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President-elect Trump and First Lady Elonia celebrate Thanksgiving at Mar a Lago

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Many Trump dubious cabinet nominations unlikely to be confirmed

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

I would like to explain why I continue writing so shamelessly about a subject about which recent events have proved I know next to nothing.

In my defense, the news I have reported over the years has been always been based on facts and the traditional “reliable sources”. Unfortunately, my opinions and predictions have been personal and out of touch with the current political and social climate prevailing in the United States, which has changed substantially since the turn of the century.

I had little interest in politics in the USA during the two decades I lived there. We spent the 90s struggling for survival, doing menial jobs, which is the lot of most immigrants without American educational qualifications and work experience. But by the time I decided to retire in Sri Lanka 20 years later, we had achieved the one ambition that mattered to us. Our children had grasped the wonderful educational opportunities available during the Clinton years to kids who were prepared to work hard, as mine were. They have been amply rewarded for their efforts.

My imagination was captured by the noble aspirations of Senator Barack Obama, an African-American who, in 2008, was shooting for the skies, against all odds. I was a valued volunteer in the Obama presidential campaign office in Phoenix, Arizona, performing such vital tasks as licking stamps and answering telephones in my thick Sri Lankan accent. When Obama was elected the first black president in US history, I, like many an American, was elated that my adopted country had finally turned the racist corner. Man, were we wrong!

I retired in Sri Lanka after the war at home ended in 2009. I had little interest in Sri Lankan politics, though I was struck with grief and disgust at the way our politicians were stealing our beautiful island blind, robbing from the poorest of the poor. But like many self-serving dilettantes of the privileged class, able to comfortably weather these deteriorating economic conditions, my social conscience was conspicuous in its cynical absence.

In any event, I dared not protest against the corrupt politicians in “power”, who held no brook with those who attempted to publicly exercise their constitutional rights of free speech including publication, armed as they were with their own extra-military goon-squads and the infamous “white vans”. Journalism in Sri Lanka was not, in those days, the healthiest of occupations.

I have every confidence that, prayerfully not too late, we have finally replaced a series of crooked governments since Independence with a patriotic leader and a party of politicians intent only on the country’s prosperity and not on their own. A government elected with enormous goodwill, with the hope that a nation with great resources, human and natural, will be administered competently to finally reach its full potential.

With the kind of integrity, discipline and national pride that has transformed Singapore, a shanty town in the 1960s, to one of the most advanced, prosperous city-states in the world, Sri Lanka in the 1950s was one of the richest of British colonies. We could have surpassed Singapore if we had our own Lee Kwan Yew, who once famously said. “I had to choose between democracy and discipline. I chose discipline”.

There is every hope that our present leader will be that Sri Lankan Lee Kwan Yew, even 70 years too late, who will also choose ruthless discipline against international-scale corruption, political extravagance and departmental wastage, the disgusting hallmark of every past Sri Lankan government, which had reached a crescendo of corruption in the new century.

Democracy is a luxury we can enjoy after we have set our house in order. Just like Singapore, a vibrant, prosperous, disciplined democracy today.

So long as President Obama was rescuing the USA from the near economic recession he inherited from the younger Bush, and doing so with competence, grace, compassion, without a trace of political or personal scandal; and so long as my adopted home was progressing inexorably towards its final destination of that Shining City on a Hill, I found no need to express my thoughts on paper.

Until the nation hit a roadblock, when the despicable Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, probably the most qualified candidate in history, for the presidency in 2016. An election that proved conclusively that America remained a deeply racially and ideologically polarized nation. In a perverse sort of way, we should thank Trump and the Republican Party for exposing how Americans really feel, which is far removed from the sanctimonious bull shit they have been feeding the world over the years.

