Ranil holds two-day pooja in India worshipping Hindu gods
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s intense concentration on religious activity in
India has gained some notoriety in the Indian media.
An Indian publication, Asian Age, reported: “On Saturday (7/6) and
Sunday (8/6), Mr. Wickremesinghe prayed at the Lord Krishna temple at
Guruvayur before emplaning for Chennai. Though a Buddhist by birth, the
Sinhala leader is a frequent worshipper at many Hindu temples in India.”
The Asian Age noted: “The UNP chief arrived at Kochi from Colombo on
Thursday and had closed-door sessions for two days with well-known
astrologer Parappanangadi Unnikrishna Panicker.”
It added: “It was for an Ashtamangalya Prasnam (an astrological pooja
for knowing what is in store in the coming days) that Mr. Wickremesinghe
came here. He used to call on me quite regularly,” Mr. Panicker told
this newspaper.
Some UNPers are disturbed by this report. They point out that he
removed all the Buddha images from Sri Kotha, the UNP headquarters, and
then goes all the way to India to worship Hindu gods.
Of course, Hindu gods have filled the need for heavenly intervention
in earthly affairs - a power absent in agnostic/atheistic Buddhism.
Wickremesinghe is following this tradition of seeking sustenance from
Hindu gods plainly because he has failed repeatedly to gain any
substantial support from the Buddhist electorate. God only knows how
many other gods he has approached to save him from political extinction.
Anyway, given his pro-Western and anti-national stance, it is not
surprising to see him throw the Buddhist images out of UNP headquarters.
Furthermore, removing of Buddhist symbols from the UNP goes
nicely-nicely with his overall policy of inviting the Catholic
Portuguese to celebrate their 500th anniversary of invading Sri Lanka
even after historical records have established the wanton and
indiscriminate destruction of Buddhist temples and sacred sites by the
Portuguese — the cruellest of the three colonial masters. Considering
also his anti-national activities at home and abroad it seems that he is
bent on finishing the jobs that the Portuguese could not do during their
occupation.
Defeat
It is also not surprising that after facing the defeat at the polls
for the umpteenth time he should rush to sit at the feet of Panicker for
two days trying to figure out what is in store for him.
What can he expect from the future when he does not know his past, or
learn lessons from the past? Panicker has boasted that Wickremesinghe
rings him regularly to find out what the configuration of the
astrological position is for him to go down the track of his
“juck-muck-toot-toot” politics.
It cannot be denied that there is some validity in astrology,
provided it is read scientifically. But to ring Panicker each time he
runs aground is a sign of a desperate man clinging to straws.
His panic attacks are understandable because he has lost every card
he played. He has entered into alliances with anyone who is willing to
go to bed with him. When he gets up in the morning he finds that his
partner/co-signatory has left him, leaving him to pay the bill. His
demonstrations - conducted invariably from the back seat of his car -
are as impressive as Mangala Samaraweera hitching up his Barbara Sansoni
sarong to dance the baila with “Kolu”.
In a desperate bid to dispel the image of being anti-Buddhist he
wrote a kind of treatise (of course, ghost-written by a hired writer)
and to counter the charges of being an agent of Prabhakaran he renounced
both federalism and the ill-fated CFA. But the people are refusing to
buy whatever he is selling. It is not so much his poor salesmanship that
is undercutting him.
Shady deals
It is his shady deals of selling the nation to the West, to
Prabhakaran and now to Rauf Hakeem which are undermining his
credibility. His habit of running from one capital to another bad
mouthing Sri Lanka has not earned him any marks either.
By now the UNPers should realize that he has an image problem arising
from his weak character. He is also seen as a sly salesman who cannot be
trusted.
As any local advertising agency would tell him, no one is willing to
buy a car from him even if he states that it was driven only by
Chandrika Kumaratunga to buy her stock of favourite French wines once a
week in gay Paris.
Besides, how can the people trust him when his own backbenchers have
no faith in him and desert him in droves? The biggest ever exodus from
the UNP occurred under his failed leadership. He not only brought the
nation to the brink of institutionalizing separatism with his disastrous
CFA but also reduced his party to a useless lump of elephant dung.
