Former Justice Minister and Buddhasaasana Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe must be a very absent minded man. Or else, he must be suffering from a rare disorder that causes him to forget his ideas, views and everything else that he did for long periods of time, only to remember them years later. This week, Rajapakshe wrote a letter to Speaker Karu Jayasuriya. In the letter, he argues that the creation of a Constitutional Assembly for the purpose of drafting a Constitution is ‘illegal’ and wants it annulled.
It is not to be taken lightly because Rajapakshe issues a dire warning: “It is the duty of the Speaker to rectify this error. Otherwise, the Speaker should take responsibility for the chaotic situation being created in the country owing to the protests and agitations against a new Constitution”.
Who are we to argue? After all, Rajapakshe is a ‘double doctor’, like N.M. Perera and G.L. Peiris before him. NM wrecked the economy, GL wrecked the judicial system, and it seems Rajapakshe wants to wreck the Constitution.
You would expect Rajapakshe to know what he is talking about. He is a lawyer by profession, and has two doctorates: one in Law from the University of Colombo and the other in Buddhist Philosophy from the University of Kelaniya. Little wonder then that he was appointed Minister of Justice and Buddhist Affairs! If only all our Cabinet Ministers had a doctorate in the subject of which they are the minister in charge- they would then all have to resign, like Rajapakshe did! Rajapakshe resigned in late August this year. That was after the United National Party (UNP) passed a resolution stating that he had violated party discipline, having been critical of the party and the government on a range of issues. We have no problem with that because every man is entitled to his opinion. What concerns us are the memory lapses that Rajapakshe appears to be having, from time to time.
The Constitutional Assembly was created in March 2016. It held its first sitting a month later, in April 2016. On that day, on April 5, 2016, a Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly was appointed. It comprised 21 members and guess who was on that Committee? Yes, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe. From April 5, 2016 Rajapakshe was on that Steering Committee. We didn’t hear him utter a word against it. We didn’t hear him say that either that Committee or the parent Constitutional Assembly of which it was a part of, was illegal.
Rajapakshe resigned as a Minister in late August this year and now, hey presto, he has suddenly realized that the committee he was sitting on is ‘illegal’. Ah, wisdom must come but late to this man, but it is better late than never, I suppose! There was a time when we thought Rajapakshe was everything that we wanted in a politician: home bred, in the rough climes of Walasmulla, in the Hambantota district, becoming a lawyer by sheer dint of determination and then taking to politics, showing some backbone in refusing a portfolio offered to him by Mahinda Rajapaksa and then being critical of the government as the Chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprise (COPE) before leaving it altogether. What more could you ask? But something went wrong somewhere, and Rajapakshe seems to have undergone a metamorphosis.
The first inkling came when Rajapakshe stood up in Parliament and began defending those accused of irregularities in the Avant Garde controversy. At best, it was unethical; at worst, it was a blatant cover-up, undertaken while abusing parliamentary privileges. Tilak Marapana did the same, but he fell on his sword, admitting culpability for his conduct.
Rajapakshe however, stayed put and claimed he had no private dealings with Avant Garde bosses- until Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka produced photographic evidence, showing Rajapakshe and his family holidaying with Avant Garde Chairman Nissanka Senadhipathi in Disneyland. Walt Disney himself would have been proud to make a movie out of this story. Rajapakshe also proudly proclaimed, again in Parliament, that it was he who prevented the arrest of his namesake, former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
We have nothing against Gotabaya Rajapaksa and take no pleasure in seeing him arrested, but can a Justice Minister stand up in Parliament and say that he intervened in preventing the arrest of someone? Surely, that must amount to interference in the judicial process, particularly, in a government that proclaims ‘good governance’? Maybe, Rajapakshe was letting the cat out of the bag about his true political affiliations, though it took some time for his Cabinet colleagues to realize that.
Since then, Rajapakshe has been making dissenting noises from within the government. They tolerated him for a while. Perhaps, President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe thought, like US President Lyndon B. Johnson thought of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover: “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.” Rajapakshe though was ‘pissing’ so much that the stench finally got too strong and the UNP thought otherwise: that it was better to have him outside the tent pissing in, than inside the tent pissing out! This is what he is doing now, suddenly waking up to the reality of the Constitutional Assembly and its Steering Committee and declaring it ‘illegal’.
It is not a crime to have political ambition. We also know that most of our politicians, when they become ambitious and begin a journey to become popular, become patriots. It is a well-trodden path and this is what Rajapakshe is embarking on.
People see him for what he is- a political opportunist- but they won’t take kindly when he insults their intelligence by suddenly crying wolf about a Constitutional Assembly that he was very much a party of for well over a year. Ah, haven’t we all heard that pithy saying in Sinhala: “don’t trust even a kitten that hasn’t opened its eyes, if it is from the other side of the BentaraGanga”. We learnt that the hard way with one Rajapaksa, now another Rajapakshe is trying to teach us the same lesson!