By Rohana R. Wasala

Vinasha kale vipareetha buddhi” is an ancient Sanskrit proverb. It means: When a person’s doom approaches, their intellectual power becomes reversed/disoriented or turns against them (causing their destruction)”. This pithy saying seems to be as much applicable to incumbent president Anura Kumara Dissanayake as it once was to former president Mahinda Rajapaksa.   This was brought to my mind by president Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s absurd  treatment of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa in his keynote address at a public rally dubbed  ‘Suhada Hamuwa’ (Friendly Meeting)  held by the ruling JVP/NPP alliance at Katukurunda in Kalutara on January 19, 2025. President Dissanayake stated that he won’t hesitate to remove altogether even the already  reduced security detail of sixty policemen recently left for Mahinda Rajapaksa to retain, if the latter didn’t stop whining about it! President Dissanayake also suggested that the former president could be asked to vacate his high rent (according to AKD) official residence (at Wijerama) made available to him rent-free and might be required to accept a monthly allowance that is equivalent to one third of his monthly pension to use for renting an alternative residence. AKD’s obvious tyranny in this instance sounds laughable because he was a member of the committee appointed by the Yahapalanaya (presumably, in 2015) that approved the allocation of that house to Mahinda Rajapaksa as former president. This piece of information was revealed by Ranil Wickremasinghe who addressed a meeting of leaders of opposition parties at Kollupitiya on February 1 as reported by the Sinhala language Lanka Leader website the same evening.  

According to media reports, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s lawyers, on his behalf, filed a fundamental rights (FR) petition with the Supreme Court, Colombo on January 25, 2025 against the current Malimawa (JVP/NPP) government’s alleged decision to curtail the security that he is legally entitled to as a former president. Downgrading the security of war winning Mahinda Rajapaksa, apparently  on a whim, is likely to be seen by the sensible public as an indication that the ruling alliance is already veering off its promised course of ‘clean’ governance. Remember that, just as the SLPP led by the Rajapaksas fought the elections of 2019 and 2020 on the single platform of One Country One Law (aimed at preserving the unitary state and communal harmony), the JVP/NPP alliance organised its presidential and parliamentary election campaigns of 2024 around the exclusive theme of eliminating corruption, punishing the corrupt and ushering in a clean Sri Lanka, while rescuing the country from its current economically bankrupt state.  

 Owing to his having failed to skilfully utilise the tremendous opportunities that the democratic electoral victories of 2010 and 2019/20 offered him for pursuing the nationalist cause that he claimed to champion to its ultimate triumph in the face of internal and external challenges Mahinda Rajapaksa has tragically lost his original charisma and heroic stature as a senior politician. He is virtually a spent force. But he is not your average past president. If president Anura Kumara Dissanayake is determined to enhance his own image by harassing Mahinda Rajapaksa, it would not take long for him to realise that he is gravely mistaken. Opinions are being voiced that AKD has succeeded in giving MR a new lease of life in politics!.

 Among the five surviving former presidents, Mahinda Rajapaksa is the most vulnerable to possible assassination attempts. Had it not been for his courageous political leadership, the mindless separatist terror campaign that had ravaged Sri Lanka for over thirty years (1975-2009) would not have been defeated. The crushing of terrorism earned him many enemies who are waiting to settle old scores with him. However, the grateful citizens, young and old, can either remember as a direct experience or as something they have learned from older adults or from books, the indescribable suffering that the terrorists were inflicting on all Sri Lankans irrespective of their diverse ethnicities, religious beliefs, cultural practices and political ideologies. They won’t forget how deeply relieved they felt when, at long last, they found themselves safe from the threat of mental and physical agonies, torments and tortures that they had experienced during that dark period. Ordinary Sri Lankans have a special niche in their hearts for Mahinda Rajapaksa despite the many allegations critics raise against him which remain to be properly investigated..

Besides, Mahinda Rajapaksa has earned the envy as well as the anger of Western imperialists and their local lackeys by being one of the only two post-independence Sri Lankan political leaders who brought well deserved recognition and distinction to our beloved Motherland and refurbished her image in the world as an independent sovereign nation through their unique service; the other is the late Mrs Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike. The United Left Front (a coalition of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and some left parties) led by Sirimavo Bandaranaike  swept the parliamentary polls in 1970 with a two thirds majority.  The ULF government, under her leadership, proclaimed the country a republic in 1972, severing residual colonial ties (to the expired British empire) which had survived the dominion type of incomplete independence of 1948. How the JVP unintentionally served as a catalyst for the introduction of the republican constitution is a different story. The ‘Punarudaya’ (Renaissance) that the present day leader of the JVP (none other than AKD) is championing seems to be a reversal of the genuine national revival or renaissance that Sirimavo Bandaranaike was instrumental in bringing about in 1972.   Mahinda Rajapaksa made history by ending the armed Tamil separatist threat to unitary Sri Lanka in 2009. Both leaders had to endure stiff external and internal resistance, which unfortunately persists to this day.  

Allegations of wrongdoing levelled against the once iconic Mahinda Rajapaksa are a different matter. They should be looked into in the relevant context where worse wrongdoers are lurking in the shadows. But as suspects or defendants, they should all be considered innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whom many have already begun to consider a sort of arrogant upstart, should not betray the trust that the people (the majority of them are baiyas/nationalists) placed in him by electing him to power for lack of a better alternative leader at this hour of unprecedented existential crisis that they are facing. AKD should not forget that the baiyas (nationalists/patriots who come from all the communities) form the majority both in the government and the opposition. They want him to succeed as president, for the sake of the nation/country by outperforming his predecessors including Mahinda Rajapaksa.

 The subject of security due to a former president of the republic is beyond dispute as legal experts tell us. It is an inviolable right of a person who has served the nation in that most exalted position, a right  established by an Act of Parliament. Security provided for a former president after due assessment of relevant factors cannot be scaled down or withdrawn completely at the behest of a political rival who has suddenly been catapulted to power by volatile circumstances. The Presidents’ Entitlements Act No. 4 of 1986 clearly stipulates the terms relating to the provision of an ‘appropriate’ residence for a former president. It is no surprise that Mahinda Rajapaksa, as the president who succeeded in putting a decisive end to three decades of armed terrorism,  remains a constant target of potential assassins. He has also earned the wrath of racists and religious extremists (powerful in both the local and global political spaces); they know (though they don’t acknowledge it publicly) MR as the leader of inclusive pan-Sri Lankan nationalism, which they oppose deliberately misconstruing and misrepresenting it as Sinhalese Buddhist racism or chauvinism. Despite the chorus of uninformed approval of and impulsive support for AKD’s hateful denunciation of MR heard from the immature brainwashed sections of the JVP’s young novitiate membership,  numerous critics have already pointed out that AKD is wrong in his behaviour towards the former president and that he (AKD) is most likely in violation of the Sri Lankan Constitution in this regard. 

To be continued