Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe: Hail the new sawdust filled martyr in town

Sacked minister now says he was ashamed to be in the Cabinet: The question is why did he remain so long enveloped in shame?

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends and country. In Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe’s case it wasn’t his life that he was prepared to lay down but the ministerial positions he held; and which he, with disdain, declared as but a trifle – one he could and would easily ‘shuffle off from his mortal coil’ in the nation’s interest, with the same ease as a moulting snake in the grass, and ‘in the ecdysis blue’, sloughs its seasonal skin.

But events were to prove otherwise. When the crunch came after all the hard talk, after all the patriotism puffs, that trite trifle turned out to be grindstone wrapped around his neck which he found hard to shed. And found near impossible to sever power’s umbilical cord to which he, leechlike, did cling, until the presidential knife had to be employed to cut his attachments to power and position and set him free from his inexorable fixations.

For, when it came down to even sacrificing his portfolio and all its attendant privileges the former Minister of Justice and Buddha Sasana displayed a remarkable reluctance to renounce his ministerial fiefdoms which, just last week, he had proudly declared he would give up without the batting of an eye, in the name and cause of returning the Hambantota Port to the people. He sought instead to drape himself with the lion flag of patriotism in the belief, perhaps, it would render him untouchable,

In an imperious speech and in arrogant tones generally adopted by emperors of old, this temporary holder of a grave and favour ministerial post held at the whim, fancy and mercy of President Maithripala had pompously declared: “I will not rest until I regain Hambantota Port and give it back to the people. Even if it means I have to resign from my minister ship.”

But if Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had hailed the enforced resignation of disgraced ex finance minister and then foreign minister Ravi Karunanayake as an exemplary example of the present Yahapalana ethos of this government, it soon became clear the prime minister had spoken prematurely. That his optimism was pure wishful thinking. That the resignation bug amongst ministers was not catchy at all.

Ravi K’s scandal was a pure ‘kiss and no tell’ affair, As he admitted to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the bond scam, he did not know that the Rs. 1,450,000 rent per month was being paid by the very man at the centre of the bond scam probe, Arjun Aloysius. Neither did he know that he was parked in Monarch residencies posh, plush penthouse suite and living the high life without any legal status since there was no lease agreement between him or anyone of his family with the owner of the flat the 28 year old daughter Anika of millionaire businessman Nahil Wijesuriya. As the then Finance Minister, he at best a guest of primary bond dealer Arjun Aloysius. At worse, a squatter. He didn’t ask his wife ‘to whom do we owe this bonanza?’ and neither did his wife tell him, probably thinking the poor man had much to chew about as the nation’s Finance Minister, worried nuts over repaying the national debt than to burden him further with how to repay Arjun Aloysius 1,450,000 per month five star hospitality altruistically extended to grant him domestic bliss.

The Ravi K scandal rocked the government boat. The public interest in it was unprecedented. It burst at its seams and split open. It had all the juicy ingredients to rival any fictitious soap opera.

If the events surrounding Ravi K’s resignation had all the juice, Wijayadasa’s affair was dull as ditchwater. And coming so soon after the Ravi K box office hit saga, it was more like a drab anti climax sequel to Cecil B. DeMille’s bl o ckbuster Ten Commandments or King Kong 2 after the original KK ended with the ape holding the heroine atop the Empire State Building in New York.

But while Ravi K’s offence was imprudence over accepting gifts shady Greeks brought to his doorstep and - out of good manners, perhaps - his failure to look a gift horse in the mouth, the charge against Wijeyadasa was based on the alleged abuse of power in delaying the due process to bring mega rogues to justice, and committing the cardinal sin of breaching the cardinal rule of collective responsibility ministers of the cabinet are cloaked with the moment they takes their seats at Camelot’s table of ministerial knights.

Ravi K did not just resign in the way gentlemen of politics normally do. As far as he was concerned he knew nothing and held he had done nothing wrong. And could see nothing wrong in his wife and daughter accepting the bounty Arjun Aloysius bestowed out of concern and sympathy to one who happened to be temporarily shelterless while his opulent residence in Kotte set in sprawling acres of land - where he said so many ministers had enjoyed the golden waters of his Scottish hospitality - was being renovated. What are friends for?

But when it came to the issue of resignation, he had to be tethered by public opinion, goaded by the independent media, vehemently pushed by some of his own party members to face the stet gun held by the President before which he backtracked, made his exit to live another day.

Not so with the sawdust filled cardboard enclosed new martyr in town. For a man who repeatedly said he doesn’t give a damn for his ministerial position, he seemed to be in no undue haste whatsoever to resign from his ministerial portfolios which he had announced just the week before he would gladly relinquish with relish in the interest of the nation. It soon became clear he was bent on seeking martyrdom by being drowned by the presidential hand in the waters of the Hambantota Port and wouldn’t settle for anything else. Not for him the life line and jacket his party leader Ranil threw, not for him the rubber tyre to stay afloat but martyrdom in the deep to emerge as a born again Sinhala Buddhist patriot.