I felt compelled to write, for my own pleasure, an essay about the disaster that my adopted home had wrought upon itself. I sent this essay to my aunt, Ms. Vijita Fernando, distinguished Gratiaen Prize winning journalist/author, who had spoilt me relentlessly since I was in my early teens. She encouraged me to submit this essay to my old friend, the editor of the Sunday Island, who, to my surprise, published it. So at age 75, I became a “journalist”, and enjoyed the heady emotion of seeing my name in print. Writing also provided me with the occupational therapy that helped me occupy my time with a pastime I had always enjoyed.

Donald Trump had inherited a booming economy from President Obama, with 75 weeks of consecutive economic growth and the lowest unemployment rate in decades. I will not repeat details of Trump’s disastrous first term, with enormous tax cuts to benefit the wealthiest, moronic claims that climate change was a hoax and deregulation of environmental pollution laws imposed by President Obama; criminal mismanagement of the Covid pandemic which cost over 650,000 American lives; these were just the “highlights”.

I continued writing on a regular basis about Trump’s criminal misadventures, and when the US electorate came to its senses and dumped him in 2020 in a landslide, and elected President Biden, my relief was palpable. I published a book (for friends and family, not for sale, you may call it an ego trip), which ended with the speech of Oliver Cromwell, on the forcible expulsion of the corrupt and duplicitous Rump Parliament in England in 1653. The last words of that speech were:

“Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

“IN THE NAME OF GOD GO!”

Most appropriate words for Trump and his neo-Nazi Republican cronies of 2020.

Only, those venal bastards didn’t go. Instead, the MAGA (Make America Great Again), white supremacist section of the Republican Party, incited by defeated but incumbent President Trump, tried to violently impede the peaceful transition of power, when a white supremacist mob stormed the Capitol. A felony of sedition. Trump left the White House without observing any of the traditional ceremonies for the changing of the presidential guard. In leaving, he stole boxes of top-secret documents which belonged to the National Archives. A felony of espionage.

The leaders of the Republican Party, who initially denounced Trump, and held him accountable for the crime of inciting the insurrection on January 6, endangering their own miserable lives and the lives of their Congressional colleagues, changed their tune, kissed the ring and made him their Supreme Leader.

So I decided to resume writing, with the ambition of compiling a second book when the criminal Trump, saddled with four indictments, 91 felonies, impending sociopathic dementia and dictatorial hallucinations, would surely be decisively defeated in the presidential election of 2024.

I was, yet again, proved spectacularly wrong. I had, yet again, shown my complete ignorance of the national psyche of the modern United States.

A totally different American electorate, one which voted against the incumbent Democratic administration purely because of high prices and inflation; which voted instead for a proven loser who led a Party which openly espoused a campaign of fear and racial hatred. An electorate too myopic to see that these current high prices and inflation were the result of the near recession that the Biden administration inherited, which had, after four long years, been brought under control by rational and bipartisan legislation. They paid no heed to the opinion of leading economists that the US economy was the strongest and the “envy of the world”. And would only get better.

Instead, they opted for an administration whose proposed economic policies of high tariffs and tax cuts for billionaires and corporations will only bring more grief to the working classes; and whose authoritarian, white supremacist policies will spell the end of democracy in the cradle of democracy.

Even women, who had been deprived of their reproductive freedoms by the most corrupt right wing Supreme Court in history; black males and Latinos, who had been the brunt of Trump’s obscene insults; they incredibly supported this obviously white supremacist authoritarian movement.

A movement financed by billionaires, led by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who had financed the Trump election campaign and has been his constant companion at Mar a Lago since the election, the honored family guest at Thanksgiving.

I will conclude this essay with a few undeniable facts. Trump’s felonious conduct is beyond doubt. He has been elected president for a second term, with a jail sentence and trials for felony charges for sedition, obstruction of justice and espionage hanging over him, which would have seen him languishing in federal prison for the rest of his life had he lost the election.

Trump’s selected cabinet is composed almost entirely of yes-men and women, singularly lacking in the morals, intelligence and qualifications, even the confidence of traditional allies, to manage the departments of the most powerful country on the world. Their only essential qualification – blind loyalty to Trump.