Another weak characteristic of his is to open his mouth like a tap
when he goes abroad, denigrating Sri Lanka. Of late, he has been
lambasting the editors for not giving him enough publicity for his
“juck-muck-toot-toot” politics. Of course, his barbs are not directed at
his two stooges - Lasantha Wickrematunga and Ms. Sonali Samarasinghe of
The Leader group.
Symbiotic relationship
There is a symbiotic relationship between Wickremesinghe and
Wickramatunga, one scratching the other’s back. In return for running
the opposition (because Wickremesinghe has failed to do so) they get
political appointments in peace delegations or in diplomatic missions
abroad when Wickremesinghe crawls into power.
In running advertisements for themselves Wickrematunga and Ms.
Samarasinghe crow that they are “Unbowed And Unafraid”, or “Nothing
Escapes”. But how valid are these self-promoting ads? Take, for
instance, the symbols in the masthead of The Morning Leader.
All the national and traditional symbols of the nation have “escaped”
the attention of these two stooges and they focus on a Buddhist monk
waving his hand who is juxtaposed next to an armed squad pointing their
rifles. This is not surprising coming from Lasantha, an avowed
anti-Buddhist Christian fundamentalist.
However, if he is unbowed and balanced as he claims to be, shouldn’t
he also run an image of Holy Mary being smuggled out of the Madhu Church
by a Catholic priest who is handing it over to an armed group of child
soldiers? Like his master, Wickremesinghe, Lasantha finds Buddhist
images as hateful symbols.
He also labours to make-believe that the sun shines out of
Wickremesinghe’s toilet bowl every morning. The following paragraph
culled from his latest editorial is an example of how he bends over
backwards to whitewash his master’s failures: “Ranil Wickremesinghe as
the Leader of the Opposition and the UNP took upon himself to canvass
the EU membership to continue with the GSP+ subsidy.
That should be the duty of any responsible politician. Instead of
thanking Wickremesinghe for his efforts, he is being roundly abused and
threatened by government members who accuse him of canvassing for the
GSP+ to be withdrawn! This is petty politics of the village bazaar.”
This is a typical example of Lasantha’s vain attempts to transform a
rat into a cat. This is also a glaring example of how the facts have
“escaped” his attention.
The facts as known to the public reveal that it was Wickremesinghe
who first mooted the idea of canvassing the EU, giving the distinct
impression, at the height of the eastern province election, that he has
a bigger clout than the Mahinda Rajapaksa government to fix GSP+
subsidy.
After all, he is a regional head of International Democratic Union -
the leading pro-Christian club of the West. The editorial is right when
it says that it is the duty of any responsible politician to come to the
rescue of the nation. (It is, indeed, odd that the leader writer
confines the argument of Wickremesinghe’s responsibility only to the
issue of subsidy and not to more serious matters confronting the
nation.)
That aside, Wickremesinghe’s mission was doomed from the word go.
First, he is in the forefront of the NGO and the Tiger lobby to bash the
government on human rights. Having bashed the government on human rights
his chances of arguing a case to change EU policy were zilch. It is this
kind of kinky thinking that makes him believe that he can have the cake
and eat it also.
Second, he thought it was a good card to play at election time to
save himself from defeat more than the garment industry. He was
grandstanding to impress the electorate that he could do things if he
gained power in the east and elsewhere which the government cannot.
Third, it is doubtful whether he did the job with a sufficient degree
of commitment to win the case. We have only his word for it. Fourth, his
excuse that he failed because the EU insists on improving the human
rights record is like the story of the man who went up the coconut tree
to cut grass.
Everyone knew that there was no grass to be cut at the top of EU.
Wickremesinghe went up to satisfy his own needs and when he came down
empty handed his excuse was that there was no grass! And Lasantha wants
the nation to say “Alleluiah!” to Wickremesinghe for climbing the
coconut tree to cut grass.
The EU mission will go down as another failure of Wickremesinghe: he
couldn’t even convince his Western buddies to grant the subsidy. So what
has he ever achieved for the nation, his party, or himself? No wonder
the poor man has to ring Panicker every few seconds seeking divine
intervention! The choice is simple: either he must change his astrologer
or his brand of anti-national politics for the obvious reason that no
politician who abandons the grassroots can survive for long in politics. |