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Friday Nov 15, 2024
Tuesday, 24 February 2015 00:40 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Plotting return
He insisted that his removal from the seat of authority was a conspiracy. He challenged the enthused participants to take a side. Obviously it was on the side of the hero plotting return from enforced exile. It was the perennial message of the epic from Rama to Ulysses.
The trenchant proclamation by the former President confirms that he has an enormous war chest. He has the machinery in place to manage dozens and more such risings. The drone cameras captured the images of spirited youth, both male and female, with well-coiffured hairstyles dressed in Paradise Road attire waving posters of the Mustachioed Macho Patriot Supremo.
His consent to return and the call for mobilisation was a mercurial synthesis of a thesis and an antithesis. The master of ceremonies was repeatedly assuring that the wildly-cheering crowds were all concerned citizens representative of the 58 lakhs or 58% of the Sinhala majority.
It was an efficiently-executed logistical enterprise. It sent out a significant political message to the reformers relaxing in graceless and graceful indolence. They will ignore it at their peril.
Star performances
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka in his new discipline of Spin Science outperformed Marlon Brando’s Mark Antony. In a subsequent commentary he accurately and appropriately quoted the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen ‘Come on up for the rising, lay your hands in mine’, conveying the spirit and purpose of the concert at Nugegoda. Rock and hard rock. Vasu vainly trying to blast rock with an outdated fuse and wet gunpowder. A vainglorious Weerawansa retail marketing sleazy jingoism. Diminutive Gammanpila writing a new grammar on flag waving.
It was magnificent in attendance and deficient in content. The star performance was that of Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka who read out the message of the former President. The message was crisp. Mahinda was willing and able. He loved them all. Crafted in meticulous syntax it was classical Hegelian Marxist.
Mahinda Rajapaksa phenomenon
Like it or not Mahinda Rajapaksa is more than a person – a phenomenon. When he says, though beaten he is not defeated he relies on the single asset that he holds intact – his authoritative charisma. Unlike any other leader in our modern history, he was fortunate with an opportunity to carve for himself a place in our history.
Nothing alters that unique legacy, however tarnished by subsequent villainy. It is this privileged perch on the consciousness of a nation that now permits him to distort a popular mandate for reforms as a conspiracy hatched not only against him but the country. To his mind he and country are one.
Yet, a sizeable segment perceive him as necessary for well-being or the very survival of the nation.
‘Mahinda Chinthana Mind Manipulation’
The Orwellian purposes of ‘Mahinda Chinthana Mind Manipulation’ are best demonstrated in the textbooks given free to every child. All text books have this message from President Mahinda Rajapaksa:
Beloved sons and daughters,
Many countries that lagged behind us at the time we gained independence have now overtaken us and gone far ahead. But we must not be prepared to copy those countries or work according to the development models of those nations. Similarly, there is no purpose in continuing to lament about our lost heritage. What we shall do instead is to surpass them and reach a stage of overall development they have not reached, and show new paths and possibilities to the world.
Dear sons and daughters, we are now engaged in building your future!
Mahinda Rajapaksa
President of Sri Lanka.
(Statement that appears next to the National Anthem in every school text book used by our children – An extract from the speech delivered by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the historic water filling ceremony of the Magampura Port on 15 August 2010.)
His Minister of Education in the same textbooks informs the children that they are descendants of great generations whose creative power enabled them to carve statues of loving kindness and compassion out of hard heartless rock and compose graffiti of great literary value on the ‘Mirror Wall’.
The Gobblesian purpose of the two messages to the innocent children is manifestly unambiguous. This urgency has been brilliantly summed up by Professor Nira Wikremesinghe in her paper ‘History as heritage in post-war patriotic Sri Lanka’.
“Today more than ever, nostalgia permeates heritage practices in Sri Lanka. The return to heritage in myth-building and historisation is a process that was not born in the post-civil war years but received more State sanction in the ideological setting of a triumphant Sinhala-Buddhist state victorious over un-national secessionist forces.”
Re-tribalising initiative
The patriotic project of the ‘Nugegoda rising’ is the first post-defeat Rajapaksa initiative of re-tribalising the presumed balance 42% of the Sinhala majority. It was a great afternoon for the fans and perhaps rewarding to those incentivised to attend.
To this writer, it was stark reminder that Sri Lanka is yet to discover its place in the world. ‘The paradox of our times is that humanity is simultaneously becoming more unified and more fragmented.’ It is the principal thrust of change.
The unelectable coalition of left-outs of the Left and the Sinhala supremacist see the resurrection of the Mahinda Rajapaksa strategy of nationalist autism and international isolation is a reasonable price to regain their lost privileges and power.
The post-war Rajapaksa rhetoric relied on folklore as history and insularity as a creative process.
The only overt concession it has made to globalisation was the widening of pavements and McDonaldisation of the nation’s eating habits. The Rajapaksa social contract created ‘Princes of Property’ out of pauper politicians.
Traditional Sinhala red rice is today, classified as gourmet rice known as ‘Kalu Heeneti’. It commands a premium price with a discount on one’s credit card. This rice, which ‘Andare’ wanted the ‘Gama Rale’ to feed him with before he lifted up the rock in the paddy field, is an upmarket luxury. Had President Rajapaksa won a third term, further research could have been undertaken to produce the same grain in maroon and offered at Independence Arcade as an alternative to the two hundred rupee hoppers.
The young patriot
The young patriot returning home after the ‘Nugegoda rising’ stopped at a take away joint on ‘Pagoda’ road. He bought himself a cheese and chicken koththu. The clanging sound of metal on metal fragmenting the ‘roti’ into tiny bits sounded similar to the virulent poetry of Gunadasa Amsarasekera promising to tear up Mangala’s letter to Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
To ease his mind he contemplated the serenity of the Buddha statue erected by public-spirited Buddhists on public land nearby. The narrow road was congested with parked busses that brought the patriots to the concert in the Kingdom of Kotte. He brushed aside the awful thought that the decline of the Kingdom began with a cabal of brothers ransacking the palace, now known in history and folklore as the ‘Wijayaba Kollaya’.
(The writer is a former journalist and a retired professional in leisure and aviation industries.)
