Learning lessons from history or teaching history a lesson?

Continued from Page 11 of military dictators robbing, looting and destroying countries, particularly developing countries, where thousands, if not millions of innocents have lost their lives and democratic rights suppressed. Indonesia is a classic example where the killing of six generals led to an army coup that resulted in the first president of the country Sukarno being removed and General Suharto taking over presidency and continuing for 30 years!

An anti-communist purge – the proChina Communist Party (PKK) being accused of killing the five generals -resulted in an estimated number beyond one hundred thousand to a million Indonesians disappearing or being killed in this vastly spread archipelago. The country no doubt stabilised politically and the economy recorded growth of 6 to7 percent annual growth and also with the unaccountable affluence of the six Suharto brood and Suharto cronies. The end came with the Asian Financial Crisis that resulted in Indonesians breaking loose after 30 years, rioting on the streets and resignation of the dictator.

The failure of military dictators or strongmen as saviours of countries is numerous. Close to home we have had Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives which have had such saviours without much success. Some of those who can be termed disasters are: Marcos of the Philippines, Pol Pot of Cambodia. Assad—father and son of Syria, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Pinochet of Chile, and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Despite his achievements, Nasser left behind a hierarchy of dictators -- Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak and now Abdel Fattah alSisi.

Sri Lanka has been fortunate not to have a military dictator although the brutality of military rule was experienced in the two insurrections in the South and the Northern and Eastern Provinces during the 30 years when emergency law prevailed for a greater part of the time. That experience should be considered as a bitter lesson of history. But as Aldous Huxley’s quote at the beginning of this column states, the most important lesson that history has to teach is that we do not learn from it.

Perhaps some of the political pundits that are in the think tanks that have come into being are trying to teach history a lesson.