by Tisaranee Gunasekara
"Learn from humans; the Demon King told the demon lords. Learn from humans. Its amazing what you can learn from humans".

Terry Pratchett (Eric)
Once upon a time there was a little boy. On his way to school he would kill birds and other little animals with his catapult and take the carcasses to show his schoolmates. In the course of time this boy naturally developed a craving for a pistol. He broke open his piggy bank and bought his very first pistol from a local mudalali. In due course he began a struggle to liberate his people from their oppressors. Many moons later he fell in love with a pretty girl who at first scorned him but had a change of heart when she realized what a gentle, tender, loving, caring man he was under his rough and tough exterior. They married and had a son who grew up to be a peace loving and studious boy with a flair for languages. So under the calming influence of his wife and son our hero gave up his violent ways and entered the path of peace, never to leave it.

This modern day fairy tale is actually a propaganda movie on the life and times of Vellupillai Pirabaharan, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The honour of producing this highly sanitized and romanticized version of the life of the Tiger leader belongs not to the LTTE propaganda unit but to the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration. This telefilm humanizing and glorifying the Tiger leader is a production of the state owned Sri Laanka Rupavahini Corporation headed by the PM’s confidante Dhammika Ganganath Dissanayake and was telecast last Monday (June 30th).

Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe is a virtuoso when it comes to giving the enemy a helping hand. Which other Prime Minister would sanction the use of tax payers’ money to make a propaganda movie extolling a terrorist leader who is responsible for the assassination of so many of his predecessors and colleagues? (This is apart from the signal such a movie would send our children and young people: that violence pays and the more murderous you are the greater your chances of success). Who else but Mr. Wickremesinghe would have sanctioned the attendance of two representatives from his office at the recent Pongu Thamil rally in Jaffna (one of whom was his media coordinator and confidante, Saman Athaudahetti)? The Pongu Thamil stage contained a huge cutout of Mr. Pirabaharan with the sun as the background (apposite, given his Suryadevan status) and the Eelam map. According to the Tamil Net a female LTTE cadre hoisted the ‘national flag’ - i.e. the LTTE flag, the national flag of the nascent state of Tiger Eelam. The theme of the Pongu Thamil rally was ‘we want our land’ and appropriately the highlight of the day was the highly symbolic act of destroying a replica of the SLA’s high security zone in Jaffna by the crowd.

These days the Wickremesinghe administration, alarmed understandably by the manifest displeasure of its ‘ally’, seems obsessed with doing everything to bring the smiles back on faces of the Tigers. So much so that the administration was undeterred even by the murder of one of its senior intelligence officers (OIC Sunil Thabrew) by an LTTE operative in the vicinity of the capital city. In fact the regime seems totally unconcerned that its tireless efforts to regain the LTTE’s approbation are undermining the defence of the country and the safety of the people.

The Interior Minister, when he is not busy dismantling the country’s intelligence apparatus, dreams of setting up red light districts and waging a relentless war to death on homeless dogs (in a famous statement during the Wesak season he wanted all homeless dogs to be shot). When the confrontation took place between the Tiger weapons ship and the Lankan Navy, the Defence Minister went on record blaming the incident not on the Tigers but on the ‘anti-peace’ elements within the Navy. The fact that the report of the SLMM absolves the Navy and criticizes the LTTE for not flying a flag indicate that this PM and his merry men are far more pro-Tiger than even the Norwegians. (Incidentally when the infamous raid on the LRRP safe house occurred, the former deputy minister of Defence Anuruddha Ratwatte issued a statement absolving the present Minister of Interior John Amaratunga of all wrong doing; during that time Hon. Ratwatte was still at large and obviously hoping to avoid a spell inside!)

On the eve of the Fourth Eelam War, while a sizeable section of the troops stationed in Jaffna lack even the basic defence gear such as helmets, the main preoccupation of our political elite seems to be the intense use of their power and wealth to gain more power and wealth and self-aggrandizement. Take Minister Milinda Moragoda of the ‘A Warm Heart, A Cool head and A Deep Breath’ fame. As mentioned in the book ‘the funding, printing and distribution of this book has been sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Government’; the editor of the book is former civil servant M.D.D. Pieris who is currently the Senior Advisor to the Minister of Economic Reform, Science and Technology - who is of course none other than the author of the book himself; when Mr. Pieris launched his own book ‘In the Pursuit of Governance’ last year the key note speaker was Minister Moragoda. I think in modern parlance this is called networking, a new name for an old adage.....

