Thoughts from London

Thonda's Thottam, hotel hijinks and the games politicians play
Chee, chee, chee, I don't believe those stories. How to believe such dirty stories no? If you heard them you won't believe either. Our people are not going to accept them just because the newspapers say so, aaah.

If some of you don't believe that the people won't believe all this rubbish about our ministers -- at least some of them -- behaving like new recruits to the Sicilian Clan, then do the democratic thing.

I mean there is George W. Bush, the best thing that happened since Kentucky Fried Chicken, an ardent believer in the democratic process telling anybody who would care to listen, how to run elections. As Georgie boy says, it helps if you have a brother in office somewhere who can juggle around with the votes and deprive your opponents of theirs.

Now that Georgie and his laptop poodle Phoney Tony are determined to teach the people of Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and assorted others the glories of democracy and elections, my friends on the other side of the cadjan curtain appear to have taken that obdurate oaf at the White House and the court jester at No. 10 not only seriously but also set out to improve on the process of democratic elections.

So our friends who are being told that under the Tokyo declaration they should respect human rights, advance the peace process and demilitarise, are carefully shrinking the electorate.

They seem to think that democracy would function better if there are less people around to demand their pound of flesh. So to simplify the democratic election process Velu and his clan have started eliminating those who do not agree with them and thus make the numbers manageable like in the Greek city state where democracy was born.

Of course some find it difficult to fathom the political subtleties that drive the Velupillaian philosophy. How, they venture to ask, can democracy be born when the democratic opposition is being killed?

Such silly questions are being asked by those who cannot grasp the profundities of Velvettithurai politics. Such doubters should wait for the establishment of the interim administration in the North and East and see how democracy flourishes. Add to the current shambles the distinctly depraved behaviour - or so we are told - of the progeny of some of those who delude themselves into believing they are the leaders of the people.

Just last Sunday I read in this newspaper about the doings of a minister named Arumugam Thondaman. I don't know what his portfolio is, nor do I care. Now according to this story written by the Political Editor himself, this Thondaman had gone to a hotel in Nuwara Eliya, accompanied by a senior police officer and the minister's retinue of police bodyguards.

At this point, the story gets somewhat vague, probably because the writer considers himself a cross pollination between Earle Stanley Gardner and Agatha Christie.
Anyway the epicurean minister decides to test more than his taste buds and setsupon the waiters supposedly for getting their order wrong. Whereupon the Front Office Manager intervened and he was apparently taught a simple lesson about letting sleeping dogs lie.

Having shown his prowess with fists and pistol, this Thondaman turned to the accompanying policemen who were doubtless doing their very best to restore law and order, and reportedly said the hotel employees deserved what they got-and that were not compliments.

But the police who appeared to have been suddenly seized by a collective paralysis of movement could only utter "We are with you, Mr. Minister". This comment has been grossly misinterpreted by the denizens of the country to show the utter servility and parasitical nature of the police that at other times are quick to harass passers-by or pummel people at police stations.

Really, the subtlety of the police comment appears to have escaped even the vigilant journalists. The police are well known for their subtlety, especially when they have a baton in their hands. "We are with you" does not actually mean we support you in your actions. Rather it means that "we are with you" at this moment, we are physically here. If you read the police information book that is what it will say on the day's play.
I am by no means suggesting that the "senior police officer" - who seems to have taken a vow of silence, is a student of William Empson and has studied the seven types of ambiguity.

But then knowing how servile some of the policemen are, it won't be surprising if the policeman in question thought that the lesser evil would be to engage in a bout of intellectual wrestling with Empson than end up catching fish in Punguduthivu.
But I still can't believe this story. If this Thondaman chap is anybody of old man Saumiyamoorthy Thondaman, then he is hardly likely to behave like a kangany on the thottam on pay day.

Though old man Thonda's people came from the other side of the Palk Strait - what to do no - Thonda was gentlemanly enough not to resort to fisticuffs to make a point. His success as a politician was that he had one aim - that was to look after his people.
Thonda ruled his Thottam but not with terror. If it is claimed that this Arumugam is a descendant of the Thondaman, then he appears to have descended too far.

The most likely explanation of what happened at Nuwara Eliya that evening is that when Thondaman was minding his own business and sipping a cup of tea, the jaws of passing waiters came and struck his fist. And the policeman, poor chap was not doing anything at all.

I don't believe what has been said about that minister from the south Mahinda Wijesekera. Could it have been about 30 years or so ago when I first came across that name and it was not in connection with thuggery and intimidation.

Anyway he is said to have threatened a journalist called Lucien Rajakarunanayake who has complained to the Prime Minister. According to the said Rajakarunanayake, Wijesekera who was with some others enjoying the food at the Hilton Hotel, threatened to do all sorts of things to him and his family because he had exercised his rights as a free media man.

I don't know this Wijesekera personally, but I find it hard to believe that a Cabinet Minister from Sri Lanka will threaten people publicly. After all we have 2,500 years of culture and all that cannot be erased by a ministerial misdemeanour at a five-star hotel.

It is true that he once told a newspaper that "boys will be boys" after his son was supposed to have been engaged in some fisticuffs of his own. But a minister threatening a journalist, even if it was a journalist who used to bowl full tosses to President Kumaratunga during those tedious television programmes that were really WMDs, meaning ways of mass deception.

Then there was some deputy minister who exited a wedding at the same Hilton Hotel with weapons firing like a 21-gun salute, earning him the sobriquet Wediaratchchi or some such pun. Do you believe all this rubbish? Surely not, not all those honourable men, to adapt the words of Mark Antony.

Back to Columns