Let’s recap. UNP hostility toward Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe in his seeming reluctance to nudge the elbow or give the shove to the Attor ney General’s Department to expedite the piled up cases of corruption against members of the Rajapaksa regime had been brewing for some time. Cabinet Spokesman Rajitha Senaratne stated seventeen days ago “Some 43 files on which investigations had been completed by the FCID, the Bribery Commission and the CID on various crimes have been forwarded to the AG’s Department some two years ago and they are gathering dust”.

But just four days before on August 6th Wijeyadasa had given an interview to the Irida Lankadeepa, where in its columns, he had underlined his own fate in red. For while it was difficult for his detractors to prove an alleged dereliction of duty when it came to holding him responsible for the delay in bringing the Rajapaksa regime rogues to justice, here in bold ink he had signed his ministerial death warrant by criticizing a decision of the cabinet he was a member of and going public with his opposition to the cabinet decision to handover over to the Chinese the Hambantota Port on a 99 year lease. It appeared to all who looked his his pin potha, the Merit Book, for the nation to peruse and marvel over the great meritorious acts of Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe the Great.

Having received no explanation, the UNP leader had no alternative but to inform the President that the UNP rank and file wanted Wijeyadasa to be removed forthwith and stripped of his cabinet portfolios. The Prime Minister conveyed the message that night to the President. And the following day it was announced that the President had approved of the request and in turn had conveyed the message to the minister who continued to play truant by attack the Yahapalana government and some UNP ministers. He even attacked the Health Minister Rajitha stating that he was neglecting his duties as Health Minister by straying in to areas that did not concern him without realising that the same applied to him: that the Hambantota Port‘s fate did not come under his purview as minister of Justice and that, perhaps he too, shared the same dock he had put Rajitha in.

But this week on Thursday, hours after he was sacked as Minister of Justice and Buddha Sasana, the man who had just this month declared he didn’t give a fig leaf for his ministerial posts, and who had expressed that he would gladly sacrifice his portfolios and resign in the interest of the nation, was telling the media how ashamed he was to have been a member of a cabinet that had approved giving Hambantota Port to the Chinese on July 25th. Shortly after he was sacked he said: “It is a shame for me to be in a government which is bent on selling public assets”.

The question arises, does it not, that had he been so ashamed by the collective cabinet decision taken one month ago why he did not resign then and pursue his worship at patriotism’s altar? Why did he not resign when the UNP parliamentary members spoke in one voice and called for his resignation? Why had he ignored his party colleagues complete loss of confidence in him, and had opted instead for the presidential guillotine to fall upon his neck and for the tumbrels to carry him away anointed with pseudo martyrdom’s fake blood plasma?

Why did he willfully choose to bask in the gaudy glare of shame instead of seeking the shade of self respect?

Why did he not make the special statement he promised last Thursday he would make this Monday? Was this president’s counsel so lost for words that he found it impossible to draft his own defense and place it before the supreme court of the sovereign people of Lanka and await their verdict?

He also mentioned that he was sacked to sweep the bond scam dusts under the Yahapalana carpet. If he did indeed know the secrets the bond scam dust held, why did he wait so long in such stinking cabinet company without revealing it and walking out? Why say he was privy to that secret and why conceal it from the public even now?

Wijeyadasa also mentioned that the Attorney General had been summoned to Temple Trees and given a proper roasting. But on Thursday the Attorney general denied it and stated that it was he who had requested a meeting with the Prime Minister and that nothing had happened at the said meeting which would have served in any way “to undermine the respect and integrity of the Attorney General’s Department happened”. Whose version would you rather believe in? The choice is yours. This column is, after all, not the Oracle of Delphi to make wild guesses.

Tonight, as Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe boards the patriotic midnight express to nowhere on the Rajapaksa monopolized train full of patriots, he may find that the ticket issued to him is a third class one with standing room only in the colourful company of the likes of Weerawansa and Gammanpila and such odd characters - all professing the same religion and faith: Patriotism, the last resort of the ……., dear reader, you fill the blank as you deem fit.

Perhaps Wijeyadasa had expected a private berth in the first class carriage but, alas, all the berths had been reserved well in advance and already taken by the Rajapaksa clan, Lanka’s first family of patriotic citizens. And, as for the second carriage on this patriotism drooling, patriotism hooting gravy train, he will find to his dismay, it’s reserved for the clergy and jam packed with the Bodu Bala Sena saffron set.

And as the train begins to roll from its temporary stop to take another cardboard martyr on board, he may well wonder at the bizarre turn of events that had left him bereft of not only his prized portfolios but also placed in question his own credibility as a future leader.

For both him and the nation, it may well serve best to ponder over what Gilbert and Sullivan wrote in their musical play HMS Pinafore a hundred and forty years ago, Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream; Highlows pass as patent leathers, Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.