Trump’s nomination for Attorney General, depraved Congressman Matt Gaetz, was forced to withdraw his nomination when swirling allegations of sex trafficking and raping underage girls made his confirmation impossible by even Trump’s lapdog majority Senate.

His choice for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is a doozy. A marine who served two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, his only “administrative” experience is as a weekend television host on Fox TV. He has numerous police charges for drunken and disorderly conduct, and sexual assault. Hegseth also believes that torture like waterboarding and war crimes are justified under certain circumstances, and women have no role in military combat. He flaunts a white supremacist tattoo on his body. A lifelong alcoholic, who his Fox colleagues say was often drunk on the job, he has sworn to lay off the booze if confirmed. He even got his mommy to plead on Fox TV that her son is “a changed man”, capable of running the largest bureaucracy in the nation, with three million employees worldwide and an annual budget of $850 billion. After all, he did promise to stay sober on the job.

Hegseth will probably not survive the confirmation process in even the most servile Senate in history. Nor will several other of Trump’s highly dubious cabinet choices : Kash Patel (FBI Director), Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence), Robert F. Kennedy Jr (Health Secretary), to name just three. But not to worry, there are plenty more of those creepy nutcases around that Trump will ultimately get confirmed. All they’ll have to do to keep their jobs would be to nod.

President Biden had earlier indicated that he would not be using his presidential powers to pardon his son, Hunter, who had been on trial for two minor charges, committed when he was a drug addict. One, for tax evasion – the back taxes have since been fully paid, with late fees. Two, for the purchase of a gun while he was a drug addict, which was never used in the commission of a crime. A Class E felony, which would been dismissed with a slap on the wrist for a first offender, had his name been anything but Biden.

Hunter is completely sober today.

But President Biden, mindful of the retribution threatened by the Trump’s nominees for Attorney General, Pam Bondi and FBI Director, Kash Patel, against Trump’s imagined “enemies”, knew that Hunter would be tormented, and have the book thrown at him, to a maximum of 17 years’ jail time.

So President Biden lied, he undeniably abused his power and went back on his word to grant Hunter a full pardon. Which any father would have done for his son in a heartbeat.

As the saying goes, Democrats are expected to be flawless, while Republicans can be as lawless as they please. Biden’s pardon had the hypocritical Republicans screaming foul, claiming that he was guilty of gross abuse of power. Forgetting the traitors and fraudsters Trump had pardoned during his first term, and has promised to pardon in his second. They are insisting that, as a quid pro quo, Biden should pardon Trump for his conviction of 34 felonies, and other indictments of sedition, obstruction of justice and espionage, for which he is awaiting trial. The moral equivalent of pardoning a traitor as a quid pro quo for pardoning a jaywalker!

President Biden would be well advised to give advance pardons to himself, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Liz Cheney, Dr. Fauci and those named “enemies from within” like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff that Trump has threatened to prosecute and imprison after his inauguration.

Trump has told us exactly what he’s going to do when he is in power, and Wannabe Hitler is not playing games. With white supremacists and neo-Nazi “strategists” like Jason Miller, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon in Trump’s backroom, and a supporting cast of thousands of Christian nationalists and avaricious billionaires, America had better fasten its collective seatbelts.

The tragedy for the ages is that the majority of the citizens of the most educated, powerful and richest nation in the world has elected to be led, with the powers of a monarch, by a self-confessed white supremacist on the cusp of dementia, an illiterate, cruel wannabe dictator and a political party of violent Nazi Brownshirts.

Shades of the Third Reich in Germany in 1932, with the caricature American Hitler elected as the Fuhrer.

I hope I am wrong, as usual.



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The Hegemon and his Henchman

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by Rajan Philips

Musk behind The Resolute Desk. Who is the boss?

