By Rajpal Abeynayake
They say that Mahinda Rajapaksa does not know the meaning of the word compromise. In that context I’m reminded of what somebody said about that.
‘Compromise’, it was said, is an arrangement by which it is assured that no party involved in a deal is happy.
Maybe that is why these days Mahinda Rajapaksa is happy. He does not believe in any kind of compromise with Ban Ki- moon or Navinatham Pillai or David Milliband or Gordon Brown. The manthra is —— “I go my way ..., you go yours’’.
By now it is also abundantly clear that he does not believe in any kind of compromise with Sarath Fonseka or any of his wildly aggrieved backers. It’s again “you go your way I go my way’’, with a passion.
In this situation of no compromise, a rapid and severe political polarization vis-a-vis Sri Lanka both locally and globally is inevitable.
But Mahinda Rajapaksa does not care that much about it, because locally speaking, he is enjoying wild rural based popularity at the moment, while the opposition is seen flapping about flailing for some sort of political direction and viability.
However almost on a daily basis the polarization between the Rajapaksa administration and its local and global haters, particularly its global haters, is increasing.
Standoff
It appears sometimes that he is headed for a dangerous Venezuela or Iran type standoff with the international community, where international haters of a regime either overtly or by implication keep baying for regime change.
Even if it may not be regime change they are asking for, it is clear that Navinatham Pillai and some of that ilk are baying for some sort of punishment of the Rajapaksa regime.
The considerable diaspora backed Rajapaksa hate-lobby is buoyed by this kind of international persecution of the Rajapaksa regime, but then, Mahinda Rajapaksa seems to know where to start the counter attack.
It is clear that he is going after the NGOs even though it was hilarious last week to see Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu the head of the CPA, announce, based on some obscure NGO news report, that he is at the top of a state intelligence list of identified saboteurs possibly up for arrest.
The positive aspect of it all for Mahinda Rajapaksa is the fact that in Sri Lanka, even the street protestors and the agitators and all the agents of dissent, are lotus-eaters too.
They can talk about hunger strikes and street protests, but it is clear for instance from the general’s hunger strike last week demanding for his wife’s phone to call his daughters, that the local street protestors and hunger strikers are not of a variety that can inspire hundreds of thousands to get onto the streets, for a cause.
The upshot of all this seems to be that Mahinda Rajapaksa is doing a rather incredibly successful David versus Goliath act that seems poised to remain intact for quite some time into the future.
As stated last week, any election prediction is a no-brainier with the UPFA guaranteed to win, though the breath of the margin may be less perhaps than widely expected.
Sarath Fonseka is to be brought before a three member court martial panel this week and it’s the strongest signal if any is needed, that the government is knee deep in a project for maintaining the Sinhala nationalist status quo.
The president is even in this election, warming up to the Sinhala nationalists and sidelining those on his nomination list who are not seen as being Sinhala nationalist enough.
The rise and rise of Wimal Weerawansa is as good an indication of this trend, as any.
The opposition against this continuing Sinhala nationalist project of the Rajapaksas is not only from the diaspora and the diaspora manipulated Tamils, but also from a considerable Colombo based group of majority Sinhala businessmen and ideologues who feel that all opportunities afforded to countries such as South Korea Thailand etc., are passing this country by, due to the very simple fact that the Rajapaksas are not willing to play ball with the West.
The contradiction is that if the Rajapaksas play ball with the international community, they are going to fast lose the rural Sinhala nationalist vote base that brought them to power in the first place.
If on the other hand the Rajapaksas don’t play ball with the international community, the global big boys are going to extract their vengeance, the Ban Ki-moons the Pillais and all.
This is a no-win therefore for the Rajapaksas, a situation that the president needs to learn to handle with the best of tenacity.
It’s a condition he cannot overcome but one that he has to cope with, such as diabetes with a chronic sufferer —- a condition not necessarily fatal, but something that extracts its price nevertheless.
