Snoozing in Oxford, losing at home

Chandrika Kumaratunga's speech at Oxford seemed to be the best indication that this is a President fast losing her touch. The whole tour of England was a disaster, yes. She told BBC that 40 per cent of Sri Lanka's children are malnourished, and that's old hat now. 

But at Oxford, the President seemed to be determined to show mediocrity.

In the first place, should a President of a country have spoken at the Oxford Union? Bill Clinton went there, but he was an alumnus. Benazir Bhutto was an alumnus. But, Kumaratunga boasted that she was an alumnus's daughter. She went onto explain how her father shared the bench (or whatever those quaint people in that University call it) with so and so and such and such potentate in Britain. She _ a head of state said she was honoured to be at Oxford! This, to a bunch of grinning women and men, some of whom couldn't suffer peroration for just 20 minutes, and were seen in various states of dishabille nodding off, as a head of state read from her prepared script.

Sorry chum, but Castro wouldn't have done it. Sirimavo wouldn't have done it. But the daughter does it, and does it badly, all a good sign that this is a politician losing her sense of even keel, just before an election that seems poised to bury her politically. Then she goes and sells her soul to one Tim Sebestian on BBC. And they are said to have charged a cool 11 million for it.

You wouldn't need much more information to bury a government such as this one. It's a feudal government, run by a feudal scion _ and it's been run like a feudal fiefdom. It's a government of the elite, for the elite, by the elite. 

Bandaranaike came back from Oxford, and he eschewed most of Oxford's stuffy traditions and what those had taught him. When Bandaranaike said that Oxford kindled in him "the sprit and desire to return to his country and work on behalf of it's people", he didn't quite mean it the way his daughter said it. In Oxford, he saw why the Sri Lankan elite felt twice alienated. They felt alienated from the common people, because they had aped the British. They felt alienated from the British, because the British would never quite accept them in Britain, though they would make a few patronizing concessions like making one of them the President of the Oxford Union. 

In fact, we shouldn't quite be debating this issue at all. A President of a country has no place in Oxford at all, today, a day and age when it's an utter embarrassment to hark back to the shackles of a colonial past. But, Chandrika Kumaratunga has this uncanny way of embarrassing the whole country, of delivering it back to the age of the dominion.

Small wonder it's her government that's being dominated today by the pernicious institutions of the West, and by vested interests emanating from the West. Last week, this space discussed the issue of how the Americans want the PA to be in power, so that it's own vested interests could be persued via a corrupt inept government. 

It's to the JVP's utter discredit that it has anything to do with a regime as feudalistic elite and pompous as this one. It's a sign that the JVP's young are still willing to be serfs and handmaidens to the effete aristocracy of this land.

It's a sad indictment. As Wickramabahu Karunaratne, one of the few truth-tellers in this campaign said _ the JVP is making a terrible hue and cry and ruckus about the fact that farmers' loans had been written off under the JVP's tutelage. As he says, it was only in theory and those loans would have eventually had to be written off by any government anyway.

The JVP has embarrassed it's own political tradition by allying with the remnants of the walauwa. That's why Vasudeva Nanayakkara, who rarely fails to call a spade a spade, has a few of his choicest words reserved for today's JVP. As for Chandrika she will probably remain President, thanks to a man who never went to Oxford. J. R. Jayewardene, who made certain political mistakes the way Bandaranaike did, created the Executive Presidency which Chandrika now promises to use when the PA loses. Jayewardene's education was at Sri Lanka Law College only where he didn't wine and dine with future British Prime Minster's, but was privy to much healthier traditions, such as winning the Hetor Jayewardene Gold Medal in those early halcyon Law College years.