America has a hegemon; and the hegemon has a henchman. Americans elected Donald Trump as president by a slender majority, but the whole world has to suffer him without having any say in the matter. Both America and the world have also to suffer Elon Musk, Trump’s unelected henchman. Just who is who – between the hegemon and the henchman – seems to be the question that is deliberately being provoked in political circles, hoping to trigger Trump’s ire against Musk. Inasmuch as Musk appears to be outdoing the president. Time magazine’s cover page placing Musk behind the president’s desk is amusing even as it might be provoking Trump. CNN’s Jack Tapper has started calling Musk, the President’s “First Buddy,” arguably more significant than the traditional First Lady.

For now, Trump seems to be giving Musk the long leash as Musk and his young software interns run amok through federal government departments and their projects, in Washington and elsewhere, including far flung places throughout the world. All in the name of eradicating government ‘waste, fraud and corruption.’ And all discovered in a matter of days by teams of Musk’s X employees, some of them in their teens, and all of them with a worldview that pretty much starts and ends at their laptop and tablet screens. It is as if the old ‘revenge of the nerds’ is being played out for real in the theatre of the American state in Washington DC. With the difference that the nerds roaming Washington have a hegemon to back them up.

President Trump is all hell bent on demolishing Washington institutions even as he has taken to calling Gaza a “demolition site.” He did that without any touch of irony at a joint White House press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza’s demolitionist-in-chief. Netanyahu had completed Gaza’s demolition before Trump started his second term, and he was rewarded for that with the honour of being the first foreign leader to be invited to the White House for presidential audience.

Trump’s description of Gaza as a demolition site is no accident, but a natural projection of his real estate mind. At the press conference, as a befuddled Netanyahu stood and stared, Trump rambled on about redeveloping Gaza into a Riviera in the Middle East, where the poor Palestinians will be allowed to work to support all the (rich) people of the world gathering for their holidays.

The horror of this scheme is the presumed eviction of the already displaced residents of Gaza to unknown desert tracts in Egypt, Jordan, and any other host country in the Arab world. These countries will have to just receive the displaced Gazans and shelter them just because Donald Trump has said so, even as the Trump Administration is rounding up ostensibly illegal but organically integrated immigrants in America and deporting them in handcuffs by military aircraft to their home countries. Even as far away as India.

The new Secreatary of State, Marco Rubio, a right wing Cuban American with more blind loyalty to Trump than any gravitas in world affairs, and other similarly inconsequential minions in the Administration, tried vainly to soften their president’s dangerous fantasy about Gaza. But Trump doubled down and summarily said that the Palestinians of Gaza will have to leave, Gaza will be redeveloped for the amusement of the rich under Israeli security, and all enabled under American laws. Whatever those laws are!

While there is little chance that a Riviera will ever be built on the Gaza waterfront, Trump’s outlandish speculations are only going to further aggravate the already turmoiled situation of the Palestinian people and rule out any possibility of a fair and durable resolution of a conflict that is as old as the UN. Trump has even worse contempt for the UN than he has for Gaza.

Imperial Illusions

President Trump’s Gaza musings are also indicative of a significant new dimension to his second term in comparison to his first. He seems to be labouring under the illusion that his second term could be the beginning of a new era of American expansionism. There were rambling allusions in the inauguration speech to a new United States that “expands our territory … and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons … and … pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”

The first step in the flight to Mars is to impose tariffs on earth. All countries of the world, no matter friend/neighbour (Canada, Mexico) or foe (China) or everyone in between (India) must pay an admission fee for the privilege of entering the coveted American market. The revenue generated by import tariffs will be used to support the massive tax cuts that Trump is determined to give the wealthiest in America. The entrepreneurs of the world are welcome to locate their businesses and factories in the US and enjoy the world’s lowest taxes, or stay where they are (that is “your prerogative,” Trump said to a virtual session in Davos) and pay the world’s highest tariffs. All of this seems to be Trump’s new economic gospel, if not philosophy.

