Rajapakse who arrived Monday at the Katunayake airport at 11.20 am on flight SQ466 was greeted with angry language scratched across his private luggage with a thick marker pen.

The President’s luggage would normally be in a separate container and would be unloaded at the VVIP lounge and would not go through the usual channels or the carousel. The baggage handling at the Katunayake airport is usually carried out by SriLankan Airlines staff.

The coarse words could only have been prompted by a public pushed to the limit, economically and socially driven to the end of their tether and a public now willing to stand up and say enough was enough.

"Thopi Lankawe Janathawage Salli Kapiaw" (You are squandering the money of the Sri Lankan people) had been scrawled in large letters on the bags of President Rajapakse. Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama also arrived on the same flight but his bags were spared the indignity of this desperate cry from the soul.

The language though common and tastelessly colloquial was also language often used by the President himself and language Rajapakse who claimed to be a man of the common people would readily understand.

Orders inquiry

No sooner than the incident was brought to the notice of the President he ordered an inquiry and the CID and PSD officials were immediately brought in to question the airport staff including SriLankan Airlines personnel.

Ironically when President Rajapakse landed he had also attended an alms offering for several Buddhist monks at the airport premises before proceeding to the VVIP lounge.

While Rajapakse was experiencing a severe reception Monday, earlier on Sunday many of his own cabinet ministers were experiencing a reception of a different, more enjoyable sort, the wedding reception of former President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s daughter Yasodhara and son-in-law Roger Walker.

Nuptials

Recent political developments had set the stage to make last Sunday’s nuptials a political event. If ever there was a wedding reception in the public perception that was less to do with the bride and more to do with the mother of the bride, then this wedding was that wedding.

Meanwhile the politically charged party proved to be another disaster for President Mahinda Rajapakse. While nobody perhaps is likely to remember what was on the menu, everybody will remember that a large number of Chandrika loyalists from the government ranks were present.

Late last month no sooner than President Mahinda Rajapakse suspected that a wedding invite was not coming his way, he sent out a letter to Kumaratunga cutting down her staff and withdrawing various other facilities including asking her to vacate her residence at Independence Square. And to give it an air of even handedness, the facilities used by the ailing former President D.B. Wijetunge were also withdrawn.

Birthday gift

Mahinda Rajapakse however has demonstrated a particular knack for ruining a party. Just as he took away Kumaratunga’s security and staff just days before her daughter’ big day, recall that last year in June 2006 he took away Kumaratunga’s leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and gifted it to himself on her very birthday.

However this time Kumaratunga has vowed not to take it as it comes and has already consulted a prominent President’s Counsel on the matter in order to take legal steps against Rajapakse’s move.

Meanwhile the day before the reception, Western Province Governor Alavi Moulana who had tried to broker reconciliation before as well, was to tell Asian Tribune in an interview that he would meet Mangala Samaraweera at the wedding reception and try to persuade him to come back to the Rajapakse fold.

While Moulana was coming to the wedding with a specific mission in mind SLFP (M) Co-convener and former Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera would have none of it.

The Moulana move was to follow a message sent to Samaraweera by Gotabaya Rajapakse also entreating him to reconsider returning to the Rajapakse fold. However Samaraweera was to dismiss these calls and tell confidants it was far too late to go back now.

Desperate measures

And if the wedding was to have political implications then it was Rajapakse’s own friends who were creating the hubris around it. On the very day of the wedding, Transport Minister Dulles Alahapperuma at a public meeting at Diyatalawe was to say that the reason President Rajapakse was not invited by Kumaratunga and that Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was, was because there was not only a hidden agenda but there was also a class issue.

That the wedding reception was a private affair was lost on Alahapperuma as much as the fact he was expecting Kumaratunga to invite a man who had stripped her of the party leadership on her very birthday.

Much like the ancient Mariner who detained the wedding guest with a glittering eye and a skinny hand, so did Alahapperuma attempt to detain the cabinet ministers. By making this look like it was a class struggle, Alahapperuma was trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Subtle boycott call

Firstly he was trying to create empathy for Rajapakse as a man of the lowly masses and segregate Wickremesinghe further into an elitist mould. Secondly the intention was to send out a subtle message to other SLFP stalwarts and government officials that since their Leader President Mahinda Rajapakse was not invited, they too should boycott the do.

However what Alahapperuma did not say was that Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake was invited and was prominently present even gracing the head table together with Ranil Wickremesinghe, and other members of the family, Anura and Sunethra including the bridal party.

