On June 4, last year, at a confidential meeting at the Overall Operations Command Headquarters in Colombo, Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapakse personally gave orders to evict Tamils from Colombo lodges. As mothers were separated from their daughters and bridegrooms separated from their brides, without warning over 400 Tamils were packed into waiting buses and dumped in a camp in Vavuniya.

In an interview last week to the Sunday Lankadeepa Gotabaya Rajapakse was defiant. He said, 'there are lakhs of Tamils in Colombo. We sent back 300 of them who were in Colombo without a valid reason.'

Who among us hasn't been somewhere without a valid reason? One may find oneself in Malabe of a morning with no real reason to be there. One of the benefits of being a citizen of a country is that you have a right to be anywhere in that country without having to proffer an explanation to anybody much less to an ugly American from Los Angeles.

One doubts, that should Gotabaya travel to his home in Los Angeles for Valentine's Day this February, he would be prevented by the federal police from gamboling on the streets in Las Vegas or Arkansas or Atlanta, on the basis he had no valid reason to be there. However given the tone of last Sunday's interview it is unlikely Gotabaya would appreciate the analogy.

Advocates

Let's take the Defence Secretary's interview step by painful step. Or let's not. Let's instead go straight to his desire to change the supreme law of this land to set himself up cosily. In the interview Gotabaya advocates an amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka that would forever institutionalise nepotism. He advocates that an amendment be made to the Constitution that would make it compulsory that a future president of Sri Lanka appoint his brother the secretary of defence.

 Perhaps with four brothers in top positions in government controlling 80 percent of the country's economy, and over 128 relatives appointed to various key positions in the Presidential Secretariat and other vital departments, and paid for by public funds, Gotabaya finds no distaste in saying this.

There would have probably been no tinge of shame on his cheek of modesty as he put forward this proposition. Mind you the reforms he envisaged did not include sisters or provisos in case a future President was not blessed with a brother or sibling of any sort. Perchance, he is of the view Percival Mahindra of Medamulane will be President forever.

We wonder whether this is a practice he advocates for the banana republic Sri Lanka is today or whether he would like it adopted a universal principle? Is he saying that in the US the defence secretary should be the brother of President Bush and that the constitution should have been amended for that purpose?

Self emulation

In last Sunday's interview he calls himself a superior and super secretary arguing that only he as a sibling had access to the President at any given hour. Only he, he said was able to call the President at 12 midnight or discuss with him the true position with regard to casualties or other defence matters. Surely if access and proximity are the criteria, should not Shiranthi Rajapakse, the First Lady qualify for the job?

After all she is the proud daughter of a top naval officer who served the country with distinction and more importantly sleeps right next to the President. Ditto for Laura Bush.

Alas, nonetheless, he would find upon introspection that he is not as close to the President as he thinks. He was to tell the Lankadeepa interviewer that the economic condition of the country was due to the war even though his brother had never made that an excuse and that time frames should never be given for the war.

Double speak

Did this super secretary not know that Rajapakse supporting the war had, just a week before assured the Indian press that peace would be achieved in a year? Had this superior secretary not been told by his brother, the President, that on several occasions hehad warned the public they would have to endure economic hardship and tighten their belts due to the war effort and had in fact blamed all the ills of the country on military issues?

That Gotabaya as per his interview is not only delighted that the CFA is no more but also wants the LTTE banned in Sri Lanka with immediate effect necessarily means that he has ruled out a political solution through talks. And with no monitoring mechanisms in place to entertain complaints of human rights violations, Gotabaya, with what can only be called overbearing audacity states, 'Look at what's happening today. If someone is arrested or is killed by the armed forces they say he is an ICRC worker, a Red Cross worker, an INGO worker, NGO worker or if not all this that he is a journalist. The person who distributes papers has also become a journalist now.'

The Defence Secretary by this, effectively accuses the ICRC, the Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies of fraudulently claiming that a person killed or injured is a member of their organisation. Not only that, he accuses these organisations of complicity with the Tigers.

'Reporter'

As for even paperboys being called journalists by interested parties as he alleges, Gotabaya, who claims he can call his brother the President at all odd hours, should know that even his own brother was at one time famously known as the 'cabinet reporter.' Yes, anyone can be a reporter.

Furthermore it was following a plot hatched between a dubious political office clerk purporting to be a website editor, President Mahinda Rajapakse and EPDP Leader Douglas Devananda in Switzerland last June, that Karuna was packed off and Pillayan put in his place.

Gotabaya knows well that he has now been named by Karuna in a London Court as the man who gave him the forged diplomatic passport and facilitated the terrorist's escape. Despite a denial by Gotabaya of any involvement in Karuna's escape to the UK, the evidence, both direct and circumstantial this newspaper has revealed elsewhere in today's issue proves otherwise.

With measured nonchalance he says some innocents may be arrested but it can't be helped. 'Even I do not like being stopped and searched,' he says. Luckily there is little chance of that happening to him given he has served himself the privilege of stopping vehicular traffic and clearing roads at any given hour, for him to motor down any highway or by-way.

'If a hundred are caught 10-15 may be innocent,' Gotabaya admits in his interview. He gives the classic example of how his own brother, President Rajapakse was accused of murder and jailed. Extracting sympathy left and right he says, 'When my mother died, the President was in jail - for a false charge of killing a man.'

It is true that President Rajapakse was discharged in that case for lack of evidence. But assuming the veracity of the facts as told by Gotabaya, do two wrongs make a right?

It is obvious Gotabaya is not comfortable with the media that does not grovel before him. It is this that prompts him to say that if he had the power he would not allow the media to write anything about the war. Whether this blanket censorship would include the government's grossly exaggerated figures of dead and injured LTTE cadres and other propaganda was not immediately clear.

