{"id":54180,"date":"2012-09-15T17:25:29","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T17:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=54180"},"modified":"2012-09-21T09:25:21","modified_gmt":"2012-09-21T09:25:21","slug":"mervins-son-and-keheliyas-kehelmal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/mervins-son-and-keheliyas-kehelmal\/","title":{"rendered":"Mervin\u2019s Son And Keheliya\u2019s Kehelmal*"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Malinda Seneviratne<\/a>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

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

Malaka Silva<\/a><\/span>, son of Mervin Silva<\/a><\/span>, Minister of Public Relations and Public Affairs is a thug.\u00a0 He is rumored to be involved in drug trafficking but rumor is not fact.\u00a0 If indeed he is, there is either a lack of information to warrant investigation or there\u2019s pressure from above to keep things quiet or the investigation is being carried out in hush-hush ways.\u00a0 It is rumored that the Army officer who was assaulted by Malaka and his thugs and who is known to be attached to the Army\u2019s Intelligence Unit<\/a><\/span>, was actually on duty investigating drug trafficking and drug traffickers. Those who will connect the dots will do so, but that\u2019s all conjecture.<\/p>\n

What is fact and indeed caught on camera is that Malaka Silva and his gangsters assaulted this officer, causing grievous hurt and necessitating hospitalization.\u00a0 Police Media Spokesperson, SSP Ajith Rohana<\/a><\/span> has acknowledged that the assault was captured on camera and said that the culprits will be apprehended.\u00a0 The Army has launched its own investigation.\u00a0 Two Police teams have been deployed to hunt the man down.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, even as the nation in one voice calls for the arrest of this thug and wonders about the logic of a soldier putting his life on line to free the nation from the menace of terrorism having to suffer the fate of being banged up a common thug, Malaka Silva calmly visits the Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihare, as a VVIP<\/a><\/span>, bypassing the long queues, to pay homage to the Sacred Kapilavastu Relics<\/span> <\/a>and this in a place where over 2,000 policemen were stationed to maintain law and order.\u00a0 He is photographed, duly and the photographs are published.\u00a0 Malaka is essentially lifting a metaphorical sarong at the country\u2019s law, law enforcement officers, the judiciary and the general citizenry.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s serious stuff.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the flip side, and the hilarity that should not provoke laughter but does, perhaps because (for good or bad) we are a nation that can see the funny side of things even in the midst of grim sobriety.<\/p>\n

Mervin Silva, the assailants father with a considerable scot-fee history of intimidation and assault himself, claims that his son would never hit a man in uniform.\u00a0 According to him, Malaka hit someone who he believed was an ordinary person, whose crime was that although he had a cigarette he was ready to give cigarette-needing Malaka, didn\u2019t have a lighter to go with it.\u00a0 So Malaka can assault anyone he bums a cigarette from if he didn\u2019t have a lighter as well, provided he didn\u2019t happen to be in military uniform.\u00a0 Stretch that argument and we have Malaka with a license to assault anyone other than military personnel (who too would be spared only if in uniform).\u00a0 We should not take Mervin too seriously, for the man thinks the law allows anyone to tie anyone else to a tree.\u00a0 We should take issue from those who do nothing about it.<\/p>\n

Keheliya Rambukwella<\/a><\/span> now holds the dubious record for besting Mervin at this kind of humor.\u00a0 At the weekly media briefing on Cabinet decisions, responding to a query, he is reported to have said that the Police didn\u2019t arrest Malaka in Kelaniya because \u2018he was on sacred ground\u2019.\u00a0 Now, had Prabhakaran<\/a><\/span> been spotted worshipping at theMadhuChurchand the Army had surrounded the place, would he have been accorded the same privilege?\u00a0 Let\u2019s assume so.\u00a0 At some point Prabhakaran would have had to leave or starve.\u00a0 Let\u2019s assume he chose the former option.\u00a0 Would not the Army have captured him there and then, or shot him dead if he attempted to fight his way out?<\/p>\n

Malaka Silva walked away.\u00a0 He would have exited \u2018sacred ground\u2019 at some point.\u00a0 The Police could not have been so blind as to leave a to-safety avenue for the thug.\u00a0 He could have been apprehended at the gate. He was not.\u00a0 The police are not stupid.\u00a0 The people are not stupid.\u00a0 Keheliya seems to believe that both are stupid.<\/p>\n

Malaka Silva is not an extraordinary citizen.\u00a0 If I did what Malaka did, I would be behind bars now.\u00a0 I would have been arrested within the hour of assaulting a senior Army officer.\u00a0 Malaka is free, still.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t say a lot about law enforcement in the country.\u00a0 It says a lot about Malaka\u2019s and Mervin\u2019s political backers.\u00a0 It leaves a question:\u00a0 \u2018Who is the President of this country, Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/a><\/span> or Mervin Silva?\u2019<\/p>\n

*literally \u2018plantain-flower\u2019 but used colloquially to mean \u2018balderdash\u2019.<\/p>\n

Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation<\/a>\u2018 and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":44732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,2938],"tags":[4524,4775,4698,1187,4525,4523,4774],"class_list":["post-54180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-editorial","category-popular","tag-army-major-attacked-by-malaka-silva","tag-army-major-attacked-by-malaka-silva-an-keheliya-rambukwella","tag-attack-on-army-major-chnadana-pradeep","tag-malaka-silva","tag-mervin-silva-son-asulted-army-major","tag-mervyn-silvas-son-malaka-silva-attacked-army-major","tag-son-of-mervin-silva"],"yoast_head":"\nMervin\u2019s Son And Keheliya\u2019s Kehelmal* - 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\/mervins-son-and-keheliyas-kehelmal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mervin\u2019s Son And Keheliya\u2019s Kehelmal* - 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