Robe, politics and karapincha

Wednesday 11th November, 2020

Former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, who heads the National Movement for a Just Society, has paid a moving tribute to the founder leader of the association, the late Ven. Sobitha Thera. Employing apostrophe for dramatic effect, he has apologised to the Thera for the unfulfilled yahapalana promises. In fact, all yahapalana grandees and their associates should kneel around the statue of Sobitha Thera and ask for forgiveness.

The yahapalana movement was foredoomed to failure. It saw the coming together of a bunch of strange bedfellows inhabiting disparate worlds of ideologies ranging from Marxism to Capitalism, and it was no surprise that the unsteady political project collapsed like a house of cards. The yahapalana politicians got on like a house on fire during their struggle to bring down the Rajapaksas, but lost the plot and fell out after achieving that target.

One of the key protagonists of the yahapalana revolution, Maithripala Sirisena, who left the Rajapaksa government in 2014, condemning it as a repressive regime, defeated President Mahinda Rajapaksa with the help of the UNP, etc., and helped form a UNP-led government in 2015, is now playing second fiddle to the Rajapaksas in the current government. Prime Minister of the yahapalana government, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has lost his parliamentary seat. Many of those who voted for the 19th Amendment unflinchingly backed the 20th Amendment, which was the final nail in the coffin for yahapalanaya.

All yahapalana partners have suffered ignominious electoral setbacks. The UNP, which had 106 members in the previous Parliament, failed to win a single seat at the last general election, and has not yet been able to nominate its National List MP. Its offshoot, the SJB, managed to secure only 54 seats. The JVP has lost three out of its six seats and the TNA six out of its 16 seats. This shows that the architects of yahapalanaya failed to sell their political project to the people in all parts of the country.

Sobitha Thera was disillusioned with what the yahapalanaya turned out to be. He would have taken on the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government if he had lived longer. He was very critical of that dispensation towards the end of his life. He must have realised that he had been used by the UNP-led forces to capture power. He once called upon President Sirisena to honour the yahapalana promises forthwith. He did not mince his words when he said at a public meeting that the griddle had been heated and Sirisena had to bake the promised roti instead of using it to warm himself. In other words, he told Sirisena that the time was opportune for the abolition of the executive presidency, and it had to be taken by the forelock. Sirisena remained silent with his sphinx-like smile.

Sobitha Thera should have known better than to give a leg-up to a bunch of self-serving politicians who do not scruple to cheat anyone to capture or retain power. The bigwigs of the present regime are doing to the Buddhist monks who helped them with their ascent to power what the yahapalana leaders did to Sobitha Thera. Ven. Muruththettuwe Ananda Thera, one of the prominent monks who were instrumental in bringing the current regime to power, is beginning to sound just like Sobitha Thera, who was offended by the shenanigans of the yahapalana rulers; he is inveighing against the government which has shortchanged him.

Sobitha Thera, however, was wise enough to stay away from active party politics and remain above self-important politicians. Some other monks have not emulated him in that respect. Surely, Sri Lankan politics is a swamp that needs to be drained. Unfortunately, most Buddhist monks who undertook to do so chose to plunge into it and wallow therein in the exalted company of crafty politicians. They have also desecrated the saffron robe by sitting with political dregs in Parliament, which is the Sri Lankan version of the Augean stables. Now, two prominent monks, who came forward to contest the last general election, claiming that their mission was to cleanse politics and liberate the masses, are fighting over a National List seat; their dispute is not unlike the legendary tussle between two Naga leaders, Chulodara and Mahodra, over a jewel-encrusted Throne, in Kelaniya. Unfortunately, the Enlightened One is not there to resolve the ongoing Chulodara-Mahodara fight on the political front.

Buddhist monks who back politicians for political reasons or to achieve social justice with the help of the latter ought to realise that they are only hoping against hope, and what awaits them is the so-called karapincha treatment—they are used and discarded. Ask Muruththettuwe Ananda Thera.