{"id":173537,"date":"2017-02-04T15:10:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-04T09:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=173537"},"modified":"2017-02-09T10:47:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T05:17:09","slug":"a-time-for-outrage-battlecry-in-nugegoda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-time-for-outrage-battlecry-in-nugegoda\/","title":{"rendered":"A Time For Outrage! Battlecry In Nugegoda\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dayan Jayatilleka<\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord\u201d\u2014Phil Collins<\/p>\n

Attending the mammoth Nugegoda rally on January 27th 2017<\/a> and participating as a speaker who had not only been on the stage and read out MR\u2019s message two years before at the same venue in Feb 2015 but also been among the handful including Wimal and Udaya who planned that \u2018patriotic fight-back\/MR comeback\u2019 initiative at a working dinner in January 2015, I noted the expansion of the crowd in 2017 and the sustained, blistering attack on the PM (albeit with some sardonic sideswipes by MR at his successor).<\/p>\n

The spirit of the huge 2017 rally, both of the speakers and the crowd, was best summed up in Stephane Hessel\u2019s famous phrase and title of his pamphlet, \u2018Indignez Vous!<\/em>\u2019 which translates as \u2018Time for Outrage!<\/em>\u2019 If Nugegoda 2015 was a \u2018Time for Resistance<\/em>\u2019 in the face of the defeat some weeks before, Nugegoda 2017 was a \u2018Time for Outrage\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nugegoda 2015 heralded a political guerrilla war and the uprising of a patriotic political resistance movement. Nugegoda 2017 witnessed a shift in the mood and the correlation of forces due to a deepening of the crisis. From political guerrilla war, the Opposition had graduated to frontal, political, social and ideological battle. The patriotic popular\u2013democratic (or populist) movement has shifted from the defensive to the offensive; from resistance to revolt; from guerrilla combat to a battle cry of political insurrection.<\/p>\n

This escalation\/radicalization is essentially due to the defrauding of the JO\u2019s legitimate status and political space as the Parliamentary Opposition, the denial of Opposition leadership to Mahinda Rajapaksa-Dinesh Gunawardena, and the installation of the counterfeit Opposition, the TNA.<\/p>\n

The Parliamentary debate and the Nugegoda rally revealed that within and outside Parliament, within and outside the Jan 8th 2015 coalition, the PM\u2019s policies, personal style and the aggressiveness of his loyalist UNP hawks have become alienating and polarizing factors all around the political compass. The PM is radioactive; a hate symbol; the target on the back of the Sirisena dispensation, the SLFP and the UNP itself.<\/p>\n

In my Nugegoda 2017 speech I made three points, speaking to the overall theme of the gathering which was \u201cPeraliya\u201d or \u201cOverturn\u201d: \u2018Whom? Why? How?\u2019 Who<\/em><\/strong> should be overthrown? What<\/em><\/strong> is the reason for overthrow? How<\/em><\/strong> can they be overthrown?<\/p>\n