Who indeed is Hitler?
My letter refers to the news item headlined: Reductio ad Hittlerum, which was published in the Daily Mirror of Friday, May 8. It says that former president Mahinda Rajapaksa had described the Police Financial Crime Investigation Department or the FCID as an institution similar to those that existed during the Nazi Regime of Adolf Hitler.
Is it wrong to have a specialised unit to fast -track investigations into wrong doings during the Rajapaksa regime and arrest the wrongdoers, who had fleeced this country dry? Was it not the mandate given by the people at the January 8 elections?
Unfortunately, Mr. Rajapaksa and the coterie of sycophants around him seem to have contracted a sudden but convenient bout of amnesia in an attempt to fool and mislead the people again. By playing the ‘Nazi card’ he has attempted to divert the people’s attention from what was and what used to be during that era. As the then president did he not arrogate to himself absolute power with the approval of the UPFA members who were mostly servile ‘yes’ men and women with a Prime Minister who was for all intents and purposes a puppet. Has Mr. Rajapaksa forgotten so soon that through the 18th Amendment he even did worse or went even further? Under this authoritarian Amendment to the Constitution he gave himself the authority to contest for the presidency an umpteen number of times and thereby thought he would be invincible or untouchable.
Has he forgotten the level to which the judiciary, the police department, the public service and all government institutions including the Central bank were politicised under his ‘benevolent care’? Has he forgotten how the state media, both electronic and print, shamelessly and blatantly spewed out government propaganda while slinging mud at political opponents day-in and dayout? Has he forgotten Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickramatunge who was bludgeoned to death in broad daylight very close to or within a high security zone? Has he forgotten senior journalist D.P. Sivaram or ‘Tharaki’, who was abducted from a restaurant in Bambalapitiya and brutally shot dead at a lonely spot close to parliament? Has he forgotten the disappearance without trace of another senior journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda? Has he forgotten the many other such tragic incidents that took place during that era? The greatest danger was that none of these killings had so far been investigated. Has he forgotten how Sarath Fonseka the much decorated army commander and war hero was ignominiously dragged to jail? Has he forgotten that the only sin or crime they committed was to have the courage to say the unsayable and to think the unthinkable by highlighting the misdeeds of the Rajapaksa regime and the then powerful Rajapaksa brothers, who cultivated such a bloated ego that made them believe they were above the law and lily white not capable of any wrong-doing. Mr. Rajapaksa has forgotten the truism that nothing is forever but that all things are transient and that the balance of power could change overnight and unexpectedly as it happened when his Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena had the spine and the guts to quit the once powerful government and f power, prestige and privilege he ventured into the unknown and by practising what he preached has left a trail for others to follow.
Who is Sri Lanka’s Hitler and who is not will no doubt be written down in the history books of Sri Lanka.