Sri Lanka: Humpty Dumpty Wigneswaran !
By Nilantha Ilangamuwa
23 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org
With all due respect, it is time to have a look at the art of the politics which has erupted out the Wigneswaran dogma that foully cries for self-determination of the Tamil people in the Jaffna peninsula. The respected former Judge turned politician no more than three years ago is using a big stick on any issues to grab the attention of the public. He is now rapping the old song of the “self-determination” while proving the skill of the Trojan heroism.
It is hard to believe that all he is claiming is actually relevant to finding a solution for our countrymen’s endemic crisis. But it is indeed producing the possible viciousness to spoil the opportunity prevailing in the country. The latest move by the well-respected judge as a politician has created a bad taste for the cause of Sri Lankan.
Sri Lanka, a long term wounded nation is in a transition period after waved the goodbye signs for both social symptoms led by Velupille Prabhakaran in the North and Mahinda Rajapaksa in the South, by the people in general. It is where the opportunity to diagnose the disease was opened up. In other words, this is the time for those privileged people to play a responsible role with the greater degree of conciseness rather than playing yet another form of the Humpty Dumpty.
Historical text of the character reads as follows;
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,
Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before
We believe Justice C.V.Wigneswaran has a much better understanding about what went wrong in this nation as a person who was sitting in Colombo, the capital of the Island, when all the safe walls were falling apart in the name of the “liberation war” carried out by the boys motivated by abstruse caste based elites from the North who spend over two-thirds of their life in Colombo. Then there were also the so-called “Marxists” who followed not Marxism, but a distorted version of Buddhism.
In the same time, Justice C.V.Wigneswaran who maintained a prosperous relationship with the Sinhalese community was playing the remarkable role as a judge and an existentialist. It was the time he was reading the root causes of the real problems before us. The nation was suffering while making pathetic headlines in the global politics. We believe, he refused to take up arms and hang a cyanide capsule on his neck as he could understand it would lead nowhere.
We fought and killed each other to achieve freedom but neither freedom nor moral strength was attained at the end. We were misguided and miscalculated badly throughout the struggle, which made other party eliminate the true seeds of the resistance. The result was clear, we have lost the generations.
After decades of the fighting for nothing, the Chief Minister, Justice C.V.Wigneswaran is barking at the wrong tree yet again to motivate the youth while creating pathetic and dangerous distances between the communities. There is no doubt, he is entitled to say whatever he has to say, but, as a responsible person it would have nicer if he can touch the practical reality while valuing fellow countrymen.
What we thought is, he is one of few intelligent politicians this country ever produced who can deconstruct the webbed crisis and find a way to true reconciliation, rather than creating a communal riot and dividing people. It would have more important and our country would have more benefits if he can convince the people about the foetid structure prevailing in the state. It is the common crisis all communities are suffering. As a former judge, he is the one who knows, how just our justice system actually is.
We all have the common problem, it matters not if you born as Tamil, Muslim or Sinhalese. We all were used and our lives were devalued for petty issues. Our capacity to resistance has demoralized, not by the opponents who eliminated our fellow citizens but by those who played the character of Humpty Dumpty while taking our blood for granted.
Time to drop the doublethink, and formulate how to educate, agitate and organize all the people for the common cause of achieving civil liberty.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa edits the Sri Lanka Guardian, an online daily newspaper, and he also an editor of the Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives, bi-monthly print magazine. He is the author of the just released non-fictions, “Nagna Balaya” (The Naked Power), in Sinhalese and “The Conflation”, in English. He can be reached at [email protected]