Paying for your sins “Not! I’ll not, carrion comfort…”

These lines of Gerald Manley Hopkins, my favourite poet, came sharply to mind when I read that the previous First Son, so much in the limelight then, has had a light focused on him, this time an investigative one, not the limelight. And his Father, His Previous Excellency comments: “The government must be happy now.”

Both those statements need clarification and this cat goes ahead, sanely, not with cattish glee.

Yes, she means that she will not take comfort from dirt-connoting crows who peck dead rats and all that nasty stuff as life sustaining food. She read in the newspapers (more than one) on Tuesday, July 12, that Namal Rajapakse had been remanded for “alleged financial irregularities in connection with a $650 million real estate project in Colombo involving India’s Krrish Group”.

The mind boggles and also remembers that even back then Krrish was in the unsavoury news.

Now, that taken objectively, not taking into consideration subjects involved, does give comfort since this feline, having been brought up when honesty was one of the highest virtues, abhors stealing, especially from the people of the land, a land that has so much poverty.

This cat’s mother, who was a single parent to her since she was five-years-old, and her school ingrained in her morality. She repeated the five precepts of her religion mindlessly like a parrot then but the psalms she recited in her Scripture class in the Methodist Missionary school she attended ingrained in her that one does not take what is not one’s due.

“Thou shalt not steal!” thundered by a clergyman from the Methodist Church pulpit down Brownrigg Street in Kandy - echoed by her school Principals, first an Irish woman and then a Jaffna Tamil, in softer voices at school assembly, and by her teachers and hostel matron - so strongly against stealing that this ‘wrong’ was ingrained deep in her mind and moral fibre as a business never to be indulged in.

Stealing a man

Take this example: This feline loves love and approves of people falling in love and being in love, even of a married woman in a very bad marriage loving someone not her spouse. Hearing of such, she just shrugs her shoulders. But if there seems to be thieving: a woman stealing a man from his lawful wedded wife, she is totally against such a love.

So the crux of the matter is that she totally vetoes and is angry with people who steal from government coffers, who steal money that should rightly go to the government and so to the people. She goes livid over using one’s clout or, that of one’s father, to steal and then live an extravagant life. So she had mixed feelings about the latest remand of a Rajapaksa family member.

She feels sorry for the young man: too much power at too young an age; everyone cringing and fawning and actually paying pooja and some encouraging corruption as they, themselves, were deep in it. On the other hand stealing is stealing, cheating is despicable. And most Sri Lankans brought up in one of the four major religions of the world, detest stealing and dishonesty, particularly of those with political power.

Now, the father’s statement: all wrong, puerile. This government has more grave and important matters to attend to than to be happy over a crime being investigated. He should realize that that old saw from the Bible still holds good: ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’

If a wrong is done, it has to be paid for. Simple: crime and punishment. And if the father and supporters imagine that ALL these accusations are cooked up by a vengeful government, they have to open their eyes to reality, jaundiced and blinkered as they are. You do wrong, you pay for it. If proven ‘guilty’, then face conviction.

Namal

TV news on Tuesday, July 12 night showed us the streams of visitors Namal R had all day long. Good for him, the support and all that. On Wednesday, July 13 a newspaper carried the headline ‘JO comments on Namal’s arrest’. Mahindananda comments: “This is a witchhunt.” This cat asks him what white vans were doing during the reign of the Rajapaksa’s picking up journalists and others not to their liking.

Dinesh says: “What this shows is the sad state of affairs of the judiciary of this country.” Does he forget what happened in the time of his admired boss? The Chief Justice no less, a woman, was castigated, humiliated and shamelessly insulted by a group of professional politicians and, then, heartlessly driven out of office and official residence. Her fault: giving a just ruling that went against the rulers of the time.

The man who said a family can live on Rs 2,500 a month, an ex-tuition master, opines: “This is one of the most heinous political witch hunts in the history of the country.” What about all the gold belonging to thrifty Tamil refugees that disappeared? What about the wealth amassed by many of the previous regime? What about car races and Lamborghinis?

I won’t comment on Geetha, the actress’s, comments. She looks as if she’s got a new face! Gammanpila forecasts that “the will of the people will prevail”. Thank goodness! Corruption will be traced, and the corrupt dealt with. That’s the will of the people.

Johnston toothily pronounces that “this government is trying to suppress public opinion” and he adds: “We will dislodge this government. We have taken the first step towards this.”

Is going to prison on remand the first step towards this? But, isn’t it this government that made a law providing for the right of all to get info? Previously, we were frightened to open our mouths to voice even the slightest dissent from the R’s and their regime when they ruled. Dullas says: “I think this arrest has clearly shown the dubious way in which the law works under the current government.” Everyone and his mother knows how ‘dubious’ everything was until Maithripala S and Ranil W took over the reins of the country.

Witches

‘Witch hunt’ is the latest epithet of the Jt Op. To get the true meaning of the word, let this cat and, all right-thinking people remind the JO that ‘witch hunt’ could be applied to the heinous crime of killing Lasantha Wicks since he was bold enough to report straight. It would also apply to Eknaligoda being made to disappear because he was drawing some cartoons.

‘Witches’ were those paid, or favoured or even coerced henchmen-personnel who cast their terminal dark shadow over targets disapproved of by the VVIPs of the last government. They used white vans and powerful motor bikes instead of broomsticks.

- Menika