Wildly popular
Sri Lanka would not fall into Burma’s or Zimbabwe’s or Iran’s level of pariah status for two or three very good reasons, one of which is that as if on cue, there is a massive infusion of publicized Indian and Chinese assistance recently including this week for railway projects and what-not in this country.
The other reason that Sri Lanka is protected, is the fact that even the international community cannot foist illegitimacy and pariah status on the Sri Lankan government, when whatever rights violations were incurred fighting what was seen as a just war against a group of solicitously violent internationally black-marked terrorists.
Besides, there is nothing that could be done, it seems, however hated the Sri Lankan government is for its defiance, when it is hardly arguable that Sri Lanka’s incumbent Rajapaksa regime is “wildly popular’’ with the masses, the rural masses in particular. The international community can say an election was rigged if there is clear and present evidence of such, but all they have are allegations of computer jillmart by some disaffected political parties, and therefore the Sri Lankan government appears unshakeable no matter the aspirations of the international elite.
The new trick among the group of unrelenting Sri Lanka haters among the international community is to whittle away at the domestically favoured Sri Lankan government, by undermining its credibility little by little, on several separate fronts.
It is in the context of this particular backcloth of events that the Fonseka fiasco appears to have more important and more plausible aspects to it that would place the episode perhaps in the category of real intrigue against the state —- rather than fiasco.
Fonseka increasingly made himself look, especially after the election, as an agent who was put in place to bring down the government one way or the other.
His campaign to go through with war crimes allegations and then to ferment street protests by repeating an implausible robbed election allegation, seems to indicate, along with the sequentially numbered money found with his son-in-law’s mother, that he is a man who has been planted by interested parties to bring down the Sri Lankan government no matter what ——-and no matter the legitimacy of his challenge.
Considering all of this, even international Rajapaksa haters can’t always with conviction say that the Rajapaksa government is haphazardly cracking down on dissent. At home, when even some of the moves by the Rajapaksas against the general are seen as not being motivated by revenge even by certain neutral people, it appears that the Rajapaksas therefore are unshakeable, at least in the foreseeable future ——- despite all national and international efforts against it.
They say that Mahinda Rajapaksa does not know the meaning of the word compromise. In that context I’m reminded of what somebody said about that.
‘Compromise’, it was said, is an arrangement by which it is assured that no party involved in a deal is happy.
Maybe that is why these days Mahinda Rajapaksa is happy. He does not believe in any kind of compromise with Ban Ki- moon or Navinatham Pillai or David Milliband or Gordon Brown. The manthra is —— “I go my way ..., you go yours’’.
By now it is also abundantly clear that he does not believe in any kind of compromise with Sarath Fonseka or any of his wildly aggrieved backers. It’s again “you go your way I go my way’’, with a passion.
In this situation of no compromise, a rapid and severe political polarization vis-a-vis Sri Lanka both locally and globally is inevitable.
But Mahinda Rajapaksa does not care that much about it, because locally speaking, he is enjoying wild rural based popularity at the moment, while the opposition is seen flapping about flailing for some sort of political direction and viability.
However almost on a daily basis the polarization between the Rajapaksa administration and its local and global haters, particularly its global haters, is increasing.
Standoff
It appears sometimes that he is headed for a dangerous Venezuela or Iran type standoff with the international community, where international haters of a regime either overtly or by implication keep baying for regime change.
Even if it may not be regime change they are asking for, it is clear that Navinatham Pillai and some of that ilk are baying for some sort of punishment of the Rajapaksa regime.
The considerable diaspora backed Rajapaksa hate-lobby is buoyed by this kind of international persecution of the Rajapaksa regime, but then, Mahinda Rajapaksa seems to know where to start the counter attack.
It is clear that he is going after the NGOs even though it was hilarious last week to see Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu the head of the CPA, announce, based on some obscure NGO news report, that he is at the top of a state intelligence list of identified saboteurs possibly up for arrest.
The positive aspect of it all for Mahinda Rajapaksa is the fact that in Sri Lanka, even the street protestors and the agitators and all the agents of dissent, are lotus-eaters too.
