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CHANDRIKA’S SECOND COMING NOT FOR
OUR GOOD
By Shyamon Jayasinghe,
Melbourne
It is reported that former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge
(CBK) is packing her bags to return to Lanka in order to stage a come
back to politics. Her decision is of considerable interest to political
analysts who would now try to forecast her future political course.
She is obviously going to campaign on the platform of constitutional
reform, which would include the demolition of the executive presidential
system that she enjoyed for eleven long years despite a promise to abolish
it, and despite an attempt to prolong her stay with a cock-and-bull
story about her having taken oaths a second time. She is not going to
be happy as a Prime Minister under the current system, playing poodle
to Mahinda Rajapakse and she cannot be President again. Her strategy
would be to exploit the frustration that will build around Mahinda Rajapakse.
She will attempt to undermine the latter and show him that the Bandaranaike
divine right to rule has not ended and that Rajapakse is a kind of Kallathoni
who usurped her by conspiring in the court decision to disallow her
twelfth year.
I dare say she is likely to gather around her substantial support because
the ordinary rural masses have been brainwashed into accepting the Bandaranaike
myth. Besides, she does still have charisma. Our people do not understand
that what the country is going through today is the monstrous consequence
of SWRD’s policy of Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy. That policy drove
fear into ordinary Tamils and eventually took them into the militancy
mode that we see today. It is not that SWRD wasn’t a man of liberal
education. That he was at heart not convinced of the supremacy theory
was proved by his authorship of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact
for a kind of federalism.
“A man may learn the four Vedas
And all there is to know
Even then doth greed, hate, and self-deception
Hold sway in him
Until he arrives
At the shore of nirvana”
(Sarachchandra in Pematho Jayathi Soko)
Thus did a man of wide learning like SWRD take up a cause that would
have far-reaching ill consequences for his country. Although an admirer
of Nehru, SWRD did not follow in the latter’s footsteps and give
leadership to the notion of a secular state that is the only sustainable
foundation for a stable and undivided Sri Lanka in the way that it has
proved to be the conceptual foundation for Indian unity. Instead, SWRD
chose the short cut to power, riding on the backs of the monks. The
yellow robe that carried him to power eventually destroyed him
The plain fact was that SWRD was a born political survivor. His daughter
CBK inherited this trait from him. I was one of the millions who voted
for her and I have been sorely disappointed with her crude politics
of survival. Throughout her eleven years, she did nothing for her country.
What she did was for her to survive come what may. CBK ousted Ranil
saying that the latter gave in too much to the LTTE with the help of
the Norwegians. Many people bought that story. However, when she assumed
full power with a Prime Minister of her own party, CBK continued all
that Ranil did and even went further to appease the Tiger. Thee best
example was her PTOMS proposal for sharing Tsunami aid on an equal basis
with the LTTE. Besides, CBK earned a reputation as an inveterate liar
whose word could never be trusted. She allowed her uncle Ratwatte to
do anything he wanted and that guy played ducks and drakes with arms.
CBK never cared. All previous Presidents had some concrete achievement
to show. Even Premadasa whose reign was short did so much for the poor
and he built roads and established discipline in the Public Service.
What prey did CBK do? What is she now coming to do? To complete the
destruction process that she had began and to preside over the permanent
division of the island?
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