‘Patriots’ and ‘traitors’

Thursday 28th July, 2022

The Rajapaksas and their cronies have not stopped making themselves out to be patriots in spite of having bankrupted the country and inflicted unbearable suffering on the public. Chief Government Whip and Minister Prasanna Ranatunga, taking part in the Emergency debate in Parliament, yesterday, launched into a tirade against anti-government protesters whom he accused of having insulted the police and the armed forces personnel. Painting a black picture of them as the scum of the earth chasing the dragon, and engaging in other such nefarious activities on the pretext of protesting against the government, he asked them to stop causing affronts to the dignity of the armed forces and the police.

True, there have been several instances where some of the Galle Face protesters sought to denigrate the military and the police, but their streams of invectives pale into insignificance in comparison to what the newfound friends of the Rajapakasa, who have evinced a proprietary interest in patriotism, said about the armed forces.

It has been rightly said that adversity makes strange bedfellows. When caught in swirling flood waters, even mongooses and cobras stop fighting and cling on to floating logs in a bid to save their dear lives. The SLPP and the UNP are doing likewise at present. A few years ago, the Rajapaksas, wrapping themselves in the flag, branded the UNP as a party of traitors, and its claim yielded the intended results politically and electorally. But, today, the ‘patriots’ and the ‘traitors’ have joined forces and are suppressing the rights of the public. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has become the saviour of the beleaguered Rajapaksa family. After the 2005 presidential election, he accused the Rajapaksas of having engineered his defeat by bribing the LTTE into staging a polls boycott in the North and the East, where he was popular. He can now be happy that the Rajapaksas have finally helped him realise his presidential dream by delivering the SLPP MPs’ votes to him in Parliament. It could be considered an act of reparation?

Minister Ranatunga may recall that the armed forces and the police suffered many indignities at the hands of the LTTE thanks to a ceasefire agreement the then UNP government entered into with Prabhakaran in the early noughties. LTTE cadres used to surround some army bunkers and lift their sarongs, exposing their derriere in addition to heaping abuse on the troops who had been ordered not to retaliate. (The Galle Face protesters did not go that far, did they?) While the army was advancing in the North amidst heavy casualties, at the height of the war, the UNP grandees used the floor of the House to ridicule the frontline troops marching through minefields against heavy enemy fire. Wickremesinghe himself sought to dismiss the capture by the army of Thoppigala in the East as something worthless. He told Parliament that Thoppigala was a dense jungle of little strategic importance. Lakshman Kiriella, who was in the UNP at the time, declared in Parliament that any fool could wage war, and Ravi Karunanayake claimed that the army had become so disoriented owing to LTTE attacks that it was moving in the direction of Medawachchiya thinking that it was heading towards ‘Kilinochchiya’, and had mistaken Pamankada (in Colombo) for Alimankada (in the North).

The government may frown on the theatrics of washed-up actors and actresses, anarchists and drug addicts, at the Galle Face protest site, but it must heed the voice of the ordinary public, who are undergoing untold suffering. It must not make the mistake of bracketing the hapless public with the aforesaid undesirables and tarring and feathering all of them. Aragalaya is only the tip of the iceberg of public anger; it is the irate public who took to the streets against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and caused his ouster; they will do so again if the government resorts to coercion instead of redressing their genuine grievances. A government which is not capable of even ensuring an equitable distribution of available fuel stocks is not simply worth its salt.

Former combat officers holding key positions in the defence establishment had better tread cautiously without allowing themselves to be used as a cat’s paw by wily, self-seeking government bigwigs to pull political chestnuts out of the fire. One can only hope that the armed forces and the police will see through the wiles of the politicians who are trying to pit them against the public to compass their sinister ends.