Milinda Moragoda was the founder of the Merc Bank and his family owns 20% of its shares. According to Lanka Business Online ‘the bank had its Rs. 250 million wiped off due to high start up costs, a lack of foreign exchange license and the absence of effective management’. The accumulated losses of the bank since its inception three years ago was Rs. 300 million while its liabilities amounted to 100 million. Minister Moragoda is a great believer in the inherent inefficiency of the state sector and the inherent efficiency of the private sector. He is in charge of the county’s privatization programme. However some of the largest depositors of the Merc Bank are state institutions and at least two of them - the National Lotteries Board and the Development Lotteries Board - come under Mr. Moragoda’s ministry (it would be interesting to discover when the Merc Bank obtained these deposits - was it before the UNF administration came in or after?). When the Merc Bank faced bankruptcy its directors made an unsuccessful effort to obtain the infusion of fresh funds from yet another public institution, in the form of a deposit from the ETF. Now the DFCC Bank (which is also connected to the state) is going to buy the Merc Bank, thereby baling out its incompetent owners and managers.

So that is the way it works - if you have the right connections you are always OK. The Tigers have the right connections, with the PM himself, and thus get away with gun running, child conscription, extortion and murder. Ministers get away with blatant acts of corruption and favouritism. The malaise is not limited to the governing coalition but is omnipresent, across the political divide. The highly profitable Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation was sold to a well known crony of the President, Mr. Harry Jayawardene. The PA publicly opposed the privatization of the Insurance Corporation but the President happened not to be present at the cabinet meeting which took the matter up; thus she was deprived of the opportunity of either accepting or rejecting the cabinet resolution. (Incidentally the Insurance Corporation used to award a free life insurance worth Rs. 100,000/- to all soldiers serving in the North and the East. It is highly unlikely that this national service will be continued under the new dispensation). Similarly the continuous lamentation about waste and corruption did not prevent opposition parliamentarians from becoming proud possessors of super luxury duty free vehicles, complete with such essentials for public service as televisions and mini bars.

The politicians are not the only culprits. The economic elite seem to be worshipping Mammon with greater intensity and veneration than ever before. Despite the precarious state of the nation the stock market is booming, clearly indicating how divorced it is from the real economy, real country and the real people. (And the crash, when it happens in the wake of the Fourth Eelam War, will be even more spectacular - Sri Lanka’s 1929). The scandal involving Lalith Kotelawala and Dr. Gamini Corea is demonstrative of the limitless greed and total unscrupulousness that is prevalent at the very zenith of the country’s business echelons.

The doctors go on strike at the drop of a hat, denying treatment to the poorest of the poor, punishing the weakest and most vulnerable sections of the society for the sins of the regime. The ultimate irony is that many of those striking medical practitioners who refuse to treat the poor in government hospitals while providing their services to those who can afford to pay their fees in private hospitals would not have been able to enter the portals of Medical College if it had not been for free education. Their irresponsible, anti-national and anti-people conduct is giving ammunition to those who want to destroy the free education system and make tertiary education the sole preserve of the haves - as it is becoming even in a place like the United States thanks to economic neo-liberal practices. It is about time that all parties cooperated to impose a parliamentary ban on doctors strikes.

Commenting on his experiences in Auschwitz Primo Levi wrote that in the concentration camp ‘one should never anticipate, especially optimistically’ (If This is a Man). That I believe is true of Sri Lanka today, a country which has lost both its head and its heart, a nation without intelligence or compassion. But even here one is sometimes heartened by the occasional act of courage, the rare manifestation of integrity. The judgment of Sarath Ambepitiya, convicting the police officers found guilty of the Bindunuwewa massacre to death is one such instance (Justice Ambepitiya also convicted Mr. Pirapaharan to 200 years imprisonment). Another was the recent display of passive disobedience by the majority of the people of Jaffna when they stayed away from the Pongu Thamil rally. This display of courage took place under the most unfavourable of circumstances, without the slightest backing of the Sri Lankan state and the government.

The University Students Union of Jaffna announced that it expects 200,000 people to participate at the Pongu Thamil rally; but the highest crowd estimate, by the pro-Tiger Tamil Net was 150,000. A far more accurate estimate of around 30,000 was provided by Reuters. Obviously despite the Tiger order which made participation in the Pongu Thamil compulsory, the majority of the Tamil people of Jaffna decided to brave the wrath of the LTTE and stayed away. For the sake of the country one hopes that these rare acts of courage and integrity would not be totally negated and submerged by the daily acts of appeasement and cowardice, ingratitude and greed on the part of the elite.