Some reasons the JVP can think of, for joining the government

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

This writer wanted to do a research story on why the JVP might want to think of joining the government. But this writer gets typically distracted, and goes from lobby to watering hole to lecture hall, before he gets down to do the research. But, then, he realises, he need not do any references anymore.....Here is why:

There is nothing as accurate as gauging the state of the nation via the actions of the state's large mass of inhabitants. Or, make that small mass of movers and shakers, most of whom habituate its capital city.

So here goes: We start with this tour of NGOdom, civil society, and the cauldron that is academia.

Here we meet strange species, and sub-species.

One such sub-species, defines the sub-culture of "Rationalysis.''' The typical specimen of this sub-culture is Miss Rationale. (Not to be confused with Miss Congenial of the Swimsuit Contest variety.) Miss Rationale is usually of the harried intellectually striving variety. The nub of her intellectual presence, can be noticed as her ability to be pushy about the fact that she knows what's going on in the country. This is purely because she always speaks exclusively to people like herself. At the moment, she is petrified by her own ability to exaggerate. Even so, she is still the queen of hyperbole such as this: ''Mahinda Rajapaksa is using liquor ad' banning as a distraction to make people forget the enveloping chaos.'' She goes on in this hyper ventilating way, until she is asked with what degree of certainty she can say that there will really be chaos in the country.

This would undoubtedly be her answer: "The situation is veering towards an all out war, and we in civil society are not being listened to .'' She is reminded that what is striking about the past two weeks was the fact that there were a lesser number of incidents than the in weeks that preceded it.

But she laments. She says there is a "general derogation of duty," and points her fingers towards the general direction of Temple Trees, the way a Muslim person with a prayer mat will naturally turn every five hours towards the general direction of Mecca.

I go home thinking "yes there was a derogation of duty." Prabhakaran must be thinking, and saying to himself that there was a general derogation of duty on his part, in not attacking attacking attacking, and publicising these attacks to saturation point. But it's amazing how Miss Rationale lived up to her name in rationalising this derogation of duty as something that emanates from the general direction of Temple Trees.

The other member of the sub species that we meet on the sojourn around Colombo's water holes and chattering rooms, is Mr. Fastidia. Many model themselves around this member of the sub species, so Mr. Fastidia is just the prototype - and not the talking specimen - that we are talking about.

Mr. Fastidiya

His main grouse is that the country is somehow, inexplicably, doing not too badly despite everything -- which means that he is in a hurry to see things going all down the tube.

But it is not happening. He complains as if he is entitled to some acceleration of process. He sees the country as going down the tubes anyway, and there is no point even considering that he might entertain the thought that actually the contrary may be true. Mr. Fastidia is fastidious about his tastes --- and he has been completely sobered lately by the fact that he cannot afford Blue Label after he comes out palpitating from the precincts of the gymnasium.

Fastidia also berates countries such as India, but he has got all his reasons for his harangue rather confused. He says that after India lent us Buddhism, the country has never really helped in any way. He feels that India could accelerate the process of Sri Lanka's terminal decline. He feels India should do that with Godspeed. . This terminal decline may be in his head, but not even a frontal lobotomy can make him get rid of the notion that he has to talk about India when he talks about Sri Lankan politics. Why so? It's of course for the same reason that everybody who is somebody talks of India when they talk of Sri Lankan politics.

The other day he heard this conversation, which he recorded and played every hour on the hour. We reproduce it, strictly in he way that his tape-recorder has recorded it:

'India's current role in Sri Lanka is that of guide and mentor, and not that of aid giver and policeman. The role of the disciplinarian belonged to the West. It's in India's interest to eschew the image of the disciplinarian. India foreign policy mandarins are of the view that they have a President in Sri Lanka who is not prone to lay too much emphasis on his ability to solve the conflict.

He is a stayer, who will stay the course, and a political coaxer who will by gradual process make all comers -- opponents, coalition partners, the people, realise that any solution that he sells them could be trusted.'

Indian foreign policy experts see their role, therefore, as an enabling one in which Rajapaksa is given the solution, which he will then have to pass onto the Sri Lankan people.'

Mr Fiendish, the angry middle-aged man in academia, was the main protagonist that figured in this recording.

Mr. Fiendish has one constant in life, which is that he constantly feels miserable. He has to be given credit for the fact that his dissatisfaction has never left him, however traumatic his condition of being blessed has been to others around him.

Mr. Fiendish's real grouse is not against India. His recorded comments on India were academic in nature - but his general wretchedness is anything but an academic phenomenon.

Mr. Fiendish

Mr. Fiendish has a problem with the Sri Lankan diaspora. When the diaspora called (....those calls came from London Frankfurt and Switzerland at all odd hours noon and night......) Mr. Fiendish positioned himself to take these calls as if he was paying for them, even though the calls were not Collect. Such was his confidence in his own ability to be patronising to the caller from the diaspora.

But tables turned on him almost from the very first call, which came via satellite, and came in a very staccato way. Mr Fiendish did not know that this was the way in which calls come via satellite, that there is such a thing called transmission delay which always make the called and the caller feel that the party at the other end is speaking while engaged in some other activity - such as smelling the petunias. But that was just the first straw about all that was wrong with callers from the diaspora. This academic learnt through the staccato bursts of satellite crackle, that the diaspora's first reason for calling was that there was a desire from that part of the world to be patronising in a way in which any amount of being supercilious in this art of the world could not match. 'The diaspora stank', he thought to himself, and for all he knew they were not smelling petunias, they were smelling drainpipes.