Trump is not alone in this American economic thinking, but he is alone among America’s political classes to think that America can do this unilaterally and the rest of the world will fall in line either without political demur or under economic duress. Trump’s external thrust has surprised almost all serious political observers in America. There are overtones of 19th century imperialism in Trump’s garbled rhetoric. There are also multiple points of contradictions between his new expansionist thrust and his old isolationist insistence. Even the madman theory that he has tried to tout on his own behalf has few followers because crazy unpredictability is second nature to him and unreliability is what his fellow transactors expect of him.

Allies, Adversaries and the Rest

Then there is the peculiarity of Trumpism in configuring the positions of America’s traditional allies and adversaries in this expansionary vision. His expansionism provides for the annexation of Canada as America’s 51st state; renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America; threatening the takeover of Greenland; and taking control of the operation of Panama Canal. Turning to Europe, Trump wants to impose tariffs on EU exports to America, has no abiding interest in NATO, and just this week indicated that he would be repudiating all of Biden’s commitments to Ukraine and force Ukraine to negotiate peace with Russia on Putin’s terms.

In other words, the Trumpian vision of American expansionism has no place for America’s traditional allies and suggests the annexation of at least one of them, Canada. Trump would rather have America contending for the world with its traditional adversaries, China and Russia. That would be a contest which, presumably in his understanding, will create all the opportunities for maximizing wealth and profit within market capitalism, without any of the inconveniences of state regulations, legal hurdles and overall accountability whether at the national or global level. It will be a system of hegemons and their henchmen carving up the planet as they please.

In such a set up, there is no place for American involvement in the World Health Organization (WHO), or continuing with the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump has withdrawn America from both using two Executive Orders that were among the very early ones issued following his inauguration. He is keeping America in the UN for now, mostly to exercise the US veto at the Security Council in support of Israel, America’s only ally in the world organization. He has again pulled the US out of UNHRC in Geneva, and stopped funding to UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency among the Palestinians.

There is then the rest of the world – excluding the US, the West minus the US, China and Russia. Trump’s main interaction now ‘with the rest of the world’ countries is in the humiliating deportation of their citizens after apprehending them as illegal aliens in America. A second interaction is through the abrupt closure of the USAID agency and the myriad of programs that the agency has been conducting in hundreds of countries throughout the world.

Many of these programs help in saving lives, improving health, and avoiding starvation. The Trump Administration may legitimately question the policy premises of these programs, but there is nothing wasteful, fraudulent or corrupt about them as alleged by Musk and marauders. Unilaterally closing them has been the most unkindest act so far by the Trump Administration.

The countries where USAID presence has been insensitively terminated are now fertile grounds for Chinese engagement. Even though Trump is quite triumphant about killing BRICS with his 100% tariff threat, the membership in the organization is bound to swell as Trump tries to reorder the world, and BRICS itself is bound to emerge as a force to reckon with by post-Trump America. Equally, European countries will similarly try to strengthen their economic ties with China to make up for what Trump might deprive them through reckless tariffs. Yet there is no country in the world that seems ready to push back on Trump and call his bluff. With every country so much dependent on global trade, no government is prepared to poke the madman and risk inflicting economic pain on its people.

Columbian President Gustavo Petro tried to protest the forced deportation of Columbian immigrants from the US, but was quickly forced to retreat by Trump’s tariff threat. South Africa has been singled out for harsh treatment mostly for prosecuting Isreal at the International Court of Justice, on charges of genocide in Gaza. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and often uses his X platform to accuse the South African government of genocide against White South Africans, may have had a hand in this. At the same time, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has reached out to Elon Musk apparently to help address “issues of misinformation and distortions about South Africa” in Washington.

In the midst of it all, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Washington, after a stopover in Paris, to cap what had been a tumultuous first three weeks of Trump’s second presidential term. Both Trump and Modi acknowledge the good chemistry between them, and they used the meeting to highlight their mutual benefits even if the talks were more symbolic than substantive. American media picked on the protocol of Prime Minister Modi meeting with Elon Musk before arriving at the White House. For his part, Trump offered to help India and China resolve their “skirmishes on the border which are quite vicious,” and expressed the hope that “China, India, Russia and US, all of us can get along. It’s very important.” That seems to be Trump’s preferred world order. Each country has its own hegemon, and they all have their henchmen.

