STRANGE OBSESSIONS
The obsession some
people have with regime change seems certainly to be of the
clinically certifiable pathological variety. Foreign regime
change fanatics are not so sustained in their fervour; the
moment they find other regimes in the world are more interesting
to change, they begin to work with the Sri Lankan regime which
they see as more amenable than most, good for the country's
people in many ways, and also good for business ...
But local regime change fanatics of particularly the NGO and
eccentric academic variety are fetishists.
Their regime change fetishes are more kinky in fact, than
pathological (though in their case it is difficult to see any
distinction anyway). The other day, one very hilarious ivory
tower type had written that the regime needs to be changed, and
would you believe it, his tract is complete with suggestions for
a replacement!
The gentleman he suggests as a replacement President in Sri
Lanka is one of the most devoted loyalists of the Rajapaksa
government, who nevertheless has issue by issue differences with
the leadership, something he asserted in a separate interview
with another local daily, before the ink was properly dry on the
opinion piece referred to above.
D. E. W Gunasekera the avuncular and affable gentleman
politician is the last to rebel against this government having
joined it in the firm conviction no doubt that it is the most
progressive that suits his own particular political persuasion.
D. E. W. Gunasekera will be the last to close ranks with the
fire breathing loose canons in the JVP or the politically amoral
neo-liberals in the UNP, and that's a certainty.
His giving leadership therefore to the kind of saboteur force
that our eccentric academic has in mind, has a probability of
one in a one hundred thousand. But that does not stop the
usually suspect pontiffs from pontificating, and making
improbable prognostications on paper!
The point is why some people never tire of making guesses
about regime change, and generally being petty and disruptive.
There is no rocket science in discerning why the diaspora is
motivated on the other hand, for instance. After a hole was
burnt in Prabhakaran's head by the Nandikadal, the diaspora has
been livid.
This anger is totally due to personal considerations, and the
fact that there will be no more insecurity in Sri Lanka which
these people can cite as a reason to secure their tickets to
stay on in their preferred Western capitals. A good deal of the
moves made against Sri Lanka, such as for instance the recent
grand plan to connect three issues at the UNHRC -- the LLRC, the
army presence in Jaffna and the impeachment, are hatched
originally in the snake pits of the diaspora, and only much
later finessed in UN lobby rooms by so called international
civil servants, paid generously for their services.
The point is that eccentric academics, and sometimes naive
and confused lawyers (not the Lawyers' Collective variety -
these are not naive and confused, they are plain vicious and
downright stupid ...) cotton on to all of these cunning
stratagems plotted by the diaspora leadership with such gullible
abandon that it merits asking if there are still some Sinhalayas
who remain absolute modayas, despite the fact that this cliche
is threadbare and disproved because moda Sinhalayas could have
never defeated the most ruthless terrorist organization in the
world!
A certain fraction of the Sinhalayas still may be in la-la
land, and these people though they are rather quaint, sometimes
are idiotic to the point of being rather nauseatingly
embarrassing. Those who constantly echo calls for regime change,
should grow up and get out of their stretched phases of juvenile
delinquency, for example.
After all, some of these opinion makers are academics. The
majority of society may not give a rat's tail for what these
people opine from their academic ivory towers, but these are
folks who are supposed to have young and impressionable charges.
The danger is the influence their eccentric thinking could have
on the young that need to be fed on inspiring tales of courage
and indomitability, as opposed to syrupy stories of
spinelessness and general wooly-headedness. |