Betrayal of patriotic masses
H.L.D. Mahindapala
It took the Sri Lankan expatriates by total surprise when
Maj-Gen-(retd) Janaka Perera, former Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to
Australia, joined Ranil Wickremesinghe, more so because he kept denying
that he had any plans of joining any political party.
Looking back, it seems appropriate for Perera, who was always allied
to the UNP, to join Wickremesinghe - a politico who has earned the rank
of a Maj-Gen in his own right by being a “major” disaster to the nation
and is in a “general” mess of his own.
So the UNP now has two Maj-Generals, quite an unusual record for any
political party! The official news of Perera joining Wickremesinghe was
a disappointment to the Sri Lankan diaspora, particularly those in
Australia, because he was presenting a different face to them when he
was the High Commissioner in Canberra.
Survive
Ranil Wickremesinghe |
Maj-Gen-(retd) Janaka Perera |
Then he needed them to survive as the High Commissioner facing the
formidable Tiger lobby. He won the hearts of the diaspora in Australia
by posing as an anti-UNP patriot.
The Sinhala Cultural Foundation led by Dr (Mrs) Olga Mendis and the
active Society for Peace Unity and Human Rights with its national and
international network threw their weight behind him trusting his
anti-Tiger and anti-UNP stance.
They even sponsored him as the alternative presidential candidate to
Wickremesinghe when it seemed that he was set to be the likely candidate
to win the presidency.
Perera was happy to be the expats candidate. He had ambitions but
nowhere to go. Chandrika Kumaratunga who blocked his promotion into the
Army Commander’s chair kicked him out of Canberra into Jakarta.
His career came to an abrupt end when Wickremesinghe’s No. 2, Mangala
Samaraweera, the then Foreign Minister, gave him the marching orders to
leave Jakarta without even a roof over his head to stay out the last few
days. Samaraweera recalled him a few months before his term expired in
Jakarta. During the brief period Wickremesinghe was the Prime Minister
he tried to creep into the Army Commander’s chair.
But Wickremesinghe asked him to stay abroad for the good of the
country. Without any qualms he has now joined the ranks of
Wickremesinghe, Kumaratunga and Samaraweera (the WIKUSAs).
No reason
Nevertheless, he has no reason to grumble because, unlike the poor
soldiers who sacrificed their legs, arms and even their lives to make
him a great soldier that he claims to be and got a pittance in return,
he was given two comfortable postings abroad.
And as ambassador to Indonesia he was defending President Mahinda
Rajapaksa and his administration to the hilt. Now he has joined the
WIKUSAs and is running down the administration which he praised a few
months ago.
If he calls himself a patriot when he is on the Government pay roll
what should one call him when he condemns the very same government
shortly after he leaves it ? Is he the Johnsonian scoundrel whose
patriotism depends on the quantum of benefits derived from the tax
payers’ pockets?
Sri Lanka is awash with scores of so-called diplomats who defend the
regime of the day - not so much the nation - when they live in the lap
of luxury in diplomatic missions abroad and goes into hibernation or
total opposition when they retire from the foreign service. There is
nothing like a diplomatic appointment to turn a villain at home into a
patriot abroad.
Turn into traitors
Most of our diplomats are patriots abroad who turn into traitors
overnight after their return flight home. The disillusionment of the SL
expats was expressed unambiguously in the popular Lanka Web which
headlined their outrage by demoting Perera from the zenith of a hero to
a “despicable traitor”.
The expatriate community who promoted him as the political
alternative in the grim days when Wickremesinghe seemed to be on the
verge of capturing the presidential chair cannot yet believe that he has
double-crossed them. The Australian expatriates who stood by him when he
was under fire from the Tiger lobby and the ex-JVPers in Australia fired
e-mails to him expressing their disgust about his unscrupulous high jump
into the UNP.
When Perera came to Australia as the High Commissioner the Tiger
lobby was ready to get him kicked out of Australia. The muddle-headed
JVPers, frustrated by their bid to capture power in the disastrous
Marxist uprising of 1971, joined the Tigers.
Together they had roped in Amnesty International, Christian Churches,
NGOs, Asian Human Rights Commission, media and even left-wing MPs to
attack him - and attack him they did ! They were lobbying collectively
to send him back home.
His first reception outside Canberra was at Clayton Town Hall,
Melbourne. When he came on his official visit to Melbourne he could not
get out of the car without facing the Tiger mob waiting to pelt him with
rotten eggs and tomatoes.
Humiliate
The Tiger lobby was armed with a sizeable mob to humiliate him. The
Sri Lankan patriots too were out in the streets challenging the Tiger-JVP
front. They had prepared two plans: one to deceive the Tiger-JVP
demonstrators and to keep them howling there and the other to hold the
reception at a venue at Monash University for the man they believed was
their hero.
The Tiger-JVP placards and slogans yelled: “Perera murderer! Perera
Tamil killer! Perera Idi Amin!” It was pretty obvious that Perera had no
chance of surviving that day if the Sri Lankan expats did not rally at
Clayton to defend him. The main charge against him was that he was
guilty of killing innocent Tamil and Sinhala civilians in the guise of
suppressing JVP and Tiger terrorism.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation was in full force hoping to
capture Perera with his pants down. The Tamils were feeding ABC with
their spiel. To counter the Tiger-JVP front the spokesperson for Sri
Lankan expats was there to give the other side of the story. ABC also
was forced to take pictures of the counter demonstration. Otherwise it
would have been one-way traffic for the Tiger-JVP lobby.
