New memories of Marx, Lenin and Stalin

The quarantine situation in Sri Lanka is certainly affecting some burial places abroad.

The Highgate Cemetery in London had a sudden vibration at a grave yesterday. It was the grave of Karl Marx. The vibration followed the reference to Marx by our Health Minister Pavithradevi Wanniarachchi, about the spread of Covid quarantine, which would not exclude even Karl Marx.  She believed Karl Marx was a Russian. That is only a ministerial mistake.

The grave must have shaken because our Police were planning to take Karl Marx for quarantine at a special centre in Sri Lanka.

The next shake-up was in Moscow. The body of V. I. Lenin had suddenly shaken and even the eyes opened a little in the Lenin Mausoleum at Red Square. The guards closed the place for a short while to calm Lenin’s body. Our Health Minister had said that even Lenin cannot escape our quarantine rules.

There was another grave shake up in Moscow. It was where Joseph Stalin was buried somewhat away from the Red Mausoleum, just outside the Kremlin Wall.

Pavithradevi Wanniarachchi had a real stretch of graveyard thinking, at a press conference on the current quarantine situation in Sri Lanka. She also referred to our own teacher-trade union leader, Joseph Stalin, and the fashion model Piyumi Hansamali. She was making the point that the law is equal to all in Sri Lanka, especially on Covid quarantine. It is so fair and equal that when a court of law refuses to order quarantine, those whom the Police wish to take are forcibly bundled away, clothes torn, abused, beaten and battered – including the old and yellow robed monks, too.

This is certainly the height of Saubhagyaye Dekma – Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour – where the expanding Rajapaksa Team is making it clear that equality before the law is the stuff of imagination; when all Rajapaksas of Power are certainly above the law.

One wonders whether the Health MInister was in really good health when she began to remember Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin – all of whom she thinks are Russian. Maybe, she had taken a swallow of that ant-Covid syrup she promoted, produced by an ayurvedic carpenter-cum-medicine man.

When being so serious about equality before the law, she need not have gone so far as Russia – or London and Moscow, to make her shaky point.

If she can remember Karl Marx so well today, how could she have forgotten our own journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga? Why did she not think of making his body do another shake in the grave, and talk of bringing his killers to justice? The powerful killers who were able to manipulate the ‘judicial’ process when the initial probes were taking place. Yes, Lasantha remains in our memories.

Was it the impact of that
‘kattadi-charmed’ pot of witchcraft water that she threw into a river that made her forget the name of Prageth Eknaligoda, who is still missing, following an alleged abduction and forced disappearance? The Eknaligoda name is still ringing in our ears. But it must be shut out from the ears of the Rajapaksa Players of so-called equality before the law.

Joseph Stalin can remain in a grave outside the Kremlin in Moscow, but what of the death of that excellent Rugby player Wasim Thajudeen? Does the Health Minister not want to know that he did not die in a car crash, but was killed in a car at Havelock Town, and the key police person involved is now deceased. Let’s keep remembering Wasim Thajudeen – and hope that no more Rajapaksa Power will cause such ‘accidents’. 

It is good for our Health Minister who remains a Pavithra (and not an Apavithra) Wanniarachchi, to also remember those 11 youth who were abducted and illegally detained, where Navy personnel were involved, and whose names are the tragic memories of their families. Just another display of Rajapaksa Power – above and beyond the law.

Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, and Joseph Stalin of the past are certainly not the players in the Rajavasala Balaya of today. It is the Balaya that showed how those who made public demonstrations of support for the swearing in of the fifth Rajapaksa to the Cabinet of Ministers, and were not forcibly sent to quarantine, that really matters today. 

Pavul Balaya is the theme of Power Governance today.