Columns

Could you believe it! That veteran combatant from our Grand Old Party, who was once finance minister and then foreign minister and then whatnot, is unable to stay out of the people’s assembly. He is in the fray again, and this time it is said with his own party brethren. His memory was not functioning too some seven years or so ago. Hope it is okay now.

One would have thought that the main political parties, which for long hogged the seats of power in our motherland and splintered enough in recent times to look like a peeled cinnamon stick, would cling close to their politically degenerating last legs and carry on silently.

But it seems keeping mouths shut is not a trait that has been ingrained into politicians, certainly not ours. Caterwauling at your opponents at the height of election campaigns is understandable, though it has become dirtier over the years.

Yet to do so after being soundly defeated and to have the cheek to propose tuition classes for what they see as novices at the helm of power seemed rather ludicrous after the lessons they intended
to regurgitate had been unceremoniously dismissed by the people.

But when the news spread that a senior member of the Grand Old Party (GOP) was to be hustled into parliament, I really wondered whether the outrageously adamant remnants of the GOP would continue to harass this nation and its people until they go the way of all flesh.

When the news stated that frontliner Ravi Karunanayake, who has not been unknown to the local and foreign media from time past, has been nominated to sit in parliament as a National List member of the gas cylinder party, which is several conglomerates glued together, I had no doubt that the last of the elephant brigade that now carried the cylinder was still determined to release the last of its gas.

After all, Ravi Karunanayake is not unknown for his sudden silence on critical occasions and also his verbiage, though before presidential commissions and some other groups, he does happen to lose his memory and forget important pieces of data and information.

It is not just we but nonentities too who now and then (more now than then) sit on these bodies and must surely wonder how justice could be served if those who appear in court say they cannot remember a thing or ask their wife or daughter how they came to acquire a luxury penthouse apartment they were living in, as Mr. Karunanayake once (or was it more times than that) told an officially appointed commission.

As those who followed proceedings during the commission that inquired into the Treasury Bond ‘scam,’ Ravi Karunanayake, who appeared as a witness, seemed to lose not his senses but his memory, which raised questions at the commission and laughter and amusement elsewhere when he said he did not know precisely how he came to live in this luxury abode.

No need to go into who originally owned this penthouse apartment, how it came into the hands of the Karunanayake family, who paid the rent at the initial stages, and all that messy history.

At the time of this drama that was making news, particularly when the story of a Bond ‘scam’ initially broke and the international media picked it up, I do remember writing a column here headlined “From penthouse to doghouse” about the fall of Ravi Karunanayake from grace to disgrace when he resigned as finance minister.

Maybe quoting a few paras from those days some seven years ago would not be a bad idea—at least it will revive memories in readers, who, like Ravi, might have had memory loss and cannot really recall the past.

I then said:

“These are dangerous times. The higher you go, the harder you fall. These days, when politics has become a money-spinning vocation and amassing wealth at the expense of the public is a time-tested occupation with even the corrupt prone to preach against corruption, one needs to be careful. Whether it be the good, the bad or the ugly they somehow defy gravity and keep going up and up, at least their bank balances and other assets do.”

“One cannot cheat the laws of nature forever. At times people do get entangled in a web of deceit. Is that what happened to Ravi Karunanayake, former finance minister and, until late last week, foreign minister, who has fallen from grace? On Thursday I was still trying to decide on a subject for today’s column when news of resignation hit cyberspace.

“Earlier in the life of this government, Tilak Marapana honourably resigned his portfolio after a speech in parliament in which he inappropriately made references to one of his former clients under investigation at the time. Now Ravi Karunanayake has, like Marapana, gone from the front benches to the rear to sit among what some call the parliamentary hoi polloi, the backbenchers.

“Yet within months the former Thomian Tilak Marapana had risen like Lazarus and was back in the cabinet, albeit in some ambiguous role-playing, as it were, for the minor counties. That, however, was till Friday when he was suddenly elevated to acting foreign minister.

“Since the former foreign minister has quoted scripture in his resignation speech, we might do the same, in our fashion. Will we see the Second Coming of the old Royalist Karunanayake, or has he been thrown to the wolves by some of his former schoolmates (as Karunanayake has tangentially hinted) who have learnt not to depart but to protect themselves (and the party?) from further political fallout now that the Treasury bond scandal is beginning to unravel and possibly edging closer to ‘home’ or so it seems.”

Now the squabble in the New Democratic Front (NDF) that carries the cylinder symbol is that Karunanayake has been ‘smuggled’ into parliament as a National List member without the collective authority of the NDF but on the say-so of Ravi himself.

Apparently, the UNP leadership did not know of the nomination and presentation to the Election Commission either. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has supposedly appointed a committee to inquire. But then Wickremesinghe has a penchant to appoint committees at the drop of a diphthong.

Others more conversant with the political jugglery and manipulation from Tricky Dickey’s days say that this is all a ruse worked out by the UNP to get an experienced legislator into the chamber, backseat though it may be, so that he can give those lectures that the UNP leaders proposed to give the NPP.

And instead of lecturing only Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya as originally offered, UNP’s Karunanayake can tutor all 159 of the NPP inside the chamber itself and now open his mouth freely to make up for the silence he once maintained.

But before the UNP thinks it has scored an ace, they should not forget—as Ravi seemingly does—that the ‘Affaire Bond Scam’ is not closed. The shockwave may yet come.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran
Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)