cat’S eye

HNDA hoo ha and the headachy girl

Oh what a fracas this last week! This feline goes against the popular sentiment of sympathy for the students and blaming outright the police – for brutality, too strong tactics, attacking helpless, ‘innocent’ students to curb them.

Menika strongly contends that the students were not innocent and innocuous, not merely protesting, not set upon unfairly and sadistically. True, there was a mite too much of beating with batons by the police, but consider what the students were up to. They are far too prone nowadays to protest on the slightest pretext, and there seem to be hidden agents and agendas.

This cat asks a few pertinent questions. Why did the students not disperse after they were tear-gassed and water-cannoned? Why did they continue to move forward and try to climb over the barriers and enter the premises of the UGC? What would have happened to the police in the melee if the students had gate-crashed and invaded the UGC?

The police would have been faulted and reprimanded and punished for lack of control. They were faced with a mob. Watching the incendiary incident on TV, we saw how the police attempted persuasion and pushing back the more intrepid students who dared defy the tear gas and water cannons and attempted to climb over the barriers.

They came en masse in defiance of the police. So the police lathi charged them. Of course one or two were merciless. Remember the police are human and also trained to use force. So ire being aroused, some succumbed further and were overtaken by sadism. Even that girl who is headachy and has re-entered hospital calls for no sympathy from this cattish cat. Seeing how the police were beating her co-students, why did she get into the thick of the melee?

Bad precedents

Parliament went on a binge of acrid argument. Some members from the Opposition benches shouted themselves hoarse. Pathetic seeing and hearing Dinesh Gunawardena being a pretence knight-at-arms railing against the government, the police and crying for the students and then shouting himself hoarse that his mike was not working!

What an anticlimax to his stand against supposedly tortured HNDA students! No wonder the younger generation behave as they do now, seeing the indignity of argument, nay the crass indecency of debates in Parliament. Noise, wild gestures and defying law and order while of course twisting the truth seem to be examples set for our younger generation.

A counter result of these shouts on behalf of the students and against supposed-to-be brutality of the police is that they, the police, will watch while protesting students do just as they please: block roads, enter premises that they should not enter, disturb the peace and encourage people to incite further mayhem.

Their hands are being tied by these politicians who take any and every opportunity to gain points with the masses and criticize the government. The government should see things in the correct light and not come down hard on the police.

Another adverse result of the blame being placed on the police with no reprimanding the protesting students is that the already-in-place predilection to march and protest by university students is being given carte blanche.

Mark this cat’s words. All the crocodile tears shed and media fuss over injured students and some Members of Parliament rising up in arms pass on the message to university and other youth, even the oldies, that protests are OK, that mass protests are the only way of gaining their ends.

A newspaper on Wednesday, November 4 carried a picture on its front page, a multitude of university students marching in protest against the ‘attack’ on the HNDA. The caption read: ‘Students defy court order, hold march’. Below the picture was the legend: “University students held a protest march in Colombo yesterday against last Thursday’s police crackdown on a group... They demanded punitive action against the police. The police maintained presence among protesters, but didn’t interfere” so there!

Dinesh Gunawardena and others who shed tears for the HNDA students are to blame fair and square. I did not see nor hear the Great Verbal Protester – Wimal Wee in Parliament or outside declaiming against the police and the government. Is he sojourning in Europe or taken his family to Disneyland, USA no less?

These same politicians did not squeak nor whimper protest when the previous government’s Defence Secy called the army and they shot to kill peaceful protesters asking for drinkable water. Of course, they blocked a main road, but tear gas and water would have dispersed them. No, bullets were the answer to their legitimate request.

Now, due to the hoo ha and the headachy girl and others with minor injuries who most definitely asked for it by defying the police repeatedly, a bad name has come to the police. Their order maintaining hands have been tied. Worse. Police officers will be reprimanded, transferred, demoted and even dismissed.

Police persons may well lose their jobs and livelihood of families, all due to students who are given free education from Grade 1 to post university and medical college graduation, Mahapola scholarships included, and even residential hostels.

And what about university students’ brutality to fresher-students in their sadistic ragging? New entrants have been killed or driven to suicide. This lot of protesting students do not represent the majority of university students who enter university with great difficulty and want to graduate and later seek employment. A moot point: All this hullabaloo is about Diploma students wanting degree qualifications!! They are Higher National Diploma in Accountancy students. Another protest this feline cannot bear is dog-in-the-manger uni students against fee-levying institutions of higher and further education.

To counter this very sad situation and future danger was humour enjoyed over the overdose of an aphrodisiacal drug and its consequences. Menika entertained some cousins to dinner and while the men were discussing cars, the economy and such like the women played a guessing game. One knew who the amorous one was. Him!? That old Lothario!?

Guffaw, guffaw.

Menika