REPUTEDLY, A JUDGE …

Retired judge C. W. Vigneshwaran in a recent speech tries to make a case to justify his recent outing at the so called Bar Association convocation where he tried to undermine the legal system of this country by making a case that a pretender continues to be the Chief Justice. Vigneshwaran can say what he wants, but his recent excuse for what he said earlier at the convocation, now clearly puts him in a league of his own as a charlatan.

His last speech was the Chelvanayakam memorial oration and rather injudiciously he tried to make a case at the very outset that certain quarters contended that he was pursuing an Eelam project, when he was for the most part making a legal analysis as a jurist about the recent impeachment.

Hilariously then he loses all perspective, and infers that since a ‘tenuous connection’ was made between his analysis and a possibility of pursuing an Eelam project, then that’s enough reason to pursue an Eelam project.

At least that’s what can be clearly gleaned from the utterly racist nature of the rest of his speech, of course made appropriately in commemoration of that original unadulterated Tami racist S. J. V. Chelvanayakam.

At the end of day when his speech is taken for what it is -- a racist rant -- any shred of doubt anybody would have entertained that this man is a blanket no-holds-barred racist is erased, and curiously, in one fell swoop Vigneshwaran manages to obliterate any upstanding doubt about whether his legal casuistry on the impeachment was about an Eelam project or not.

It is almost mind boggling the extent to which this ‘judge’, apparently calling himself a jurist and an intellectual, spouts the racist rhetoric of the Chelvanayakam-Ponnambalam brand. Who wouldn’t remember that it was Ponnambalam that came up with the curious 50-50 call for representation of Sri Lankan Tamils in the Legislature?

Vigneshwaran, amazingly, almost betters Chelvanayakam and Ponnambalam in rationalizing for a Tamil racist theory of Tamil majoritarianism which is something that can only be a construct of such an overtly racist mind.

He contends that the Tamils aren’t a minority in this country, and that they are a majority, and he quotes or purports to quote two former Sri Lankan Members of Parliament to drive home the fact!

He also says that since the Tamils are a majority in their areas, two Sinhala MPs promised a Tamil leader a Tamil seat in Colombo but later reneged on their promise.

Perhaps a special insight is needed into Vigneshwaran’s febrile mind to find out why if the Tamils are a majority in their own areas, they also need a dedicated seat for the Tamil community in Colombo, but when one is in a race to better the old diehards Chelvanayakam and Ponnambalam in the race bating game, there is no end to the contortionist positions a gentlemen can take.

Vigneshwaran’s attempt at reduction i.e.: on the lines of ‘I was charged with probably advancing an Eelam project, therefore what’s the point I will become an Eelamist’ (he spouts Eelam rhetoric after all by the bushel load) -- is symptomatic of the grieving elite Tamil intelligentsia who seem to miss the days when they used to dominate the majority Sinhalese under the British.

As opposed to these ersatz intellectuals, one knows of the real ones that are probably in the North today, trying hard to come out of a war torn era of terrorist hegemony, to write freely, and enjoy unfettered access to an intellectual milieu that’s challenging and free from the deleterious effects of violence.

Vigneshwaran exposes himself badly – he is in the tradition of the Shiva Pasupathi, the former Sri Lankan Attorney General who enjoyed all the benefits of the system and then became an Eelamist, while the true Tamil intellectual giants are those in the tradition of Rajini Thiranagama and others who would lay down their lives to eschew the humbug of kowtowing to Prabhakaran in the name of academic freedom. The Vigneshwarans do the opposite; in the name of freedom, they prostate themselves before Prabhakaran’s ghost and then cheer to the racist drumbeat of that arch original racist bigot, S. J. V Chelvanayakam. There is just one question left - with such ‘intellectuals’ who needs boors?