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| Sunday, 5 February 2006 |
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Jayantha Dhanapala: Apey Kolla Quite rightly our candidate for Secretary General has been publicized in our columns and Sri Lankans would naturally want to wish him assured success. This brief note is however also to assert that once he becomes Secretary General, as we hope, he would also reflect in true reality the priorities and needs of the Third World, including in our own little country- our political cauldron in which we have been for such long years now. Very briefly, some illustration of these show what we mean and what he needs to do about them. On our own political scene, he has been quoted as making statements such as that the LTTE has to learn democracy, or that it cannot be trusted - so called conclusions that can only come out of a grossly inadequately briefed mind on these past decades. As I wrote more than once - with wide approbation - it was not the Tamils that created the LTTE but the Sinhalese, meaning of course elements amongst the Sinhalese. He would know this history - the '58 slaughter, the B-C Pact scuttling and the jettisoning by the Youth of the Tamil civic leadership, the Army cruelties of the '70's in the North, the Inferno '83 and all as history. Secondly, given a history of totally obtuse uni-ethnic majority government at the Centre it was only natural that the opposing rebels sought rebellious modes of conduct in their dealing with their opponents. This latter is history not singular, but in all revolutionary histories in the past. A Secretary General who carries this into his office would be least comfortable to countries in situations such as ours. Thirdly, and to be brief, as mentioned in my earlier writings repeatedly, the international reality of the future - not too distant at that, is of a new re-emergence from the present unipolar world, to very likely, a tri-polar world. This has no where appeared in Dhanapala's thinking or intention or agenda, for his intended high international future! Fourthly, despite the pronouncements on the complexity of the UN as an organisation one looks to find specific hard core conceptualizations on a real potential future structure at the UN reflected anywhere in his statements (c.f. my article Daily News 31st March 2003). For his sake and for our sake as Third World, let us hope for this new dimension from him. As the phrase goes, he is Apey Kolla and at the end of it all, in tribal fashion, we would want to see him there. Prof. C. Suriyakumaran
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