‘The People’
Following Lasantha’s death, Dayan Jayatilleke, as typical a voice from the government as can be, has declared that it doesn’t matter what the handful of us think; ‘the people’ still support Mahinda and his ‘winning’ this war. Indi asks, aren’t we ‘the people’, too? To which, in response, Jayatilleke confidently parrots propaganda that is the trademark of this government, and maybe those before it: majority, majority, majority. It doesn’t matter what the minorities think, be they ethnic minorities or religious minorities or a minority of people that feel different about the war. It’s the numbers that count to them.
He says some mysterious third element, the same one that killed Richard de Soyza, killed Lasantha. I say there’s no mystery about who killed Richard. Everyone knows who killed Richard, just like everyone knows who killed Lasantha. And this is the problem: it’s not just this government that kills people to protect its wrongdoings. Every government does it. And the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter anymore, really. It doesn’t matter whether the government was directly involved, indirectly involved, or heaven forbid, not involved at all. It doesn’t matter if Mahinda had NOTHING whatsoever to do with Lasantha’s murder, or whether he ordered the hit himself. The people (yes, they’re people, too) know what they believe. And that’s all that really matters now. It won’t matter how many times he denies it, or how many theories he puts forward, or many others he blames: ‘the people’ will remember that one week Lasantha was criticizing the government, the next he was dead; and this is too much of a coincidence to ever forget. By killing him, they only made him a martyr of his cause. Something that people will put up on a pedestal and rally around for decades, and Mahinda and his government have always had a nasty attitude towards media critical of its decisions, which won’t help their cause at all.
And Mahinda continues to ‘win’ the war. The masses blindly support him, drunk on his maniacal propaganda, eager for a country without war. But is a country that is simply without war going to be a country with peace?
So he’ll win the war, expand his fascist control to cover the North and the East, and crush the Tamil and Muslim minorities under his own heel. Because the war is just the consequence of a much bigger problem; not the problem itself. The Tamils will continue to suffer, living forever as second class citizens in their own motherland. To them, he’ll be just another tyrant. Prabhakaran, Mahinda: what’s the difference, really? Same bullshit, different asshole. That’s all. They’ll continue to live in fear.
‘The people’ only support him and his war because there’s nothing else to believe in. There’s no strong political opposition, or even an independent one, that offers ‘the people’ the same blessing: a war-less Sri Lanka. You have to admit, it’s a tough one to resist. It sounds so good, after all. Of course everyone is falling over themselves to support a man that claims he’ll end this dreadful war. Everyone’s fed up with it. Everyone just wants it to be over. Scarily, at whatever cost.
The current political opposition in this country doesn’t really offer anything that anyone will want to rally around. They have their own political agenda: they want to hit the government because they want to BE the government, not because they care about stopping this government from wrecking the nation. They’ll come into power and wreck it just the same.
What we need is an alternative solution. A serious solution that can mobilize ‘the people’ and their faith. And we need to win the propaganda war. The ‘other side’, whatever the other side is, needs to get their voice heard. They need to act. Because right now, the only face you can see and the only voice you can hear is Mahinda’s. People need to know that there can be another way. Get famous people on billboards, do events where people can make moving speeches: the works. We need it.
The people, whoever the people may be, have the right to choice. Right now, they have none.
But isn’t that what democracy is about? Catering to what the majority wants?
Comment by David Blacker — January 17, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
1/
don’t take anything on groundviews blog seriously bc it censors ( like in all censorship in an arbitrary and stupid fashion) comments that question its peacenik worldview.
2/
why should anyone care who killed lasantha anymore than any other dirty corrupt politician? and he definitely was one. anyone who says he was not is either a blind fool ( to even what lasantha wrote in his own paper) or is as corrupt as he was.
i didn’t see the people who make big deal of lasantha now, urging government to bring to justice the terrorists criminals, (who are killed thousands upon thousands of innocents ) , using violence of needs be.
did you ? where? why not?
didn’t you instead support “solutions” that advocated giving more power to ltte murderers. didn’t you ?
maybe you should explain that big beam in your own eye that blinds you, before you point to the alleged speck in mahinda’s (and by extension in sri lankan’s who support him in this) eyes.
of course you are free not to, but isn’t that hypocrisy?
3/
the people’ will remember that one week Lasantha was criticizing the government, the next he was dead; and this is too much of a coincidence to ever forget.
what logic !
may be ‘the people’ will remember that minister fernandopulle was criticizing certain peaceniks ( even calling them ‘tigers’) (and exposing corruption of a certain bloggers’ families) and what do you know, he was killed.
what does that logic tell you . that terrorists kill to protect their paid slaves?
[note to the irony deficient ( david blacker in particular, with a well documented case of this deficiency ) - i am of course being ironic above and not accusing anyone of being involved in any murder but showing the idiocy( bc it was not ironic) of electra’s logic. ]
there are lot of people who benefits without any side effects from lasantha’s murder. in case of mahinda costs are definitely more than benefits. only a person completely out of touch with sri lankan politics will fail to get this.