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Anura Bandaranaike was an exemplary and honourable leader

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Anura Bandaranaike

The 76th birthday of the Late Mr. Anura Bandaranaike fell on February 15

by Gamini Gunasekara

Mr Anura Bandaranaike, an Honours graduate in History of the University of London, was a formidable and prestigious leader who engaged himself in gentlemanly politics. He was never accused of any wrongdoing. From whatever angle one views his career, it would be fair to name him a man of unblemished character, in the fullness of the meaning of that phrase- a person who enjoyed the respect of everyone who lived in this country, be they political supporters or opponents and a leader of prestige here and abroad.

He was a rare person who had the good fortune to associate with foreign leaders at the highest level from his childhood and to enjoy their affection. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the only political leader in Sri Lanka who has had that fortune. From his childhood he was able to associate closely with the leaders of many countries such as India, Pakistan, Japan, China, America, Russia, England, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, the Middle-Eastern countries and countries of Europe. In consequence no other leader in Sri Lanka could claim the international contacts that he had.

At the same time the extreme facility with which he could handle the English language was always combined with his erudition. The knowledge that he possessed of a wide range of subjects including international politics, modern and ancient history, the world economy, classical Western literature, modern world trends etc etc is immense. He was second to none as a person who shone in debates both in Sinhala and English, in our legislature. His absence is acutely felt when one looks at the Parl iament today.

Anura Bandaranaike was born on 15th February15 , 1949 and passed away on March 16, 2008, saddening many a Sri Lankan heart. A large concourse of people converged on Horaglla Walawwa, where his body lay, in long queues from all corners of Sri Lanka, until the day of the funeral. I met that day even people who had come all the way from such far off places as Trincomalee. I recall that many such people standing in the queues were in tears. I attended that funeral along with Minister Sarath Amunugama.

I was Mr. Bandaranaike’s Media Secretary at the time. Dr. Amunugama and I associated closely with Mr. Anura Bandaranaike. Often when Mr. Bandaranaike wanted some assistance from Dr. Amunugama I acted asthe medium.When Dr. Amunugama wanted some assistance from Mr. Bandaranaike also I acted in similar fashion. My association with Mr. Bandaranaike was that close. It is the same with my association with Dr.Amunugama.

Mr. Anura Bandaranaike was a leader who always sincerely felt for the people. A significant feature of his character was that he never craved for wealth or power. We should remember that he donated to members of his household staff, portions of the commercially very valuable Horagolla Walawwe land which was his ancestral inheritance. It must also be placed on record that Anura Bandaranaike was a very distinguished Speaker of the Sri Lanka Parliament. He was also the youngest Leader of the Opposition in the Commonwealth at the time ( 1983- 1988).

The Late Gamini Dissanayake once told me that Mr Bandaranaike as the Leader of the Opposition played his role extremely competently, against a very strong Government. The degree dissertation of a female undergraduate of the Peradeniya University last year, was the role played by Mr. Anura Bandaranaike, as the Leader of the Opposition. She consulted me too on some matters. Mr Bandaranaike as the then youngest Speaker in the Commonwelth, conducted himself in international relations also preserving the prestige of Sri Lanka, by expressing his views fairly and fearlessly.

Anura wasthe only son of Prime Minister Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandararanaike and the world’s first female prime minister Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike. His family has a long history in our country’s political and social arenas. His grandfather was Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, Mudaliyar of the Governor’s Gate. His mother’s father i.e. his maternal grand father was Rate Mahattaya Barnes Ratwatte Dissaswe.

