Cry My Beloved Country!

So His Majesty…oops! His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa is ensconced in the presidential throne – oops again — seat for another spell. Some say it’s for six years, others say it is for 6+2 = 8 years.

A refrain that’s going on in my heavy head is from a song of a couple of years ago which lamented disappearances: Where have all the flowers gone? Gone to …. Where have all the girls gone? etc etc. The song that buzzes in my saddened head has the word ‘votes’ substituting all things in the song: Where have all the votes gone?  So I keep singing this line under my breath. I dare not give the answer.

Those block votes of the UNP and JVP are what I mean. Except for the obvious seats where General Fonseka was assured of winning, like the northern and eastern districts, and Colombo where he got a massive vote, most other districts had him getting just half of what His Majesty, ooops for the third time, His Excellency got. Curiouser and curiouser! Ranil fared better than Sarath Fonseka at the last presidential election though Ranil went it alone with only UNP votes assured him.

Another song came creeping into my mind. It was made famous by the Material Girl and about another material girl, Eva Peron, but the song is beautiful and apt at this moment in time. So I keep singing under my breath Cry, cry for me Sri Lanka substituting a double ‘cry’ while the song said Don’t cry for me Argentina. Oh gawd, it’s a medley of songs that’s going through my poor head. Here’s the country ballad – Hang down your head Tom Dooley. I add a name here and also include the word ‘shame’, so it goes Hang down you head in shame, ……….  And then my nose is assailed with this fish smell, which stopped my singing but started mournful tears.

So though many expected and more hoped for our local tall Skinny Guy to follow the American one, he failed to do so or rather a peretheya intervened. Otherwise how explain his getting only half the valid votes in his home town, leave alone other inexplicable massive defeats.  Obama was faced with terrible odds, almost insurmountable at the beginning of his campaign but in the end, the cleanly clear-cut American system made it possible for him to win the presidency.

In our case, though we had expected a fair and just contest, we nail-bit and palpitated and then went into depression. We of the older generation, who have breeding of both decent homes and good schools, are used to playing the game straight and taking defeat or victory in stride. We never ever played the game to win by hook or by crook or being dishonest. It’s obvious times have changed, and with it people and their integrity.
Listened intently to the press conferences on Wednesday — late evening and early night.

We were invited by the President, voted in by a grateful populace, to help him develop the country. That is, I am sure, after the victory is celebrated over and over again. Also will all those who partook of food in the Abode and voted in gratitude for the meal have to be invited again for a thank-you  sangrahaya? Our country runneth over with milk and honey.

I was shocked at how ungrammatically and un-diplomatically our Minister of Education, Love Victory (hope my translation passes muster) answered the question asked of him by a foreign woman correspondent – at least her voice sounded accented and foreign. She asked a simple question: “Was a Rajapaksa brother in the results announcing room?”  See anything hostile, insulting, obnoxious, overbearing with the white man’s superiority in this question?  Nothing! It needed a simple yes or no answer.

But our Minister was visibly shaken and very annoyed by the question and took umbrage. He replied sharply: “He is asleep. We are all tired after breaking rest.” Got his tenses mixed up. She asked ‘was he’ to which she is told what the person questioned about is doing at the moment. Worse was to follow. Looking visibly angry, he went on a tirade against being asked questions by a foreigner. “See all these journalist who are here. They don’t ask such questions, like a foreigner who comes to our country for a short time and …” He was advised for all to see by Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe to mind his language.

So let’s cheer up. His Majesty – there I go again, His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa invited all of us to join him in developing the country, our beloved Sri Lanka. It really needs developing in integrity, economically and with determination to alleviate poverty of the many and lighten the hardships borne by most.