Punsara Amarasinghe Institute of Law and Politics Scuola Superiore Sant Anna Pisa, Italy

A group of students studying abroad have recently published a statement claiming that they are really gutted about the political situation in Sri Lanka and their claim seems to indicate that this patriotic bunch of kids are extremely concerned about preserving the democratic values of island. In a way their empathy on the democratic institutions in Sri Lanka is correct as Sri Lanka stands as one of oldest democracies in Asia. Nevertheless, a serious doubt of the honesty regarding the statement made by those self-proclaimed democratic loving Sri Lankan student studying abroad emerge in examining the substance of their statement. The statement was released two days after the appointment of Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister by President Sirisena on 26^th of October and 32 students studying in North America, United Kingdom and Australia have signed in their statement by condemning the action taken by president Sirisena . Moreover, in the given statement their demand was very much focused on sacking former prime minister Ranil Wickramasinghe as an outrageous act, yet they have been honest in acknowledging the fact that yahapanana government was an utter failure. The statement states

Despite some success, the government of national unity led by president Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickrmasinghe has filed to stand by many of its commitment on democracy, corruption and justice. Yet this failures do not justify an illegal power grab

In these students those who have released the statement have explicitly mentioned the chaotic situation made by yahapalanaya government, yet they are adamant about the occurred power transition as total undemocratic and illegal move. Being a student of constitutional law, my argument is that why these bunch students writing from abroad failed to mention a word about the legitimacy of appointing Mr. Wicramasinghe in 2015 January without the clear majority in the parliament. The doggy attitude of this bunch is purely visible in their manner to disdain Mahinda Rajapaksa by claiming that he has no confidence as the representative of the people. The statement indicates as follows

Mr.Rajapaksa does not have the confidence of a majority of the representatives of the people

The pivotal question that I wish to raise is that whether they are aware of how much he has been accepted as the representative of the people. The local elections held in February 2018 simply gave a message to Ranil and Royal College gang about the pulse of the people in Sri Lanka.Above all this group has not stated a word about how effective it is to dissolve the parliament to assess the real strength of people.

In ascertaining the motives behind this so called democratic loving young Sri Lankan scholars studying abroad, it becomes important to look at the background or cultural upbringing of this group. Being a graduate from Faculty of Law, University of Colombo I have had known some of the characters during my undergraduate days there. One of the pioneers of this group named Sanjayan Rajasingham currently studying at Yale University happened to be my batch mate at law faculty.

Even though I have no personal grudge against him I vividly recall his reluctance in seeing Sinhalese Buddhist ideology as the backbone in Sri Lankan society. We often argued about this and every time his reaction on Sinhalese identity or role played by Buddhist monk in nationalist movement was rather cynical.

Ironically he remained silent on the evangelical movement functioned in University of Colombo as a clandestine group and later he became one of its leaders. Rajasingham or his famous uncle Sumanthiran had never questioned about why their favorite destination the US still keeps the phase In God we trust or why still constitution of Norway give a prominence to Christianity. Their antagonism was always shown to our 9^th Article in the Constitution which gives prominence to Buddhism.

Apart from Sanjayan Rajasingham another pioneer in this student movement functioning abroad is Gehan Gunatilleke currently studying for PhD in Oxford was another obnoxious character I knew at law faculty who was once or twice invited by V.T Thamilmaran (Former Dean of Law Faculty) for a guest lecture. Like his infamous grandfather Godfry Gunatilleke at MARGA institute of Sri Lanka, Gehan too has been a NGO activist in Sri Lanka. In his writing and public speeches the depiction of Sinhalese nation and Buddhism always has been a majoritarian evil that tries to trample the minorities.

It is not an exaggeration to mention that those who are writing against their ethnicities in favor of minority rights always get best academic opportunities in the West as protectors of liberty and freedom. Having associated number of characters studying for PhDs or other higher level of education in Western universities I am aware of how they have got such opportunities.

The simple rule is as long as you criticize your home government and pretend as a victim of it, you get the full package of stipend and many more benefits. I am certain our learned friends who have issued this statement about the undemocratic nature of the power transition may have already received the acceptance as heroes from their universities. Nevertheless, the challenges looming before us is whether we have strong intelligentsia representing the national interests in the country to resist this young Christian evangelical distorted minds studying abroad.

The lack of role models who inspire their students to be patriotic and apathy for English education have simply cornered our Sinhalese Buddhist university students  and this provides the platform for this emerging anti nationalist characters to badmouth on Sri Lanka as a failed state. The list of the students that have issued this joint statement simply reflects the power of Colombo based evangelical Christian elitism in action.

The parents of this kids have had completely dependent on foreign NGO money and inculcated the same pro-Western anti nationalist, anti-Buddhist mind set among them and now they have reached their turn to tarnish the image of Sri Lanka.