At the time Anura was born his father S W R D Banadaranaike was the Minister of Health and Local Government who later became the fourth Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and was assassinated on September 26, 1959, when Anura was just 10 years old. His mother became the first woman Prime Minister of the world in July 1960 establishing a record, after assuming the leadership of the party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, that her husband had founded.

Anura, after being appointed the leader of the youth wing of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, built up the SLFP youth wing into a formidable force in all districts including in the North and East. At that time he was the most popular youth leader in Sri Lanka. He contested Nuwara Eeliya- Maskeliya multi member

constituency as the SLFP nominee in the 1977 parliamentary general elections. While the SLFP suffered an ignominious defeat in that election, we must remember that Anura secured the Second MP position relegating Mr. Thondaman to third place.

Anura has told me that he devoted only two weeks at Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya at that campaign. The rest of the time he was campaigning for the party all over the country. He secured more than 49,000 votes in the Nuwara Eliya – Maskeliya multi-member constituency. Gamini Dissanayake was elected the First member. These two were friends. I was also fortunate enough to be able to associate closely with Mr. Gamini Dissanayake.

Truly, the country has now been orphaned by the loss of such political leaders. Most people are unaware that Mr. Anura Banadaranaike delivered lectures on South Asian politics in foreign universities. He often quoted writers from Shakespeare and T S Eliot in his lectures. He inherited that talent from his father. People doing politics today should read the biographies of leaders like this. The lessons one can learn from such reading is immense.

(The writer is the President, Education Friendship Guild)

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Ninetieth Birth Anniversary of Ven Vajiraramaye Nanasiha Thera

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by Nanda Pethiyagoda

Ven Vajiraramaye Nanasiha Thera moves on from being an octogenarian to nonagenarian on February 18. His family, his Sangha kalyana mithra, and those who know him rejoice in the fact and wish he will proceed to achieving centurion honour. Hopefully, all those who read this article of appreciation for a life so well spent, will second the expressed wish. Formerly he was Olcott Gunasekera, civil servant and much more, who rendered wholehearted service to the government and compassionate concern to the people of the country, striving to set them on self-improvement.

When making known his plan to be ordained a bhikkhu, he told the reporter who wished to make this known: “I do not like publicity for the sake of publicity but I would like to see if it is possible through your article to bring about an upturn of those renouncing the world and becoming monks in order to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana; to encourage parents from privileged backgrounds to gift their sons to join the noble (ariya)clan. We have 2.3 million attending Dhamma schools and it should become the recruiting ground for new monks. But it is not so. With what ease did persons of all ages renounce during the time of the Buddha!”

Before that statement made 10 years ago, he had said: “On February 18, I turn 80. I shall undertake renunciation of lay life on that day. We usually give danes at Vajiraramaye and Narada Bauddha Dharmayathanaya on that day, but this year I shall offer myself to the Sangha, I will go into retreat to study, reflect and meditate on February 18 and then on March 15, I will be ordained at Vajiraramaya.”

Facets of the person are clearly discernible in his statements. Duty first, then the personal; his life so well planned showing clear thinking, determined personality. Also the deeply religious and spiritual inclination within him. Responsibility having been borne by him all through his career and family life was evident even in his contemplated new way of life. He had a son at home, his daughter being married. He asked his wife and daughter whether they could manage matters with him separated. It was with their assent and permission that he entered monkhood to further his progress on the Path to ending the samsaric cycle.

Biodata

Rajagalgoda Gamage Doshaka Olcott Gunasekera was born third in a family of five, two older sisters, a younger sister and brother; to a government servant father and housewife mother. Since his father was in a transferable job, the family lived in different parts of the island. His birth was on February 18, 1935, the day after Olcott Day, hence his second name.

His primary education was in Southlands, Galle, Sri Pada, Hatton, Good Shepherd Convent, Kandy and then he was moved to boys’ schools of Dharmaraja, Kandy and Dharmapala Vidyalaya, Pannipitiya, St Josephs’, Colombo. His senior secondary schooling was entirely in Royal College, Colombo, from 1946 to ’52.