'The public do not need to know about weaponry. What is there, what was procured but only what is generally happening with the war,' he said. Why Gotabaya, who in September 2006 formed a private company for the procurement of all arms and ammunition, under the auspices of the state of which he became subscriber director, does not want the media spotlight on procurements was not made immediately clear. What was in fact clear was that he wanted the media watch dog to clear off and leave him and his brothers to deal with the war and the Defence Ministry the best way they thought fit.

Retired and went away

Gotabaya lived safely in America for 15 years of his adult life having left the army in the early 1990s under a retirement scheme on offer. As a US citizen, while he advocates media censorship for the war he now seeks to fight, the question is whether he will advocate the same for the US media on the war in Iraq? Everyday official numbers of American soldiers whose lives are lost in Iraq are officially published. They are respected and named and mourned.

Supress the media?

Today Bush leaves the White House a veritable laughing stock due to his war on terror in Iraq based on false and discredited evidence regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. While the American media uncomfortably review themselves over their apparent lack of perception and insight in swallowing the biggest WMD lie in the history of the civilised world, does this  super secretary also advocate media censorship on the war on Iraq? Come on Gota, go tell it to the Marines. Meanwhile, Gotabaya's call to suppress the media and bring back criminal defamation came just 72 hours after Karuna, now serving a jail term in the UK for travelling on forged documents, named him as the person who facilitated his travel.

His arrogance is all the more absurd as Gotabaya attempts to foist upon the Tamil people two leaders for their community. 'Only two Tamil leaders remain' he says. That is TULF head, V. Anandasangaree and EPDP Leader, Douglas Devananda. While Pillayan showing his affinity to the government has decided to run with the government at the upcoming eastern polls, The Sunday Leader learns Pillayan has already made threatening noises against PLOTE Leader Siddarthan, Devananda and Anandasangaree, issuing a warning they would not be allowed to effectively campaign in the east.

Dreamworld

Gotabaya is living in a dream world if he thinks either Pillayan, Pirapaharan or any other Tamil leader or politician will allow him to choose their leader for them. It is officious and idiotic that he would as a Defence Secretary make such a statement to the Sinhala media. But force feeding is a fashion for those from Medamulane it seems. His brother, Mahinda force-fed a solution based on the 13th Amendment to the long suffering but spineless APRC.

Gotabaya also comments that the likes of Devananda need round the clock protection while stating that people like Mano Ganesan don't even need security as they are persons who talk to the LTTE. It is when they deal with the LTTE and things go wrong that they should get scared, he says. In the same vein he continues about Maheswaran. Maheswaran came a cropper because he did business with the LTTE. He did a business deal with them and when the money wasn't given he was killed by the LTTE itself, Gotabaya alleges.

Surely then by the same logic, the President too does not need security because he too had dealings with the LTTE and was even accused of passing money under bogus housing projects to fulfill a pre election deal. Mirror, mirror on the wall.

He also laments in the interview that Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has referred to him as 'Ugly Gota' in the presence of diplomats. 'He calls me 'ugly' then he asks me to give security, there is no meaning to this. This is where we want the help of the media,' he says.

Whether Gotabaya is angling for a prime spot in the Hi Magazine one does not know but perhaps he is ignorant of the well known term 'Ugly American' which is in fact the phrase Wickremesinghe reportedly used. The term has nothing to do with appearances but attitudes and actions. The Ugly American is the title of a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer which became an influential bestseller. The novel described how the United States was losing the struggle with Communism - what was later to be called the battle for hearts and minds in Southeast Asia, because of arrogance and failure to understand the local culture.

In the context of this novel, the title alludes to both positive and negative attributes of its characters. The authors state that one of the "good" characters is "ugly" looking to create a contrast with the "bad" characters who were "handsome." For example there is an "ugly" engineer who helps villagers with an irrigation system, and a "handsome" ambassador who does not care about what happens to the people on the village level.

The term is now widely used to refer to perceptions of arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless behaviour of Americans at home or abroad.

Cocky and ignorant

 Gotabaya in the interview comes out as a brash racist, ultra rightist, attempting to tell a people who has suffered immeasurably while he was living it up in Los Angeles what to do with their lives. His cocky attitude can only be borne out of ignorance, having gone straight from places like Medamulane to the US. Gotabaya like many other migrants living in Melbourne, Sydney, London, Los Angeles and Toronto are caught up in a time warp.

Having left their motherland and gone to Western countries where they often are compelled to engage in professions that they were not accustomed to back home, they grow nostalgic. Treated as third class citizens, they see a sharp contrast between themselves as first generation migrants and their sophisticated children often born in the new country of residence.

Reality

It does not matter that thousands of village boys die in a bid to fight a war they do not believe in while their own children sip coffee at wayside cafs on the rue de la pais and obtain Harvard degrees. These migrants hold on to their prejudices and hates from 20-30 years ago while the true Sri Lankan has long ago shed him and herself of all that garbage. Of these ugly migrants, Gotabaya is one.

Finally, once while resting on a rock during a short trek in Nepal, an American (Ugly) walker stopped and showed the great Conqueror of Everest, Edmond Hillary how to hold an ice-axe. Hillary listened and thanked him, but said nothing else. The American went away with no idea to whom he had spoken.

There is a lesson in this tale for the likes of Gotabaya who lived 15 years in the US while the sons and daughters of the soil bore the brunt of terrorism.

Pledge of allegiance to be a US citizen

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."
 
Source: http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20080203/spotlight.htm