POLITICAL SKETCHBOOK

POLITICAL SKETCHBOOK by Rajpal Abeynayaka

It is aid stupid - what LTTE problem?
Milinda Moragoda seated himself opposite his interlocutor (moderator as they say) leaning towards one side very heavily, and the body language said ' something was different.'' Something was different from the time that Milinda Moragoda came barrelling in, took over the talk show, talked right down to his audience, and for all intents and purposes was both interviewer and interviewee.

Moragoda last week even looked upto the audience -- he gazed up towards a balcony at some sort of a televised town meeting, and that must have been hard for a man who always talked down -- metaphorically more than literally. Those days, before the LTTE walked out of talks, he might have even got the people to get down from the balcony and of course he would have said it is all for the sake of warm hearts and informality.

But there was little warmth and even less informality at the town meeting held in some tenement area in Colombo last week. But Moragoda still does not believe in standing up at town meetings. He is seated and the people are standing -- this shows that even if Moragoda had his heart in America, he does things very much the way Sinhala kings used to. Bill Clinton has to be Moragoda's hero, because Clinton is the democratic icon of America - and Moragoda is the man who looks upto the American ideal. Bill Clinton never had a town meeting at which he was seated.

Psychologically he may have been on a raised dais and had the mental advantage, but he created the illusion that he was somehow less important than the people because he stood while the people sat. But Moragoda turned all that logic upside down. At one point, the people were barrelling down on him. One lady, in a rather agitated voice, all the way from the balcony, directed a question about whether the LTTE is not making threatening noises whereas at the beginning of the peace process it was all sugar and syrup?

Four months ago, an LTTE question was Moragoda's invitation to treat. He would twirl it around his little finger, and use his LTTE connections to good effect to indicate that he had tea and cakes with Anton Balasingham the day before, if any indication was needed that peace is permanent. But, in Colombo last week - he kept the LTTE question on hold. He was like 'don't fiddle while Rome burns - - don't talk of the LTTE when there are more important burning issues '' So he tilted to his head to a side, and with a surge of passion, delivered the important message that Japan and Germany both became industrial powers due to American aid. We can do it with aid too, he said.

The donor conference he said can get you out of the tenement, except that you should stop talking about silly things like the LTTE getting back to war. Well he didn't say that -- but he didn't have to. The people on the balcony would have done anything to get out of their little chicken coop flats, and there were never more questions about the LTTE. Moragoda then talked of the supiri hotalay "luxury hotel'' in Japan.

Between visions of a luxury hotel and getting out of the tenement, the LTTE issue almost dived down the drainpipe. When the moderator reminded him about it -- Moragoda was already George C. Marshall. The tenement dwellers were agog. Moragoda took a deep breath. The moderator then removed that little microphone fixed to the button closest to his warm heart.

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