Among the guests were a fair number of government ministers and significantly given Alahapperuma’s earlier warning, all those invited had in fact turned up with their hair in a braid in total defiance of President Rajapakse. Not only did they turn up, they were determined to have a rollicking good time with Ministers Milroy Fernando, Pandu Bandaranayake and Tissa Karaliyadde taking to the dance floor in fine fettle.

Ministers galore

Among those present were Ministers A.H.M. Fowzie, Dinesh Gunawardena, D.M.Jayaratne, D.E.W.Gunasekera, Tissa Karaliyadde, Milroy Fernando, Pandu Bandaranayake, Arumugam Thondaman. Ferial Ashraff, Athauda Seneviratne, Dilan Perera, Wijedasa Rajapakse and of course Sripathi Sooriyaarachchi, Mangala Samaraweera and Tiran Alles.

From the UNP only former party chairman Malik Samarawickrama and present Chairman Rukman Senanayake and UNP MP from Attanagalla Sarathchandra Rajakaruna were invited. Senanayake however had not turned up due to illness.

Kumaratunga had also invited a large number of party loyalists from Attanagalla and even the domestic aides were at the reception giving lie to Alahapperuma’s claims of a class struggle to turn the reception in to a political battle. Also present were Chief Ministers Berty Premalal Dissanayake, Wijithamuni Zoysa, Reginald Cooray and Sarath Ekanayake and Governors Alavi Moulana, Reggie Ranatunge and Kinglsey Wickremaratne.

Significantly, Chief of Defence Staff Donald Perera was also a guest at the reception, including SLFP National Organiser Anuruddha Ratwatte and a large number of prominent ambassadors and high commissioners including India’s Alok Prasad and the US Ambassador, Robert Blake. The bottom line was that despite the warning note issued by Alahapperuma all government members invited attended the reception.

Talks, no talks

Meanwhile wedding guests aside, the flip flop of the Rajapakse administration on the issue of talks with the LTTE has exacerbated the political crisis faced by his regime. It was in the presence of President Rajapakse the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, that his brother and Defence Secretary Gotabaya told a large public gathering in Trincomalee that there will be no talks as the military pushes forward.

Gotabaya was speaking at a celebration to felicitate naval troops who had successfully sunk three ships claimed to be that of the LTTE.

However the Rajapakses soon realised there would be a backlash to this statement specially given the fact the President was due to attend the UN General Assembly sessions in New York and took damage control measures.

Therefore in typical Rajapakse style the Defence Secretary was compelled to go back on his earlier statement and say the government was ready for talks and prepared to negotiate.

Appropriate speech

President Rajapakse therefore made an appropriately fashioned speech in New York and told both US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas R. Burns and Norway’s International Development Minister Erik Solheim that the government was ready for talks and its military offensives were only aimed at demonstrating to the LTTE it could not win militarily.

But no sooner than the UN sessions were over Gotabaya Rajapakse was to address a counter insurgency seminar conducted at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies on Sunday and reiterate that the LTTE has to be defeated militarily before the government could look at a political settlement.

In the meantime as the human rights situation worsens in the Jaffna peninsula the government maintains that there is no push on the human rights front by world bodies.

Piling reports

The government crowed over the fact it was not on the human rights agenda of the Human Rights Council’s sixth sessions in September but fails to realise that adverse report upon report is piling up against the country and not without some specific purpose and ultimate goal.

Even as the human rights violations escalate and reports accumulate it is significant that the UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Manfred Nowak arrived in Sri Lanka Sunday for an eight day visit just 10 days before UN Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour arrives in Sri Lanka.

While burying one’s head in the sand and refusing to recognise the human rights crisis may work in domestic terms and indeed is aimed at domestic consumption, internationally it is slowly but surely taking its toll with the US Senate going so far as to in its Appropriations Act for 2008 call for a complete halt to military assistance to Sri Lanka based on the country’s human rights record.

Meanwhile as the government continues to haggle over petty semantics, the UNP in a politically astute move said it was not willing to be bogged down by the silliness of the words unitary or federal as long as there was extensive devolution of power.

UNP statement

Issuing a statement to put to rest charges the party had dropped its commitment to federalism, the UNP said last Friday it stands for a negotiated settlement based on a credible power sharing formula which addresses the grievances of the Tamils, the fears of the Muslims and concerns of some Sinhalese that devolution will lead to separatism.

Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe meanwhile is schedule to go overseas tomorrow including to the United States. Before that Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera will hold a joint press conference today where specific issues will be responded to in addition to detailing the road ahead.

And with two top human rights officials in the country this October it remains to be seen how the Rajapakse regime will handle the growing pressure both politically and economically as his stock continues to tumble in the very rural areas where Rajapakse maintains he has his biggest support.

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