4
just another tyrant. Prabhakaran, Mahinda: what’s the difference, really?
well if you cannot see the difference between ltte and government it is you who is blind with “maniacal propaganda” of the ltte terrorists’ .
but then you have a record of believing in their moronic propaganda
you believed that peace is worth any cost (even the cost of human rights , justice , freedom, and democracy,) when you supported peacenik solutions giving ltte more power. you also seem believe that ltte is fighting for tamils ( and even muslims).
you are free to slander sri lankans, but they at least have not entertained the above two idiocies and as such are not as blind as you .
Comment by sittingnut — January 17, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
Many more David Blackers, is what I would recommend. The Westernised modernist middle classes should have made the buy-in, however critically, to the war effort against secessionism, instead of presenting the Wimals and Champikas with a big fat “unpatriotic” social target. Blacker is right: as far as the masses are concerned, Lasantha and that constituency were/are bloody wankers. I would say that as long as urban dissent is identified with an Opposition led by someone irredeemably branded an appeaser, as longs as the vast majority of the people/the electorate remember the humiliation of the CFA period, these negative trends are irreversible. A de-Ranilized Opposition — and its a whole new ballgame, socially and therefore ideologically and politically.
Comment by Dayan Jayatilleka — January 17, 2009 @ 4:00 pm
Well done Sittingnut: you’re back to square one. Just because I don’t support the war, and the ridiculous way the government treats civilians, I MUST be pro-LTTE. A Tiger Lover.
Yup. Never heard that one before, especially not from you.
Comment by electra — January 19, 2009 @ 7:38 am
And David, yes, you would be right about how democracy serves the majority. The problem is that the majority of Sri Lanka is made up of an ethnic majority. Not just ‘everyone’. So maybe we need to figure out way to actually serve ‘everyone’ .
Comment by electra — January 19, 2009 @ 7:51 am
You’re right and wrong, Electra. Majority rules in democracy, and if a particular ethnic group or demographic has a majority, injustices can happen within a democratic framework. Though not necessarily. For instance, in the last presidential elections, it looked like the majority were gonna elect RW, though the ethnic majority wanted MR. It took an illegal action (VP’s disenfranchisement of the NE Tamils) to swing it. Then it gets even more complicated. MR’s powerbase isn’t just the Sinhalese majority. It’s also a rural majority. The urban minority isn’t an ethnic minority. You can have constitutional changes and other safeguards to ensure that there won’t be discrimination by the ethnic majority, but how are you going to prevent rule by a rural majority. To prevent that is to go down the road Thailand seems to be stumbling along — basically tampering with democracy.
Comment by David Blacker — January 20, 2009 @ 9:27 am
But the rural majority that did vote for MR do belong to the ethnic Sinhala Majority, don’t they? The rural Tamil’s didn’t really get their vote, like you pointed out. So we are still looking at MR’s supporters as being the Sinhalese (the majority).
Comment by electra — January 20, 2009 @ 9:34 am
Well, it stands to reason that ANY majority in this country will be made up mostly of Sinhalese — because they are the majority. There’s no getting around that. If RW had been voted in, he would still have been voted in by a rural majority, and within that majority, the Sinhalese would have been a majority. A mouthful, but do you see what I mean? It’s like pointing out that the Army’s mostly made up of poor rural Sinhalese — it is, but that’s because the country’s made up of mostly poor rural Sinhalese. Sri Lanka will always be run according to the choice of this ethno-demographic.
Remember, not ALL Sinhalese are for MR, just as not ALL Tamils are for VP. But if you think that the urban minority can vote in someone against the wishes of the rural majority, that’s absurd — it’s not gonna happen. But what can happen is to get a leadership that can straddle the divide — RW seemed to have that at the last presidentials.
You can’t alienate the rural Sinhalese — that’s what allowed the JVP insurrection — a majority that had the vote, but felt disenfranchised in other ways.
Comment by David Blacker — January 20, 2009 @ 10:12 am
“Just because I don’t support the war, and the ridiculous way the government treats civilians, I MUST be pro-LTTE. A Tiger Lover. ”
did i say that? where ? no in the comment i wrote
you have obviously reading an imaginary comment
Comment by sittingnut — January 20, 2009 @ 10:50 am
Sunila Abeysekera on discrimination in Sri Lanka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4Mt62JzebU
Comment by Dee — February 22, 2009 @ 5:07 pm
But are you not a Pro -LTTE voice ?
Strange. Your life style is financed by $$$ that come from the same accounts that support the LTTE.
War and Peace is your family business, as far as one can see.
Has there been a single word written about a poor soldier’s wife who las lost the husband ? perhaps trying to support a child.
Anti war does not mean pro LTTE. Indi is a very good example of that.
You, a very good example of Pro -LTTE.
You are most certainly not anti war. You are anti war that is about to finish cause it harms the family business.
I can surely understand that.
If my parents were peaceniks, I will want my family business protected. After all blood is thicker than water. Specially when it is fed by $$$$.
Totally understand your situation
Comment by Hulaga — March 7, 2009 @ 12:40 pm