|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 28 March 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
When you sling mud, you lose ground by Gregory Wijenayake Milinda Moragoda runs a different kind of campaign. He wants to appear clean and decent, the sort who is magnanimous in victory and humble in defeat, someone who does not harbour malicious intent. This is why I believe he is the true political heir of J.R.Jayewardene. A fox. No insult intended to the fox, of course. The man wants power and therefore is smart enough to appear as though power is the last thing he wants. It might even work in the long run. But the long run and Milinda's political ambitions are not what I want to discuss here. I want to talk about the short, short-run, that is the run-up to April 2. And I want to discuss the politics of Milinda's party, which he has to defend, both in terms of collective responsibility and as a key member of the party hierarchy. Election time is about mudslinging and those who give as well as those who do not, have to stand up and take it. As for the people, having been participants in the game, they have to share the responsibility. But society in general does not remain static. There can be movement. The political culture can improve. And improvement is predicated on being alert, being critical and being fearless enough to say, "you are out of order". I believe no one has been more "out of order" than the UNP in this election campaign. Forget policy and promise, it is the process and not the manifesto that tells us more about what to expect. In previous elections we have had both major parties, the PA and the UNP, being quite liberal in the matter of mudslinging. The JVP, either due to lack of funds or because they were reluctant to sink to that level, were pretty aloof. People realised this and this is possibly why they moved from one seat in 1994 to sixteen in 2001. Wimal Weerawansa certainly did not hold back when attacking his opponents, but one has to admit that by and large, he did not exceed the limits of decency. In fact, in general, the JVP was quite benign in their rhetoric. 2004 is different. The JVP is no longer the JVP, but a key partner in a political alliance. "We" for Weerawansa is no longer the JVP, but the Freedom Alliance. When someone like say Mervyn Silva shoots his mouth, he can't say, "I can't speak for him". He must. Still, whatever Mervyn may have said or is planning to say, cannot match all the things that the UNP's propaganda unit has been churning out over the past few weeks. Ranil Wickremesinghe may claim that he is the future, but his party is living in the past. This is not a bad thing, really, because we need to remember where we come from in order to be able to make the correct decision about where we are heading. What is important, however, is not to remember selectively. That is self-deception of the highest order and those who indulge in it have no right to solicit the people's vote. Whichever way one looks at it, it doesn't do any good for the UNP to trouble itself with the ghosts of the 88-89 version of the JVP. If the UNP campaign was to be reduced to a single slogan, it is, "Remember 88-89". The subtext of course, is, "Our version of that period". No one could have missed the newspaper ads splashed with blood across a list of names of people allegedly murdered by the JVP. One can forgive the UNP for a lack of taste in these things, for aesthetic finesse is not something one can demand from a politician and especially not from the UNP. The hypocrisy is what is mind-boggling. Somawansa Amarasinghe, the JVP leader, has admitted that the party did kill people. The UNP leadership has not admitted to killing even one person. The UNP was in power at the time and everyone knows that it is the state that has a virtual monopoly on the instruments of coercion. The UNP used these to terrorise the people, the vast majority of whom were unarmed. For every known JVPer killed during that time, the death-squads of Ranil Wickremesinghe's party would easily have killed a hundred whose only crime was being born in the wrong decade or being from the wrong part of the country. Those lists are telling, no doubt. But they are partial lists. There are thousands of names that the UNP propagandists have deliberately left out. Richard de Soyza was just a well-known name. Even he has been excluded from the list of "artists" who were killed. Why? There was a torture chamber in the premises of the Law Faculty of the Colombo University. G.L. Peiris was the Dean of that faculty. He must have known about it. Even if he didn't he would admit that it would not have been possible for the JVP to run such an operation in Colombo Campus at that time. How about the proxy arrests? Illegal detention? The periodic torture of those in custody? How about the vigilante groups that roamed the streets, promising death? The massacres in places like Embilipitiya? Can all this be brushed aside by saying tit-for-tat? In what footnote of the UNP's history are these terrible things recorded, in what corner of their minds, so given to amnesia? One might remember an elegant verse penned by Ranchagoda Lamaya in the "Aththa" just after Vijaya Kumaratunga was assassinated. He said that the death was the issue of a racist mother and a terrorist father. He knew that terror and tragedy don't fall from the sky. 1988 was preceded by 1987 and before that all the years that followed 1977. 1988 came after the UNP government systematically eroded all space for democratic protest, beginning with the attack on trade unions in 1980 July, followed by fraudulent elections, a referendum that mocked democracy, planned attack on Tamils in 1983, the murder of two university students in 1984 and the surreptitiously signed Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987. 1988 came eleven years into the so-called free economy and a free hand accorded to multinational capital at the expense of the working class, and many years of fostering thugs and thuggery to the point where the dignity of the Supreme Court was also flushed down the political toilet. 1988-89 was not "the JVP time". It could be called "the UNP-JVP time", but since the State is clearly the principal culprit, it is in no uncertain terms, "the UNP time". It was not just a bheeshanaya, but a UNP-bheeshanaya. Hypocrisy does not stop with a general vilification of the JVP. If it is the short-term that is called for, we can juxtapose JVP terrorism with that of the LTTE. The UNP claims that the JVP attacked the Dalada Maligawa. For argument's sake let us concede this. But what moral right does the UNP have to make an issue of this "fact" when all that the JVP is alleged to have done is to attack a guard post, while the LTTE actually set off a bomb that tore parts of the building out? That happened in 1999, mind you. Two years was enough for the UNP to forgive this crime as well as the assassinations of a UNP president, a UNP presidential candidate and other key UNP leaders. They didn't just forgive and forget, they went on to give a blank cheque to Prabhakaran in the North and East, an act that led to a UNP candidate from the East being killed. One wonders if Ranil Wickremesinghe knows the meaning of the word "remorse". If what the JVP has done is labelled "terrorism" and is deemed to be deserving of a full-scale "Let us Remember" campaign, then there isn't a work in the English dictionary to describe the crimes of the LTTE and certainly no justification for Ranil Wickremesinghe imploring all the people whose vote he is seeking to forget those crimes against humanity. The JVP didn't wipe out villages. Didn't engage in ethnic cleansing. The JVP, when it decided to return to the democratic framework, was unarmed and has adhered to the basic tenets of democracy. It would be laughable to even think that the LTTE would be able to match the JVP on this. And yet, Prabhakaran is Ranil's angel. Says a lot about the UNP. The UNP can certainly object to a bheeshana, as anyone espousing democracy would. No one, however, can be selective about the matter. No one can say, "our bheeshanaya is justified and legitimate, theirs is not". No one can say, "All power to our gonibilla, but down with their gonibilla." That would be the way of crude politicians. Sadly, the UNP, more than any other party contesting this election, insists on being crude. All politicians must understand one thing about mudslinging: when you sling mud, you lose ground. How much ground the UNP has lost might be calculated by the amount of ground the JVP gains, although there would be other contributing factors. In effect, you end up slipping on the mud of your own creation. Whatever the outcome of such an exercise in terms of election results, all mudslingers ought to be reminded of the fact that when you sling mud, you soil your hands. Elementary. And cleanliness in these things cannot be purchased. Pontius Pilate's hands constitute a testimony that has persisted for two millennia, if proof were needed. And the man wasn't even engaged in mudslinging! |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
