{"id":131617,"date":"2014-10-11T11:03:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T05:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=131617"},"modified":"2014-10-31T15:55:50","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T10:25:50","slug":"i-know-this-is-the-miracle-of-asia-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/i-know-this-is-the-miracle-of-asia-but\/","title":{"rendered":"I Know This Is The \u201cMiracle Of Asia, But \u2026."},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Emil van der Poorten<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Emil<\/a>

Emil van der Poorten<\/p><\/div>\n

To complete the title of this column, let me add \u201cis it also the land where suspension of disbelief is absolute?\u201d<\/p>\n

The journalists, in the English media at least, have been uttering platitudes that would justify their inclusion in one of the \u201cForums\u201d of self-righteousness that seem to be so accepted in middle-class Colombo, Sri Lanka where the word \u201chypocrisy\u201d appears to have disappeared from the Oxford English dictionary.<\/p>\n

What has provoked my outburst? All the discussion and debate, if I might debase those two words in applying them to what has transpired recently in Sri Lanka: the Nonis<\/span><\/a>\/Vass Gunawardena<\/span><\/a> brawl and His Excellency, Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a>\u2019s, most recent audience with the Pope.\u00a0 The former event leading up to the latter and to be followed by the arrival of Pope Francis<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The behaviour of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church in giving its blessings to the most corrupt and violent government in Sri Lanka\u2019s history is viewed as something of an aberration and deserving of investigation to arrive at the \u201creal truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStuff and nonsense\u201d would be the appropriate response that any<\/b> right-thinking person with even a smattering of historical knowledge would bring to this arrant rubbish.<\/p>\n

\"Mahinda<\/a>To begin with, the Vatican has a documented history of friendship with and support of the most corrupt regimes in the history of the world and for those whose knowledge of world history does not go farther back than the 20th<\/sup> century, may I suggest checking out the conduct of Pope Pius XII vis-a-vis a man called Adolf Schicklegruber, better known as Adolf Hitler, in the conduct of his mass murder of Jews and others designated by him as undeserving of continuing existence on the face of this earth?<\/p>\n

The newest Pope, if one is to believe the mealy-mouthed \u201cjournalists\u201d of the world, is well on his way to canonization for, among other things, having a prosecution launched against one <\/b>Vatican-based senior cleric for sexual crimes and choosing to live in accommodation more modest than that which his predecessors chose.\u00a0 Along the way, he has uttered what would be defined as simple platitudes if they emanated from \u201cordinary\u201d folk.\u00a0 These were in the matters of family planning and the rights of gay people to be accepted as human beings.<\/p>\n

What has been buried under this torrent of rhetoric preparing the world for this man\u2019s elevation to sainthood even before his passing is the fact that, during probably the single worst chapter in Argentina\u2019s history<\/span><\/a> \u2013 the time of the \u201cdesaparecidos\u201d \u2013 when, among other atrocities, the infant children of the tortured and murdered were \u201cadopted\u201d by those responsible for the torture and death of their parents\u2013 this man, a very senior cleric in that large South American country, did nothing, never so much as raised his voice in protest <\/b>while more than 6,000 people were \u201cdisappeared.\u201d\u00a0 Oh! I should qualify that: he did<\/b> use his influence on behalf of a small handful from \u201cinfluential\u201d families. While there is a great deal of information about this saintly man\u2019s conduct, perhaps the following link, one of many, might be worthy of pursuit<\/p>\n

Hardly a Bishop Romero, I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

As for the head of the local Roman Catholic church \u2013 Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith<\/span><\/a> \u2013 his supine behaviour towards the current regime even when churches of his own denomination were being defiled and destroyed hardly needs elaboration.\u00a0 However, I cannot resist the temptation of referring to some recent media comments that Vass Gunawardena\u2019s assault on High Commissioner (to the Court of St. James) Nonis might have some negative fall-out because the latter\u2019s family has significant \u201cCardinal connections.\u201d\u00a0 What a bunch of what comes out of the south end of a bull proceeding north!\u00a0 VG, Nonis, Ranjith and much of the hierarchies of several other religious denominations in this country are the last entities that can, by any stretch, be considered as standing between the Rajapaksa Project and its absolute control of this country.\u00a0 These organizations have, historically, been camp followers of those wielding power and it takes little more than the threat of withdrawal of a petrol allowance for their Mercedes\u2019 to have them abandon any pretence to principle and bring them to heel.<\/p>\n

Then to add to that particular media comedy, we have the fact that one of the participants in the New York Slap-and-Kick is a part of the delegation that accompanies our ruling monarch to the Vatican, though we are assured that he is not going to actually have an audience with His Holiness, Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

But just in case, Mohan Pieris<\/span><\/a>, our current Chief Justice, was photographed in the Vatican, in the company of our Excellency, his (Roman Catholic) spouse and Pope Francis himself.\u00a0 Given the black comedy that is unfolding in Sri Lanka and those places associated with its rulers, it might well be that the missing piece in this photograph is the sublime visage of the Punch and Kick Street Fighter, the afore-mentioned Vass Gunawardena.\u00a0 There would certainly have been a certain poetic balance if he could have completed this august group, keeping all these paragons of virtue company.\u00a0 That is, assuming that the afore-mentioned Mr. Nonis, one of the only two known tea-peddling senior diplomats in Sri Lanka\u2019s history, was unavailable to grace the occasion himself because he was nursing too-serious damage to his person to be there.<\/p>\n

As I check the web editions of the Sri Lankan newspapers to the accompaniment of the \u201cspeaker system\u201d of a neighbouring temple whose timer sets off its religious message at 4:00 a.m, I am greeted by a lengthy media release from John Amaratunga, a senior UNP functionary whose logic appears to be that, since the UNP\u2019s founding principles were of religious harmony, that party must join the government in extending the warmest welcome possible to His Holiness, the Pope when he arrives here.\u00a0 Mr Amaratunga denies that such an invitation is driven by manipulative political intent tied to a forthcoming Presidential election!\u00a0 Skewed logic?\u00a0 Hardly, coming from this Presidential lapdog, on the Mahinda Rajapaksa payroll through the provision of periodic expenses-paid trips to distant climes to conduct personal business!\u00a0 Invoking \u201ca pox on both their houses\u201d hardly seems benediction enough for our two primary political coalitions in these circumstances.<\/p>\n

If one is able to maintain something resembling a (wry) sense of humour in this misbegotten land, readers of the local press are certainly not short of amusement if they know where to look!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":93580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8,6968],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial","category-popular-columns"],"yoast_head":"\nI Know This Is The \u201cMiracle Of Asia, But \u2026. - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/i-know-this-is-the-miracle-of-asia-but\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Know This Is The \u201cMiracle Of Asia, But \u2026. - 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