{"id":186305,"date":"2018-01-11T13:21:04","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T07:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=186305"},"modified":"2018-01-15T12:47:17","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T07:17:17","slug":"so-is-everyone-clean-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/so-is-everyone-clean-now\/","title":{"rendered":"So Is Everyone ‘Clean’ Now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Malinda Seneviratne<\/a> –<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

Dulles Alahapperuma, having first entered Parliament in 1994 and having retained his seat in the General Election in 2000 surprising decided not to contest in 2001.\u00a0<\/span>He had his reasons.\u00a0<\/span>His argument was that he was \u2018too white\u2019 to be in Parliament.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Most people in Parliament are brown, but no one realizes this because there\u2019s no contrast to make the brown stand out.\u00a0<\/span>When there\u2019s white, it shows.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>This makes \u201cbrown people\u201d uncomfortable.\u00a0<\/span>I don\u2019t want to make anyone uncomfortable and I don\u2019t want to be where I don\u2019t fit in.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown, to him, was metaphor for taint.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>He didn\u2019t want to be a part of that tainted and tainting story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>He did return to parliamentary politics and I am not sure how he justified this to himself or those who thought he made sense with the white-brown parable, but that is another story. What\u2019s important is the parable.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Parliament and parliamentary politics is not \u2018brown\u2019 but \u2018black\u2019 in the main.\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s about pots calling kettles black and vice versa, and where there\u2019s anything relatively clean every effort being made to discolor.\u00a0<\/span>People give in and give up.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>People compromise.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>People slip.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>And once you slip, you get covered in brown and black.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Most walk in dirty, some get dirty once in.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We are seeing this in the back and forth pertaining to the Central Bank bond issue scandal<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>We have the President announcing that the Commission appointed by him to investigate the matter has found Ravi Karunanayake guilty of wrongdoing.\u00a0<\/span>We have Karunanayake claiming that he is innocent and that the President was selective when briefing the nation about the Commission\u2019s findings.\u00a0<\/span>We have the Prime Minister claiming that there was hanky-panky in bond issues from 2008 to 2015, i.e. before the Yahapalana Government came to power.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>He has not echoed Karunanayake\u2019s sentiments nor backed the innocence-claim.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Karunanayake, however, has said \u2018neither the Prime Minister nor I have committed anything wrong<\/a>.\u2019\u00a0<\/span>The news story was headlined thus: \u2018Ravi says he\u2019s as clean as PM.\u2019\u00a0<\/span>That\u2019s a mischievous re-wording of course, but it catches a salient point\u00a0viz\u00a0<\/i>the claiming of innocence.\u00a0\u2018We are both white,\u2019 he is basically saying.\u00a0<\/span>Another way of putting it is, \u2018I am as good as he is, and if he is bad then that\u2019s how bad or good I am.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s one step short of saying \u2018we are in cahoots in this matter.\u2019\u00a0<\/span>Most importantly, the Prime Minister has not denied the findings of the Commission of Inquiry that the President detailed in his special statement on the matter.\u00a0<\/span>He has not returned endorsed Karunanayake\u2019s claim.\u00a0<\/span>He has not said \u2018I am as clean as Ravi\u2019 or \u2018neither Ravi nor I have committed anything wrong.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Is that telling, then?\u00a0<\/span>Is all this \u2018telling\u2019 and if so what\u2019s being told?<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put all this in brown-white terms.\u00a0<\/span>The President has described someone as being brown.\u00a0<\/span>The moment he does this, he is claiming that he is white.\u00a0<\/span>When Karunanayake says \u2018he\u2019s told only half the story,\u2019 he is essentially saying \u2018the President could be brown too!\u2019\u00a0<\/span>When Karunanayake says \u2018I am white\u2019 he\u2019s saying others are brown.\u00a0<\/span>When the Prime Minister says \u2018it was all brown before 2015,\u2019 he\u2019s implying that it was all white thereafter.\u00a0<\/span>When Karunanayake says \u2018I am like the Prime Minister,\u2019 he\u2019s essentially purchasing claimed purity or whiteness.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Taken together they are all brown.\u00a0<\/span>For this reason they all have the fallback \u2018I am like you, no better and no worse.\u2019\u00a0<\/span>And perhaps in order to convince themselves and each other they\u2019ve indulged in fisticuffs in Parliament.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What then is left to say of \u2018yahapalanaya\u2019?\u00a0<\/span>What then is left to say of \u2018change\u2019?\u00a0<\/span>Pots and kettles, is that what we have to conclude?\u00a0<\/span>All brown and no room for white, is that what they want us to conclude?\u00a0<\/span>The more important question is, \u2018is there anyone who is white in Parliament?\u2019\u00a0<\/span>And if there are white people in Parliament, what on earth are they doing there?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This UNP-SLFP (or Maithri-Ranil) Yahapalana combine has lost the right to use the term.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>They have spent three years pointing fingers at the previous regime, which was of course as brown as the current lot.\u00a0<\/span>If that (pointing fingers) was all they did, we could still suffer them, but they\u2019ve dipped their always-brown hands into the National Kitty.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is too late for the likes of Karunanayake to salvage pride by employing the \u2018at least\u2019 option; e.g \u2018at least a commission was appointed, at least a report came out of it, at least some of the findings were made public.\u2019\u00a0<\/span>The whole story is not made of what the President revealed plus what he did not.\u00a0<\/span>The whole story is a brown story.\u00a0<\/span>An \u2018all brown\u2019 story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is a story which has all the characters saying \u2018I am as clean as he\/she is,\u2019 which ladies and gentlemen essentially means \u2018I am as corrupt.\u2019\u00a0<\/span>It is said with gusto.\u00a0<\/span>It is said with a devil-may-care air.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It is said with an unsaid \u2018so what?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s where we are right now.\u00a0<\/span>The Parliament is brown.\u00a0<\/span>Only one question remains: \u2018are we as brown and if so do we want to remain brown?\u2019\u00a0Or \u2018black\u2019 if we don\u2019t want to use Dulles\u2019 color preference which one feels was inspired as much by dirty politics as by the mud-slinging that passes off for political debate in Parliament and outside it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, it is certainly not \u2018white,\u2019 or if that\u2019s an insult to non-white people, then it\u2019s not squeaky clean.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s dirty.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.\u00a0<\/i>malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":137374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nSo Is Everyone 'Clean' Now? - 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\/so-is-everyone-clean-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"So Is Everyone 'Clean' Now? - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/so-is-everyone-clean-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-11T07:51:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-01-15T07:17:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Malinda.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"279\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"356\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Malinda Seneviratne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Malinda Seneviratne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/so-is-everyone-clean-now\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/so-is-everyone-clean-now\/\",\"name\":\"So Is Everyone 'Clean' Now? 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