WESTERN SHYLOCKS want the kilogram of flesh
By Nalin de Silva
(Courtesy for Daily News)
The West consists of the most vindictive of the states that have ruled the earth over several millennia. There are some educated, meaning of course Western educated who cannot get out of the system, in spite of some of them being Buddhists quoting Kalama Sutta ad nauseam, who would call me anti-western. I am not anti-western as such, but I am against the Western hegemony that controls our lives sometimes very aggressively and at other times in a subtle way.
These educated people would quote from Western authors to justify their views, throwing their Kalama Sutta out of the window, though these views themselves have been instilled into them through education, both formal and informal. However, these educated Buddhists adhere to the Kalama Sutta of Budunvahanse as they follow their Vinnus or knowledgeable persons in the West from Aristotle to Zeno.
It is clear that until the next Presidential elections the West is going to apply tremendous pressure on the government and would attempt to make their agent Ranil Wickremesinghe the President of the country. Of course there will be talk of Chandrika Kumaratunga and the elusive common candidate, but Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to be the choice of the West at present.
Ven. Sobhitha Thera, if at all would be thrown into the field not as the so called common candidate but as a splitter of the Sinhala Buddhist vote. Ven. Thera is supposed to be a single issue candidate but unfortunately even if he becomes the President he would not be able to abolish executive presidency on his own as the abolition of the executive presidency is not the job of the executive but of the legislative.
The single issue candidate without a party base cannot serve the masses on his pet issue as it is unlikely that he would have a Parliament with the required two thirds majority.
Shylock from the Merchant of Venice
Those who want the Thera to contest as the single issue common candidate know very well that he cannot deliver the goods, and he would be the person to split the Sinhala Buddhist vote so that Ranil Wickremesinghe could become the President of the country with the non Sinhala vote. However, Arithmetic is not as simple as the west thinks, and they would have to try other means as well to oust the President and then take him to the so called international courts.
Western diplomats
If the present government did not defeat the LTTE, there would not have been any issue over “ethnic” and religious violence in the country, and the Sinhalas, especially the Sinhala Buddhists would not have been called Barbarians by some Western diplomats residing in the country.
It is reported that three Western “experts” have called the Sri Lankan government to adopt measures to curb “the promotion of racial and faith-based hatred and bring perpetrators of religious and communal violence to justice, following just two weeks since the violence that erupted in Southern Sri Lanka.” Who are the perpetrators of religious and communal violence in the country?
It is clear that the West implies by these statements that the Sinhala Buddhists are responsible for religious and communal violence and by implication the government is behind the so called Sinhala Buddhist organisations.
However, except for the Jathika Hela Urumaya which is a registered political party and Bodu Bala Sena, which is not a political party, very little is heard of any other organisation carrying the names of Sinhala, Hela or Bodu engaged in what can be called political agitation. Organisations such as YMBA that has been established following YMCA, and Buddhist Congress do not come under this category, unless one is prepared to include YMCA, YMMA and even the Catholic Bishops as organisations involved in political agitation.
In this regard one cannot ignore the appeal by the Catholic Bishops to the Catholics at the recent Provincial Council Elections, to vote only for the Catholic candidates.
Did not the American, English and other Western diplomats residing in the country read this statement? Was that statement by the Catholic Bishops for religious harmony? Would the three experts tell us the Barbarians (I spell Barbarian with a capital B in English in order to emphasise that most Barbarians are English speaking of course not as a second or third language) whether we should request the Mahanayake Theras to issue similar statements for ethnic harmony?
What would happen if the Mahanayake Theras or even Bodu Bala Sena request the Buddhists to vote only for the Buddhist candidates at the next general elections, and the Buddhists abide by that?
Political parties
Poor Fowzie and many others would lose at the elections and the government will have to appoint them through the national list. Forget the Catholic Bishops, one finds many registered political parties carrying names to indicate that they represent the Muslims or Tamils in the country. Are these parties geared for so called national building? Would the experts and the diplomats tell us? The Minister Hakeem is on record speaking for his people meaning of course not the Sinhala Buddhists. Recently the honourable gentlemen Wigneshwaran the Chief Minister of the Northern Province had asked the Muslims and the Tamils to unite against the Sinhala to “achieve independence”, forgetting that Ponnambalam Ramanathan said that the Muslims were ethnically Tamils, and hence that the Muslims were not entitled for separate representation in the Legislative Assembly, that the Muslims were asked to get out of Jaffna within twenty four hours, and the Muslims ran for safety to the Sinhalas, that the Muslims were massacred inside a mosque in Kattankudy by the Tamil terrorists.
The Muslims have in “gratitude” to the Sinhalas have reacted against the Sinhala culture after the defeat of the LTTE by writing name boards in Arabic and planting date palms in Kattankudy to make Kattankudy a little Arab. Why not some experts suggest having at least a few name boards in England in Arabic for ethnic harmony in the “mother” country?
Communal and religious violence
In the West the Westerners are worried of Muslim aggression, but in Sri Lanka they promote such aggression against the Sinhala people, especially against the Sinhala Buddhists, and tries to blame the Sinhala Buddhists for all the communal and religious violence. The West also attempts to implicate the President and the Defence Secretary with so called Sinhala Buddhist extremists and tarnish their images. It is clear that more than anybody else the West is preparing for Presidential Elections and General Elections in Sri Lanka with the sole aim of making Ranil Wickremesinghe their agent as the next President and reverse all the gains against Tamil terrorism and Tamil racism that goes back to the Legislative council days in the early eighteenth century. It is the English who nurtured Tamil racism, after the Dutch initiated it.
Tremendous pressure is brought on the government by the West to act against the Sinhala Buddhists thus alienating them. The power base of the government is the Sinhala people, especially the Sinhala Buddhists and the government should not alienate them.
It is clear that the West is also attempting a Buddhist Spring against the government using disgruntled Sinhala Buddhists. The fact that there are Muslim enclaves in Sri Lanka is something that even the Western ambassadors roaming the country would have observed and in these enclaves it is a known fact that the Muslims take law into their hands. Aluthgama incidents are not isolated and stem from the existence of Muslim enclaves in the country. The government that was forced not to allow the background to the incidents to come to the forefront, thus giving the advantage to Hakeem is now being pushed further by the Western governments, diplomats and the experts.
The Shylocks want their pound of flesh or the kilogram of flesh of Rajapaksas, in the metric world of the French not known to Shakespeare, and the government should be firm in its dealings with the Western countries as in the days of humanitarian operations.
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