The Rajpal Abeynayale Column

Rupesinghe doctrine undermined, but Weerawansa has not conquered

When Kumar Rupesinghe faced off with Wimal Weerawansa, some people took fire insurance cover on their television sets. This was going to be so combustible, with not just one poster boy but two poster boys coming on the tube.

As debates go this will not be historic as the Panadura debate was, or perhaps even the one between the late Mr. Ashraff and the late Ven. Gangodawila Soma.

But as subjects go this debate was on a topic that would have made any opinion page editor of a newspaper want to salivate.

Two pin up boys were pitted against each other, but what's more interesting was the question, what were the pin up boys cheering for? One was for nationalism, sovereignty and such, and the other was for anything but those "categories" of thinking.

One spoke in exactly such jargon (categories/sustainability) and the other spoke the exactly opposite hard-line argot of the mob orator. Who won? Wimal Weerawansa scored the most number of debating points, with the ability to impale Kumar Rupesinghe on his own pointed logic. For example, Rupesinghe said that the allegations that Bergoff Foundation has a photograph of Prabhakran hanging in its lobby were false.

But, when asked about his alleged subversion of the Sierra Leone state when he was heading International Alert, Kumar Rupesinghe could refer to only a few discussions that he is said to have had with certain persons connected to the peace process in that country.

There was no paper-work that could make his position tenable. Does this make it clear now that the patriotism of Weerawansa is the grand idea, the dominant ideology, and that conversely Kumar Rupesinghe's NGOism is a thoroughly exposed and devalued currency by comparison?

That will be like saying that the generation gap ends when a kid becomes a wee little precocious.

This sparring match also made some people look under their TV table. They were looking for something that was being lost with every syllable uttered at the debate, the middle-ground. It has to be said that it was Weerawansa that salvaged some of this middle ground and stopped it from seeping entirely down the tube, to the naked space under the TV table. He said for instance that he had personally nothing against non-governmental organizations such as Care International and pointed out that his leader Somawansa Amarasinghe boasted of having drunk Care milk when he was a child. This was beginning to look lie a long drawn out confessional. Kumar Rupesinghe wasn't able to address the basis of the opposition to his variety of non-governmental organizations. i.e: that they are corrupt, that they necessarily have to buy into the subversive agendas of the countries which donate the money to keep these NGOs alive. His position that these NGOs are subject to audit didn't cut, as he couldn't give at the least a sufficient example of the kinds of salaries that are paid to NGO operatives. Each time he ducked the issue, he seemed to cast a brighter spotlight on Wimal Weerawansa's rogue theory which in basic terms is that NGO operatives have to be intellectually dishonest because being paid large some of money, they are hard-wired to sing to somebody else's music. He may have veered off topic, but his tactic of saying that the JVP is an NGO of a political nature also did skid, as Wimal Weerawansa was able to say that the JVP -- 'devi haamuduruvane' -- bares its assets scrupulously to the Elections Commissioner. This means that Rupesinghe was not able to remove that shroud. His veil is still there, and its like a purdah; it may make him look attractive to those who have their gaze transfixed towards him, but that kind of attire may not be comfortable in certain types of rough weather. The weather was certainly rough for Rupesinghe. But this debate was also not one in which at the end of it, a listener would have to repeat those lines by some old wag and say 'arguments arguments arguments and futility.' Would the people who watched see the emergence of Wimal Weerawansa as a gladiator who slew the Goliath, with all his sacks of foreign buckshee? That is to be doubted. Weerawansa managed to win the debate but there was no technical knockout. He was shrill and therefore, he did not slay the NGO dragon so much as he drowned him out with his voice, his verbosity and his tactical play. But at the end if it, it left more questions unanswered in the minds of the viewers about both these idiot-box gladiators and their method and backgrounds. Technically, one could say that Weerawansa evaded the answer to the position maintained by Rupesinghe that his organization and others like his have deplored LTTE assassinations.

But that was the technicality of it. In terms of language, he may have showed extraordinary moderation and contributed to a civilized debate, but he was able to underscore in the end that a moderate was better than either a NGO scavenger like his adversary or a tub-thumper like him.

Neither of these men sees the vanishing middle ground as the same ground that is cut from under their feet. It's the ground that disappears every time each gets shrill and over balanced about his nationalist rhetoric, or NGO rhetoric.