The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake

There'll be filthy lucre, when the white man cometh
The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) has done it again. They have put the NGOs in an embarrassing and compromising position by sponsoring a LTTE press conference on the Manirasakulam camp.

But let's hand it to the CPA. The CPA has been honest about it. It has been quite overtly LTTE. As the LTTE's bedfellow, it has allowed itself to be photographed with its pants down - - en flagrante and with all buttons undone.

This you cannot say for all of the Non-Governmental Organisations in town. There are those such as the National Peace Council for instance, which have a very bad record being unable to keep its funds from getting into the hands of assorted conmen.

But, that has become part of the imported NGO funded sub culture in these parts of the world. Donor governments have been quite thickly discussing the idea of keeping the NGO hands slippery.

The more the NGO agents of the donors are corrupt and are on the take, the easier it is to get them to do the donor's bidding. Take Colombo for instance. There are any amount of NGO actors here, who have blatantly been on the take. Some have had to go to court but have still done the great Houdini, and escaped. Others have diddled discreetly by cooking the books and talking peace.

But, I have been personally privy to conversations in which foreign donors and those that dole out the largesse on behalf of foreign donors advocate keeping the NGOs in the money. One theory is that the government has not been able to effectively utilise aid - - and hold on to your chairs -- that NGOs are somehow less corrupt than governments which on a relative scale makes it more profitable to keep the NGOs cash flushed.

Perhaps the upside of all this is, that Sri Lanka is becoming a test case for NGO subversion. Academics writing books on NGO aided political subversion will in future refer to the Sri Lankan example, with particular reference to what NGO movements such as the National Peace Council and the CPA have been doing to subvert the agenda in favour of the LTTE.

Take the case of the CPA sponsored Manirasakulam press conference, where the CPA is thumbing a nose directly at the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission which has unequivocally determined that the camp is in a government controlled area. So here is an instance where an NGO is openly encouraging and stimulating disrespect for the chosen foreign umpire, which should clearly indicate to even the softest of hearts where their sympathies lie.

(It is understood that the CPA has made some clarifications with regard to our story of last week, with the issue pertaining to the identity of certain parties present at last week's CPA sponsored event. Well and good, but as far as this column is concerned the issue is that any discussion that encourages the LTTE to give its viewpoint regarding the Manirasakulam camp is brazen because the SLMM has already made its determination, and there can be no challenging of the SLMM's decision as per the MOU -- and by extension in the interests of the very peace process that the CPA supports.)

The NGOs however play a more insidious role by subverting the level of the discourse. For instance, a man who has been internationally condemned as a person who ran an NGO to de-stabilise Sierra Leone has been named as "suitable'' to be included in a body to determine the future of the Sri Lankan conflict, by a person who fancies himself as an indigenous intellectual who is against the peace process! What more can be said about how far the intellectual subversion of our polity has been accomplished by Non-Governmental Organisations which are essentially in the business of importing white skins to determine local policy.

Almost every NGO funded intellectual endeavour in this country relies on "foreign resource persons.'' A recent media seminar had three foreign resource persons summing up the discussion on how Sri Lankan media should reorganise its agenda to meet "new global realities.''

This genuflection to the white skin is the best manifestation of neo-colonialism neo-liberalisation and globalisation which of course can all be bought under the broader rubric of American imperialism.

What's laughable is how lamely the local intelligentsia has buckled under these pressures. The old left is gone, and is doddering, but those who are in the old left who are a shadow of their former selves, cannot even identify these new forces of neo-colonial subversion. These leftovers are on the other hand breaking bread with these white skinned pundits. Prabhakaran himself says that he wants a neo-liberal economy in his Eelam or at least he said that he is for a free market economy. That's all fine in terms of ideological preference.

But, it points to a man who does not understand the fine mechanics of how the neo liberal economy is manipulated and who therefore thinks that an untrammelled free market is moksha. The old left identifies with Prabkakaran as a rebel. So through a twisted route, the old left also identifies with the NGO types who now import the intellectual sustenance for the subversion of the Sri Lankan state. The new left of course on the other hand, has no intellectuals, and are on an improbable odyssey to capture power at any cost.

Now no doubt this column has said on previous occasions that the present peace initiative of this government should be re-ordered, revamped and rehashed in order to 'arrive at a improbable peace'' with the LTTE. In that case, the educated reader may have the legitimate query as to how this column also debunks the white skinned NGO pundits who visit this country often to "set the agenda for peace''.

That, however, is not through any convoluted logic. This column has always held that the real enemy is not the LTTE. The real enemy is the CIA and the forces of foreign subversion which operate through the NGOs, and through various devious paid and purchased agencies, and that might include the LTTE - -- may or may not, but that's not the issue. The issue is that the real enemy is -- make no bones about it -- the "donor''.

The real enemies are Aksahi and Armitage, and Rocca, and of course their agents who mosey down this way once in a while to preach a half-baked brand of Federalism. Yet, we might federate if it just means that we can defeat and stymie this real enemy. But how can we do that, when our entire intellectual orientation is to say that Lester James Peiris is going to win an Oscar for Wekanda Walauwa when he can't even get his sound right, or to cheer on Chandraprema because he wants us to offer ourselves spreadeagled to the suddha?

The suddha has done the most dangerous thing. He has stopped our minds from working. Our military machine may not be working, our leaders may not be working, but any day we can put that right. But if our minds have stopped working, courtesy the NGOs, we have lost our power to protest. We have become colonised again, and we don't even know it.

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