Defend
The Police were there to keep both sides apart. As it was a public
event the Tiger lobby was ready to barge into the hall and make the
event embarassing for Perera in the full glare of TV cameras. The Sri
Lankan expatriates were out to defend their hero. Before the car
transporting Perera, under Police escort, could arrive at the the
Clayton Hall the organizers moved into Plan B: they diverted the car to
Monash University leaving the exhausted Tiger-JVP hecklers to cry their
lungs out against a target that was not there.
The expats melted away from Clayton and reassembled at the Monash
University Hall. As one speaker told Perera that night: “Mr. High
Commissioner your played your part in saving Jaffna and we saved you in
Melbourne!”
The expats put their necks out to save Perera because they trusted
him as the man who had done the right thing and who would continue to do
the right thing. Imagine their shock when he joined the UNP - the party
that had betrayed the nation by signing the Ceasefire Agreement.
Perera also knew the underhand dealing that Wickremesinghe had with
the Tiger agents in Australia. Following the orders issued by Bradman
Weerakoon of his Prime Minister’s office, it was Perera who authorized
the first class air fares to Charles Gnanakone, one of the key agents of
the Tigers invited by the then Prime Minister Wickremesinghe for secret
pow-wows in Colombo.
Wickremesinghe was going all out to appease the Tigers. Perera knew
how Wickremesinghe was selling the nation to the Tigers and he was
against it at the time. Or so he told the expats in Australia.
High-jump
Knowing all this, how can he explain his high-jump into the lap of
Wickremesinghe ? It would have been different if he joined President
Mahinda Rajapaksa, or the JVP with whom he claims to have a special
relationship now, or any other party in the south other than the UNP.
In fact, emboldened by the backing of the expats as a potential
presidential candidate, he approached Mahinda Rajapaksa on the eve of
the last election and withdrew his candidature, pledging his support to
him. In return he was, of course, expecting to be either the Defence
Minister, or even the Army Commander - a position which was denied to
him by the then Commander-in-Chief, Chandrika Kumaratunga.
As he tells the story, his position was given by the corrupt Queen of
Thieves to a drunkard with no record of scoring any military victories.
Eventually, thanks again to Mangala Samaraweera, the side-kick of
Kumaratunga, he found himself without a job after he was recalled from
Jakarta. Ever since then he has reacted viciously against the Mahinda
Rajapaksa regime.
Given opportunity
At every given opportunity he bad- mouths the Army Commander who has
outgunned, outmanoeuvred and outdone the Tigers on a scale far greater
than that of Perera’s achievements. He just can’t accept that his
juniors like Fonseka and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa are setting new records
which have overshadowed his records.
Perera, for all his achievements in Jaffna, is yesterday’s man. The
pity is that he is aspiring to be tomorrow’s man by joining “Maj-Gen”
Wickremesinghe.
There is no heroism in it because (1) it is against all the
principles of patriotism proclaimed by him in fighting the Tiger
terrorists and (2) it is a spiteful act to get even the Rajapaksas for
it is apparent that he would not be attacking the Security Forces and
the Rajapaksas if he was kept in government service.
Best deal
At a time when thousands of humble but heroic soldiers are fighting
for mere survival Perera who got the best deals for his services is
expecting the government to reward him with more high-ranking jobs. But,
of course, he will not admit this.
He has put a spin on his motives to claim that he has joined
Wickremesinghe “to serve the people.” It is laughable when he says that
he proposes “to serve the people” by joining - of all people! —
Wickremesinghe. His plan is to get from Wickremesinghe what he can’t get
from the Rajapaksa government: the portfolio of the Minister of Defence
in the most unlikely event of Wickremesinghe forming a government in the
near future.
In the meantime, the people rallying behind him now are arms dealers,
who are wining and dining him now hoping to get their cut later.
Wickremesinghe also promised this post to Maj-Gen Lucky Algama, the
brave soldier who won the East for the UNP under his command. Perera was
a junior officer serving under him at the time.
Maj-Gen.(retd) Algama joined Wickremesinghe in his electioneering
campaigns. One evening while he was seated at an election meeting,
waiting for the arrival of Wickremesinghe (he was unusually late that
evening) the Tiger terrorists got close to him and blew him up.
Wickremesinghe has long since forgotten the sacrifices made by
soldiers like Lucky Algama. Such remembrances are irrelevant to his
political agenda. He even scoffs at the gains by the Security Forces
fighting in the East and the North.
Downgrades
He deliberately downgrades the great sacrifices made all Security
Forces to stop the war. His greatest claim to fame is his surrender to
Prabhakaran’s demands by signing the Ceasefire Agreement without
informing his party, the Parliament, the President and the people of Sri
Lanka.
Though Wickremesinghe says that he will no longer go back to the idea
of federalism or the CFA again it is doubtful whether his word can be
trusted. His critics believe that he did that as a political gimmick to
win the backing of the Sinhala-Buddhist electorate. Even that trick has
not worked for him to win the confidence of the electorate.
His last desperate act is to throw in Maj-Gen. (retd) Perera like
they way he threw in Maj-Gen. Lucky Algama into the fray. Wickremesinghe
doesn’t care whom he sacrifices as long as he can keep on dragging the
nation with him into the precipice waiting for him. But should Maj-Gen.
Perera march with him into that hole from which he can never return? |