They can talk about hunger strikes and street protests, but it is clear for instance from the general’s hunger strike last week demanding for his wife’s phone to call his daughters, that the local street protestors and hunger strikers are not of a variety that can inspire hundreds of thousands to get onto the streets, for a cause.
The upshot of all this seems to be that Mahinda Rajapaksa is doing a rather incredibly successful David versus Goliath act that seems poised to remain intact for quite some time into the future.
As stated last week, any election prediction is a no-brainier with the UPFA guaranteed to win, though the breath of the margin may be less perhaps than widely expected.
Sarath Fonseka is to be brought before a three member court martial panel this week and it’s the strongest signal if any is needed, that the government is knee deep in a project for maintaining the Sinhala nationalist status quo.
The president is even in this election, warming up to the Sinhala nationalists and sidelining those on his nomination list who are not seen as being Sinhala nationalist enough.
The rise and rise of Wimal Weerawansa is as good an indication of this trend, as any.
The opposition against this continuing Sinhala nationalist project of the Rajapaksas is not only from the diaspora and the diaspora manipulated Tamils, but also from a considerable Colombo based group of majority Sinhala businessmen and ideologues who feel that all opportunities afforded to countries such as South Korea Thailand etc., are passing this country by, due to the very simple fact that the Rajapaksas are not willing to play ball with the West.
The contradiction is that if the Rajapaksas play ball with the international community, they are going to fast lose the rural Sinhala nationalist vote base that brought them to power in the first place.
If on the other hand the Rajapaksas don’t play ball with the international community, the global big boys are going to extract their vengeance, the Ban Ki-moons the Pillais and all.
This is a no-win therefore for the Rajapaksas, a situation that the president needs to learn to handle with the best of tenacity.
It’s a condition he cannot overcome but one that he has to cope with, such as diabetes with a chronic sufferer —- a condition not necessarily fatal, but something that extracts its price nevertheless.
Wildly popular
Sri Lanka would not fall into Burma’s or Zimbabwe’s or Iran’s level of pariah status for two or three very good reasons, one of which is that as if on cue, there is a massive infusion of publicized Indian and Chinese assistance recently including this week for railway projects and what-not in this country.
The other reason that Sri Lanka is protected, is the fact that even the international community cannot foist illegitimacy and pariah status on the Sri Lankan government, when whatever rights violations were incurred fighting what was seen as a just war against a group of solicitously violent internationally black-marked terrorists.
Besides, there is nothing that could be done, it seems, however hated the Sri Lankan government is for its defiance, when it is hardly arguable that Sri Lanka’s incumbent Rajapaksa regime is “wildly popular’’ with the masses, the rural masses in particular. The international community can say an election was rigged if there is clear and present evidence of such, but all they have are allegations of computer jillmart by some disaffected political parties, and therefore the Sri Lankan government appears unshakeable no matter the aspirations of the international elite.
The new trick among the group of unrelenting Sri Lanka haters among the international community is to whittle away at the domestically favoured Sri Lankan government, by undermining its credibility little by little, on several separate fronts.
It is in the context of this particular backcloth of events that the Fonseka fiasco appears to have more important and more plausible aspects to it that would place the episode perhaps in the category of real intrigue against the state —- rather than fiasco.
Fonseka increasingly made himself look, especially after the election, as an agent who was put in place to bring down the government one way or the other.
His campaign to go through with war crimes allegations and then to ferment street protests by repeating an implausible robbed election allegation, seems to indicate, along with the sequentially numbered money found with his son-in-law’s mother, that he is a man who has been planted by interested parties to bring down the Sri Lankan government no matter what ——-and no matter the legitimacy of his challenge.
Considering all of this, even international Rajapaksa haters can’t always with conviction say that the Rajapaksa government is haphazardly cracking down on dissent. At home, when even some of the moves by the Rajapaksas against the general are seen as not being motivated by revenge even by certain neutral people, it appears that the Rajapaksas therefore are unshakeable, at least in the foreseeable future ——- despite all national and international efforts against it.
Blogwalking here from Indonesia. How do You do?
ReplyDelete