BY NEVILLE DE SILVA
In ancient Greece there was this fussy old philosopher who went around the market place in broad daylight with a lantern in hand looking for an honest man. Diogenes was either a cynic or just crazy. Who would ever go to the market place in search of an honest man! It is as loony as searching for a well dry-cleaned politician, clean of mind and body.
While many in Sri Lanka would now be engrossed in discussing the Bond Commission report - if they could get their hands on it - and politicians trying to splash each other with contaminated mud, we should be pardoned for leaving the report alone until the president and his officials decide to have their final say.
Had Diogenes gone in search of an honest, truthful and principled politician he would probably be still going round in circles. After all, as the British High Commissioner James Dauris preached the other day, many things get in the way of arriving at the truth, such as numbers.
If I return to the subject of the British High Commissioner and his advice to all to refrain from argument over numbers as it only gets in the way of truth-seeking, it is because he leaves one rather puzzled.
Having said that “a single death is a tragedy, a large number of deaths is a statistic”, Mr. Dauris reportedly went on to tell a Sunday newspaper “If people allow themselves to lose sight of the tragedy of what happened, reconciliation and the guarantee of future peace will become more elusive. I think we need to be careful not to allow ourselves to get distracted by arguments about numbers, because figures can too easily get in the way of the truth.” So would attempts to hide the truth, but to that later.
Perhaps it is our poor comprehension of the English language that leaves one wondering what precisely Dauris is trying to say. Well he is not the only one who has created some confusion in my mind. The English language version of the presidential statement on the Bond Commission report has also created some doubts as to who has done what and who has emerged smelling like an attar of roses.
High Commissioner Dauris says a single death is a tragedy. Not so when large numbers die. That turns into a mere statistic. But not every single death is a tragedy. As a countryman of his called Willie Shakespeare once said “When beggars die there are no comets seen. ” What is confusing is Dauris’s use of the word ‘tragedy’. To him a single death is a tragedy. But then he says that people should not “lose sight of the tragedy of what happened.”
What precisely is that tragedy? Surely this could not be a reference to another single death could it? No, he seems to be referring to the near three-decade long conflict in