A visionary leader
Wijitha NAKKAWITA
A young man in a bush shirt and white slacks came into my office to
meet one of my colleagues Obadaarachchi, a young graduate working with
us. The year was 1970 and we were working for a senior SLFP Vice
President, buddy to Premier S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the legendary
Badiudin Mahmud, then Education Minister of the United Front government
of 1970 of Premier Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
The young man was Mahinda Rajapaksa, then only 24 years, elected to
Parliament from the Beliatta electorate of the Hambantota district, the
rural hinterland written about by Leonard Woolf in his famous work
Village in the Jungle described in poignantly touching detail of a long
suffering milieu of villagers whose woes were taken up by the Rajapaksas
of Medamulana, first by D.M. Rajapaksa.
Farmers’ protest
The Lion of Ruhuna who defied the colonial Government Agent when he
led a march of farmers’ protest demonstration to the Hambantota
Kachcheri, then Bastille of provincial colonial power. The farmers came
in their loin cloths.
The English government agent had told D.M. Rajapaksa ‘Get out of my
office.’ and he had retorted: “Get out of my country.”
President Mahinda Rajapaksa ... already winning the economic war. Picture
by Sudath Silva |
The Rajapaksa family was the nuclear political family of the south
but this young man of 24, just elected to Parliament, was a genial
person that from then on always recognised people he had known earlier
even when he reached the exalted office of Executive President.
Soon young Mahinda Rajapaksa started following the example of his
uncle, the Lion of Ruhuna and his father D.M. Rajapaksa who was a very
close associate of the SLFP leader Premier S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. For
this nuclear political family of Ruhuna still holds the record of the
largest number of members elected to the State Council and Parliament.
D.M. Rajapaksa, D.A. Rajapaksa. George Rajapaksa. Lakshman Rajapaksa,
Mahinda Rajapaksa, Chamal Rajapaksa and Nirupama Rajapaksa were all
elected from the same family.
Mothers Front
During the autocratic UNP regimes and especially during the 1989-93
R. Premadasa regime, no one dared to protest in public against the
ghastly and bloody suppression of youth, corpses of tortured and killed
youth tied to lamp posts or fences on the roadside, single or groups of
youth killed and burnt often alive on tyre pyres.
At that time the young Mahinda Rajapaksa organised the Mothers Front
to go to places of worship and ask for retribution for killing their
offspring, mostly youth, even when lawyers like Wijedasa Liyanarachchi,
who filed habeas corpus actions in the Supreme Court on behalf of
compulsorily disappeared persons, were tortured at the notorious
Batalanda housing complex where a minister of the Premadasa Government
also occupied a house. Mahinda Rajapaksa dared to collect information
about a large number of missing persons.
He took those documents via the Bandaranaike International Airport to
Geneva but was intercepted by a senior police officer Kudahetty at the
airport and was not allowed to take the documents.
Rally
No other parliamentarian dared to protest against the killings and
disappearances but Mahinda Rajapaksa next organized a march from Colombo
to the Kataragama shrine, Padha Yathra.
Surprisingly, hundreds and hundreds of the common people lined the
Colombo-Matara road to view and cheer the marchers. There were two
others who joined Mahinda Rajapaksa on his Padha Yathra march, the
stormy petrel of the NLSSP Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Mahinda Abeykoon, an
SLFP parliamentarian from Kandy.
As the march progressed more and more people joined it and finally
when it reached Matara a public rally, with thousands attending, was
held to protest against the killings and disappearances of youth.
No other politician or opposition parliamentarian had the courage to
oppose Premadasa whose regime saw the most horrendous and large-scale
killings other than those killed in the terrorist attacks over three
decades. The years 1989, 1990 and 1991 were to see the worst
bloodletting in recent history and to have the courage to stand up and
protest against the imperious and often sick Premadasa regime was
something no ordinary person could have done.
I had watched the progress of that young man who came into my office
in 1970 as I too shared the views he held and I was most impressed by
him not merely for his courage but also for his tenacity of purpose in
all the political programs or events he initiated.
Then in 1994 came the People’s Alliance Government led by Chandrika
Kumaratunga ending the disastrous political rule one of the worst in
history. When he was appointed Labour Minister, he had worked with trade
unions and the common man’s amelioration that he sought always was now
at his reach.
He formulated a Labour Charter but the powers that be frowned on it
and he could not enact laws to implement his proposal to guarantee the
rights of the working class.
At the cabinet reshuffle, he was given the Fisheries Ministry and
once again he proved that he was capable of reaching out to the
hardworking and often poor fisher folk.
He started the Diyawara Gammana fishermen’s housing program and
implemented several measures of improvement including the restoration of
the fresh water fishing industry and proved his ability to serve the
people of all walks of life.
Both as a student of politics and a journalist writing political
affairs, I have had the opportunity to know four SLFP leaders and among
them the present leader over many decades.
Courage
The first, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who became known as the Common
Man’s Leader, set in motion the policies that were followed by the
party. I also knew Wijeyananda Dahanayake who succeeded as Premier in
1959 after the assassination of Premier Bandaranaike but reversed all
the policies of his slain leader.
Mrs. Bandaranaike, like President Mahinda Rajapaksa, pursued the
policy of serving the rural people and the common man and both of them
share the courage to face up to pressure from various international
forces.
To have the strength of one’s conviction to make decisions about
one’s country is what differentiates politicians from statesmen. To
yield to pressures is the sign of weaklings.
National leaders are made of sterner stuff. President Mahinda
Rajapaksa belongs to that category of leaders and his political
decisions and leadership helped to defeat terrorism and it would also
win – and was already winning the economic war. |