cat’S eye

A hopeful future

This cat is purring like a noisy fan or a car left stationary with its engine idling. And why pray, you may well ask. Is it the purring of joy and contentment or contentious and dissatisfied? Menika is delighted to tell you that her mood is joyous and hopeful. Hope for what, maybe a question on your tongue. Hope for a brighter future for Sri Lanka and its people.

Without reference to opinion polls and prophetic pronouncements and shouted wins from political platforms, this feline believes that the Party she prefers is going to get larger numbers in Parliament after tomorrow’s election.

Her gut tells her this and let me assure you her gut is far superior to the astrological ability of that man who convinced Mahinda Rajapaksa when he was firmly ensconced as Prez of the country and seemingly dislodgeable, that he should go in for an election even though he had two years left to continue sitting on the throne.

You know what happened and what people who want honesty and those in power working for the greater good of the people, were gifted. They were gifted an end to that reign; a statesman of a president and six months of yahapalanaya. And today, with all quiet on the political front, Menika predicts the people will do as religious leaders and concerned civil society advised them: use your precious vote carefully and vote in honest, educated contestants with good breeding. While this article is being written well before election day, Menika surmises to herself: next week we will have a healthy national government with Parliament cleansed of those corrupt politicians of the past five or ten years.

This cat purrs having got an email about a two hour service held on August 7at the Cathedral of Christ the Living Saviour asking God’s help during this watershed time of our nation. A very apt prayer was offered by Jeanne Samuel and the choir of Methodist College sang W S Senior’s Hymn for Ceylon in all three languages.

Most know who this man was but for those who do not, let Menika divulge that he was an Oxford degreed Anglican Reverend recruited to the tutorial staff of Trinity College. In those times many from Oxbridge were in Kandy in that college. He came to Ceylon in 1906, was Vice Principal TCK, returned to England with his wife later due mostly to indifferent health aggravated by the tropical climate of his adopted country. According to his wishes, at death he was cremated and his ashes interred in the graveyard of St Andrew’s Church, Haputale.

Even though Kumari has to curtail her cat-talk due to space limits, she feels she has to quote a few lines from Senior’s poem of admiration of this country and its deserving of good:

Then bless her, mighty Father / With blessings needed most,

In every verdant village / By every palmy coast;

On every soaring mountain / O’er every spreading plain.

May all her sons and daughters / Thy righteousness attain.

Give peace within her borders / Twixt man and man goodwill,

The love all unsuspicious, / The love that works no ill;

In loyal, lowly service / Let each from other learn,

The guardian and the guarded.

Non Christians too can appreciate the appeal of that prayer and echo it.

Menika’s most clung to impression of the polling this time around is all positive and presages a better Sri Lanka where corruption is vastly reduced; where those in power work for the people who will know this and feel gratified. The rapist; the murderer; the paid-for assassin; the thug and money maker from dangerous drugs will be given short shrift or at least the message they are not to be tolerated and will be duly punished.

The President makes for hope to bloom through his very presence, calm demeanour and what he says and how he says it and acts. Kudos to him and much thanks for not appearing even once on an election platform though he seems to be so loyal to the SLFP.

Religions have come together and sit on the same platform in complete ease and friendliness. The races, though keeping themselves distinct, are showing vast signs of the amity shared we oldies knew long ago. Kindelpitiya is contesting the elections under a rising sun from a Tamil Party.

Only one party continues to beat its anti-UNP drum of rata bedanawa, koti aapahu genawa. As the JVP says all races belong in Sri Lanka and need their space and freedom within a united state. Some Tamil politicians do want something resembling Eelam. No way!

Two bits of conversation and a pronouncements from a platform are very much in this feline’s mind and demanding narration. She chatted with a driver of a van she hired to go outstation. He said he is from Matara and supports Mahinda Rajapaksa and the SLFP/UPFA.

“He built roads and developed the country.” The driver did not mention the oft quoted second plus point of having won the war, because he was stymied by being well aware of the man who actually won the war with his soldiers in the battlefield being imprisoned and all honours and pension stripped off him.

The other fella chatted to was an unknown three wheeler driver. He brought up the topic of elections and said: “I have always supported the SLFP but this time I shall vote different. Only just one or two stray rogue elephants in the party I am voting for. I like the leader now. He has no family to make rich and he has always been honest. Dress him in a good suit and he can look better than any sudda!”

A bitterly laughable pronouncement was from Mahinda Rajapaksa. He declared that he, when he is in power as PM, would immediately have the ruggerite’s untimely death investigated, also those of the disappeared and feared killed.

He added that those guilty would be brought to justice. When these crimes were committed as proven now, was he spending all his time playing cat’s cradle with his sycophants when he was all powerful President? Is that why the murders were swept under the carpets of obscurity with powerful connivance of the high-ups of the two other branches of governance? Or too close to the palace?

So who’ll be the next Prime Minister? We will know for sure 48 hours after you read this. The President’s letter to Mahinda Rajapaksa may not have clipped the latter’s high flying wings nor dashed his hopes, but it surely would have sent him into a paroxysm of rage.

The Prez wrote (and this was reported in the 9.00 o’clock news on Thursday) that if the UPFA gets majority seats, a senior member of the SLFP will be made PM. This second message of go home and stay home instead of splitting the Party et al will send the advised lived.

Thank goodness the President is safely far away from him!

Menika