The diaspora stank in the main for the reason that there was the cutting edge in the voices of those who spoke, which simply said "cut it out, we know that in the end you would have given anything to be here."

This cutting edge voice was compounded by the general attitude. Fiendish says all the time that "these Lankan fellows in Switzerland speak as if we survive by their troth." But Fiendish is most rankled he says, by the fact that some part of it is true -- some part of him says that he should have gone abroad long ago when he had the opportunity. His alter ego tells him 'the truth hurts', which is why he spits into the wash basin each time a call comes from the diaspora Mr. Visagot is from the business community, and this could mean anything in Colombo these days including that he may be a person who is making peace in an industrially productive Small Business sort of way. Remember that our intention here is to talk of the prototypes, so any resemblance that Mr. Visagot has to any person alive or near you is absolutely intentional.....

Mr. Visagot

Visagot harbours the fear which nags him all the time, that Prabhakaran might after all, since he is not immortal, die of some bug that he caught whole roasting a dead pig.

His great anxiety that is unpronounceable is that President Mahinda Rajapaksa has not done enough, even though he has to do it in a clandestine way, to ensure that Prabhakaran does not die of any death due to natural causes. One does need to admire his confidence in the fact that Prabhakaran could never be shot, or could never be poisoned in a way that it would led to his death. He is sure not so much because he understands the dynamics of the Sri Lankan conflict, but because he understands that as long as the industry of making peace is alive, there is little chance that anybody who can have a real chance of assassinating Prabhakaran goes unpaid......

Just the other day, he told me, "they sent a helicopter to fetch Daya Master to be admitted to the hospital when he got a heart attack - but I am not sure that the Sri Lankan political establishment will do it for Prabhakaran if he gets a heart attack." First, I admire the man's faith in his belief that Prabhakaran has a heart. But his way of blaming President Rajapaksa and the Sri Lankan establishment for something that has not happened so far, is quite uncanny. The last I heard, he was organising a non governmental seminar at which he strives to push the case that the Sri Lankan government should sign a document to say that Prabhakaran would be flown to Apollo in the eventuality of his getting a heart attack.

This headhunt

This headhunt is intensifying. Is there a possibility of finding someone - -anyone - in the Colombo civil society circuit that does not think that President Rajapaksa and his administration should be blamed for something that he has not yet got a chance to do?

I had to search outside the indigenous - native - - Sri Lankan circles for such a person. The wire service community and the diplomatic community are two separate entities, but these days one cannot tell them apart, they are almost symbiotic.

In the wire service community, I find ladies and gentlemen who are chastened to their molecular cells, for the reason that somebody has thought it fit to mention their names in newspapers. What I heard was that some of these wire service exponents were accused of exaggeration, of embellishment and such kind of excess when filing news stories.

As it would happen in anywhere from Botswana to Brisbane, they came in for some flak for indulging in these excesses. One could expect these attacks to glance past them -- but the unexpected side to it, was that they wore these attacks as badge of honour. At first appraisal of this fact, I thought this much have been an act of defiance. But then I noticed that it wasn't; it was just that everybody in the wire services whose names were mentioned were singularly honoured because for the first time their names have been mentioned in someplace other than the wire service dispatches.

So, it appears that this is a nixed journey. Nowhere could anybody be found, who could have figured even in a remote conscience attack that suggested that, maybe their case against the Sri Lankan state is not based on fact, but on their worst anxieties.

Someone - that apocryphal someone - - did say that the worst of our fears are imagined. Where there is a surfeit of imagination, there is a surfeit of fear. But this imagined angst in Sri Lanka is the one that keeps Colombo civil society oiled, and ticking. It's as if fear is a terrible thing to waste.

But, I delved further into the recess of Colombo's social whirl to see if there is any place where this fear is not being enjoyed - where angst is not savoured, like caviar.

But, its not as if this is Russia, where the caviar is good but is rare. The caviar of perpetual angst in Colombo runneth over. Maybe, I could dredge some of it --- walk over the marshy bog of this angst, and find some place, some sanctuary that does not have the luxury of this all pervading fear.

Perpetual angst

So, I checked into the diplomatic community. People are diplomatic there -- and there is so much bonhomie that it's easy to forget the mission you came to accomplish in the first place. They would not tell you that there is anything wrong in the country at all, which may impart the illusion that these diplomats are not worried about everything that happens in the country. But someone points quickly to some NGO gadfly, and tells me ''see he might make a good President of your country.''

This draws a repartee from me that says ''no no, but I think he might really make a good President of your country.'' That about puts a spanner across the gentle rapport that was building up between these genteel and urbane gentlemen from the eggshell world of diplomatic nicety -- and plain spoken myself. It makes me wonder later why I said what I said. I hadn't said anything that was not bulls-eye correct. That man would have made a very good President of their country, he carried their agenda, he entertains superbly with the money paid by the donors, and he too believes in his own un-subtle way that if you sow the wind of fear today, you would be able to reap the whirlwind of power tomorrow. Anyway, it appears that all indicators point to the fact that everybody -- except the voters -- want to be poised against the Sri Lankan state, the way it is being run today.......

Is this a corporate conspiracy? As far as conspiracies go this is the most open one. Business leaders might as well carry a compulsory message with all products being sold. It should read: to satiate our avarice, we need a government that is more capitalist friendly. If you can't vote for the UNP and elect it, at least cry for the UNP. With every product you buy, the slogan should be, buy Sri Lankan, and sell Sri Lanka. That 'buy Sri Lankan' should read "BUY, Sri Lankan!'' Or else.

There is nobody, the government should say, but us. And the people who voted for us. And the JVP.