. The point is not that Lalkantha seems to delight in controversies. That is very well established, including his overtly sexist talk last year about nurses needing to attract the \u2018male persona\u2019 by regular gym attendance which his party seniors said had been \u2018taken out of context.\u2019<\/p>\n

The more recent \u2018Pol Pot\u2019 (akin to the deadly Khmer Rouge persecution in Cambodia which resulted in the genocide of 2 million citizenry) promise that on coming into power, the party will \u2018enforce judicial power\u2019 through its cadre at local level raised a hornets nest that his colleagues dismissed by saying that the remarks had been \u2018misinterpreted.\u2019 That has been the stock JVP\/NPP response to Lalkantha\u2019s \u2018misadventures\u2019 so far.<\/p>\n

In the face of persistent questioning by reporters, Dissanayaka admitted that such talk, which can be \u2018easily misinterpreted\u2019 is \u2018best avoided.\u2019 However, that admission by the party leader does not amount to reassurance enough for an anxious citizenry. <\/p>\n

On the other side of the divide, the same deadly dance with Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism is also played albeit with less force, by Sajith Premadasa, Dissanayake\u2019s rival from the opposing Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) camp as it courts the monks and the military with traditional genuflection to the \u2018Sinhala Buddhist State\u2019.<\/p>\n


\nLetting the TRC \u2018cat out of the bag\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even so, the SJB can point to at least some positive notches on its record. One example is when Premadasa cites the fact that it was the SJB that opposed with might and main in Parliament and outside, the GR Presidency\u2019s atrocious refusal to allow Muslims to bury their covid-19 afflicted dead. Meanwhile the SJB\u2019s assurance that it would \u2018fully implement\u2019 the 13th Amendment to the Constitution has been repeated ad nauseam by previous leaders, most famously by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa when he promised \u201913 plus.\u2019
\nThis is familiar political talk, not to be taken very seriously as it were. As comic back-drama to this tangle of ambitious promises by Presidential contenders moreover, we see frantic scrambling around by the Wickremesinghe Government, his Minister of Foreign Affairs and officials of the interim Truth and Reconciliation Secretariat to protest that, \u2018military officials will not be prosecuted\u2019 in terms of the most recent Bill<\/p>\n

This has verily let the (TRC) cat out of a leaking bag as it were. That this August Bill is a \u2018show\u2019 for periodic questioning by the \u2018international community\u2019 in Geneva is publicly admitted. Locally, it is providing a convenient \u2018conspiracy\u2019 theory for Sri Lanka\u2019s lunatic fringe ultra nationalist politicians to whip up communal tensions afresh by alleging that the Bill will \u2018betray\u2019 the Sinhalese Buddhist heroes.<\/p>\n


\nBetween the known devil and several unknown angels<\/strong><\/p>\n

But for Sri Lanka to look fresh to a new future as our Presidential contenders promise at the top of their voices for both the majority and the minority, the narrative should not be that of \u2018persecution\u2019 and \u2018prosecution, taken in a generalised form to cover the state services in its entirety. The State must admit atrocities committed by its agents and ensure accountability in regard to emblematic cases of gross human rights violations, allowing the criminal law to take its course.<\/p>\n

To do that however requires dismantling the deep security State which few Presidential contenders will take on. That said, establishing another Commission will only repeat the agonizing process of several other Commissions in the past, tasked with exactly this same objective. These Commissions only aggravated the pain of victims. <\/p>\n

It is difficult to see what purpose this redundant exercise will serve as repeatedly observed in these column spaces.
\nIn the final result, Sri Lanka\u2019s minorities and indeed the majority are faced with the choice of the \u2018known devil\u2019 who is electioneering on a platform of \u2018continuity\u2019 (qua President Ranil Wickremesinghe whose entire effort appears to be aimed at demolishing his onetime prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Premadasa\u2019s political future) or several \u2018unknown angels\u2019 (SJB, NPP et al), all promising a \u2018radical change.\u2019<\/p>\n

That choice is less than ideal, if one is to be frank. But this is a choice that will be made for good or for ill in the coming weeks.
\n
\nCourtesy:Sunday Times<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Kishali Pinto -Jayawardene When NPP (National Peoples\u2019 Power) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake proclaimed unblushingly during election campaigning in the North a few days ago that his party is the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 party and he is the only \u2018non-racist\u2019 candidate in the coming presidential poll, that claim must be taken not only with a pinch …<\/p>\n

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