Putin Gotabaya in context, pun intended

Gotabaya is our Putin – Udaya Gammanpila I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country – Pol Pot

Our nation is gripped in a crisis of confidence. Ironies abound. Three years in to his presidency on 15 July 1979, Jimmy Carter made his famous speech about a crisis of confidence that his nation faced. He spoke of how the isolated world of Washington politicians set a nation adrift. 

When a nation hopes, dreams and vision of its future are muddled, it becomes a crisis of confidence. It was a decade later that that indomitable soldier and patriot Lieutenant Colonel Gotabaya Rajapaksas permanently migrated to that country of Thomas Pain who wrote the treatise ‘The Rights of Man’. 

Such a crisis of confidence engulfs us in Sri Lanka today. Governance is in a near state of paralysis. The economy has registered a dismal growth rate of 3.4%. Policy planners are adrift, and the people are treated to a deluge of empty rhetoric from both sides of the power barricade. 

This missive is penned on Thursday 29 March. Within a week, we will surely learn the details of the denouement of the No-Confidence motion against the Prime Minister. He is wounded. We will discover soon enough how deep and dangerous his wounds have been. 

Other momentous happenings have been overshadowed by the predicament of the Prime Minister. The Indian Express – the prestigious print broadsheet – has published one on one interviews with former President Mahinda, his heir apparent Namal and most importantly the pretender to the throne – former Secretary of Defence Gotabaya who plans to be a deep statesman of a deep state. 

This writer owes an unconditional apology to the author of ‘Gota’s War,’ the humorously Homeric account of the end of the civil war that is brazenly adulatory of the then Defence Secretary. On several occasions I have described him as a sycophantic profiler of the former Defence Secretary. What can the poor man do, if that was what was told him by the self-proclaimed war hero – the subject of his tome? 

Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a self-possessed man who loves to possess his self. The man is sincerely convinced that he and he alone ended the war. He tells Arun Janaradanan of the Indian Express: “In Sri Lanka, I didn’t create the war, I ended the war.” The word ‘we’ is not in the vocabulary of our hero, patriot and nation builder.

He is a man with opinions and a committed sense of purpose. With the Indian Express’s Arun Janardanan he unfolds his road map. 

“You have to understand that peace doesn’t come overnight after three decades’ long war. There are people who were brainwashed ideologically. I won’t say wounds are healing now, as I don’t know what has happened in the last three years. But I strongly believe that what is important is economic freedom for people, before talking about political freedom. Political freedom is necessary, but what they are talking about is devolution and all that. That is secondary. What people needed was food, employment and basic necessities to rebuild their lives… But Tamil politicians put their political interests above these essential needs of people.” 

I do not know how many readers will agree with me. The man is not a villain. He is a moron. He simply does not understand that the Tamil people do not demand food. They demand dignity. The Tamils demand self-respect. 

The guy asked Stephan Sakur of BBC, “Who is Lasantha?” That probably explains why Arun Janaradana did not broach the subject of dignity and self-respect. What is dignity? Why do the Tamils want self-respect? Aren’t roads and electricity good enough? 

That Sri Lanka needs a strong leader with a clear vision is the tantalising, seductive myth of our times. The imperative of strong decisive leader is intrinsically twined to a virulent nationalism and a reading of a faith that is light years removed from the universal values of the flawless dharma that made emperor Ashoka to embrace it and spread it around the then known world.

Nationalism per se is not a harmful or adverse sentiment. But when it is deployed as an instrument of partisan power play in an already fragile democracy, it assumes the ugly character of group incest, idolatry and tribal insanity. When it is adopted as dogma by a deranged control freak it erodes the principles of truth and justice. It becomes a love affair with an imagined nationhood above humanity. Nationalism of this kind is the inevitable precursor to the ‘national security state’. 

This sickening humbug is threatening to overpower our pursuit of self-realisation, our search for fairness, our thirst for freedom and our desperate attempts to appease our collective hunger for equity in social relations. 

The exuberance of democracy experienced in the last three years is quietly receding. A forbidding sense of an impending apocalypse is noiselessly nudging in. 

Gotabaya Rajapaksa is, today a man ready for his tryst with destiny. He is inflamed with that peculiar kind of passion that drives narcissistic people who enjoy the means irrespective of the urgency or the necessity of the ends. After several successes in gerrymandering the legal process to delay proceedings against him, he is confident that he can amputate the long arm of the law by the time we face the next presidential and parliamentary polls. 

He has mastered the art of capturing headlines in electronic media with biting, bitter voice cuts. He gives them to waiting media teams outside court rooms where he regularly appears to mark his attendance or to seek remedies in the form of writs and restraining orders to prevent or delay proceedings against him. They are all politically motivated witch-hunts.

Emerging after a court hearing, two days ago, he gave an ominous warning. “We will do it the way Ranil was made Prime Minster and Shiranee Banadaranayake was made the Chief Justice,” he promised. http://www.adaderana.lk/news/46585/crimes-have-increased-due-to-govts-incapability-gotabaya.

Clearly buoyed by the LG polls results he is convinced that victory is round the corner. “Look how they voted for the Bicycle and the Naya. We will even use a Mapila and reach our goal,” he chuckles. His choice of the reptile Mapila has a Freudian connotation. There is a local folk belief that this snake is highly poisonous, which it is not. It is also falsely believed that the snake sucks out the blood while inducing the victim into deep sleep. 

Indeed, there is a Freudian snippet that explains neurosis as the inability to deal with ambiguity. 

Radiating a haughty confidence, Gotabaya promised to put matters right when he is back in the saddle. He accused the Government of failing to maintain law and order as was done under his watch. The man is convinced that the ultimate prize is within his grasp. 

The message is unequivocal. When in power, he will start from where he stopped last time. The reference to the apex court of the land is no empty threat. As all dictators are, he is a man with strong opinions. Their beastly and warped opinions earn them ardent followers who misread arrogance for competence and character. 

Such is the crisis of confidence that we are in.