Entering the University of Ceylon in 1953, which had moved to Peradeniya about two years previously, he graduated with a First Class degree, majoring in history, then a Merit Pass from the Post Graduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies, University of Kelaniya. Moving to Palo Alto, USA, he followed an Executive Program in Management at the University of Stanford in 1976.

The prizes he won are many, mentioned here are two: Ashok Prize for Indian History, University of Ceylon, 1957; Sir Baron Jayatilleke Prize from the Post Grad Inst. of Pali and Buddhist Studies, 1993. He was awarded Fellowship by the Sri Lanka Institute of Management.

Professional Career

Olcott Gunasekera was a member of the prestigious Ceylon Civil Service (CCS), entry to which was most selective with severe character assessment by such as Sir Ivor Jennings and Sir Nicholas Attygalle. He served in the Ministry of Education and Broadcasting; Dept of Official Languages; and was Government Agent Ampara and Batticaloa Districts from 1964-65. He then moved to several other government institutions including the General Treasury. He retired in 1973 when the CCS was abolished but continued to serve the co-operative movement, agriculture and banking sectors. From 1980 to 1991 he was attached to the Regional Office of the FAO in Bangkok.

His research surveys on the impact of drug use; tobacco use and smoking; and poverty alleviation, mainly in the Hambantota District have been of great use in their reduction.

Impactful achievements

His name is instinctively connected in peoples’ minds with the Dharmavijaya Foundation which, under the patronage and advise of the most Ven Madihe Pannasiha Mahanayake Thera, he founded in 1977. It was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1979. During the monk’s life and thereafter, the Foundation grew in stature, influence, recognition and services given to people, irrespective of race and religion. The watchword or catchphrase coined by the Ven Mahathera and translated to English is: “Let us develop the country along with the moral development of man.” And thus the immense help rendered to the needy: text books and scholarships donated especially for medical students; help to villagers with centres being the temple; awareness creation of the menace of drug and cigarette use and very much more. All help to morality, health, education, economic stability given in accordance with Buddhist principles.

He has been on several boards and presidential steering committees. In recognition of the great service to Sri Lanka and its people given by Olcott Gunasekera, he was conferred the title Deshabandu in 2005.

Authorship

Very many reports, research papers, pamphlets, books were authored by him during his lay life. The best known publication of his is the series titled: Buddhism in Practice: collection of essays of which Volumes three to five were written while a Bhikkhu. His first book in the series was published in 2014 and dedicated to his parents who “showed me the way”. Second in 2015 was dedicated to his “companion in life, Anula, who helped me in every way possible in the 50 years of family life”; third in 2018, to his teachers of the Vajiraramaya Dhamma School in its centenary year. Book four had an addition to its subtitle: … messages and outlines of Buddhist talks. This was out in 2023 and dedicated to his “Revered Spiritual Friend, Associate and Companion – Most Ven Aggamaha Pandita Tirukunamale Ananda Mahanayake Thera. The fifth, published in 2024, is dedicated to the Late Most Ven Madihe Pannasiha Mahanayake Thera, “The Inspiration for My Life.” I said fifth and not last as many more of this very readable and helpful series are expected from him.

He chose his bhikkhu name doing away with the customary inclusion of the name of birthplace and substituted ‘Vajiraramaya’ to honour the impressionable, life-long association he benefited from with the temple and its monks. The Nanasiha name is to honour two of his most venerated teachers: Pelene Vajiranana Mahathera and of course Mahihe Pannasiha Mahathera.

This fact alone proves he is blessed with and has nurtured Buddhist virtues of gratitude and simplicity. He is rich with the four Brahma viharas of metta, karuna, muditha and upekka.

He is a person of excellent character and spotless morality, with much concern for the ordinary man and his land of birth; growing, serving and now in the Sangha. May this honourable person live long. There is no call to wish his sojourn in samsara be short. It surely will be.

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