Mirror Cocktail Table
by admin on June 21st, 2010
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Pakiasothy and Susantha renew clamour for celebrity status
Pakiasothy and Susantha renew clamour for celebrity status
By S. Dias
When the local detachment of the LTTE was defeated – though armed by President Ranasinghe Premadasa, aided by Norway, and given the kiss-of-life by PM Ranil Wickremasinghe – that event reduced the spoiler effect of the Wijewardenas, a king-making clan
However, we know that the Wijewardena clan’s ‘Daily Mirror’ had begun earlier to lose its power of blocking Sri Lanka’s elected leader Mahinda Rajapaksa. We saw this happen when the Wijewardena clan’s Ranil Wickremasinghe suffered a cross-over of MPs. That cost his party key voices in Parliament. Then came Ranil’s party losses in Provincial Council elections.
In searching for more talkers to feature today, the ‘Daily Mirror’ makes talking heads of Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu and Susantha Goonatilleke.
In September-October 2009, Pakiasothy moved for exposure through his posturing for justice and fair play. The ‘Daily Mirror’ helps him scrub his hide which Pakiasothy needs so as to remain a credit-worthy asset for foreign donors. However, his well-known record as a mercenary makes the debunking of his high-table talk an easy job. In the process, readers will wonder whether Wijewardena editors have been going hungry and need KFC or other fast food on his NGO’s publicity allowance.
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As opposed to that, much less light has been shed on Susantha Goonatilleke.
Susantha gained access to a public platform and then to Colombo’s diplomatic cocktail circuit thanks to serving as the editor of the People’s Bank ‘Economic Review’. To get to that journal he had applied Leftist credentials, commonly available through undergraduate campus circuit, to take in veteran socialist Hector Abaywardena, a Director then of the state-owned bank.
At the ‘Economic Review,’ Susantha’s editorial method relied on reading and re-writing other’s articles, often bordering on plagiarism. By then the Western articles he read had moved from New Left (Wallenstein, Andre Gunnar Frank) to early deconstructionism (Derrida) and towards current deconstructionism (nihilism of Friedman.)
Susantha drank of this. He discovered that his babbling brook could divert his previous friends on the Left. In consequence, Americans and German diplomats in the cocktail circuit homed in on him as a tactical weapon for deconstructing popular solidarity in Sri Lanka. He was funded by these countries for seminars in Sri Lanka and overseas. That provides us with a hint of where he could find better money than through serving with local agencies such as the People’s Bank.
For their part Norwegian funders, in keeping with their international image as peace makers (gained through publicity such as the Nobel awards,) had chosen slick dudes in Colombo such as Jehan Perera, Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu and Kumar Rupasinghe - not the embittered and warlike Susantha Gunatileka.
After Norway used its peace image and became the central financier and influence peddler through its role as peace facilitator in Sri Lanka, Susantha decided to clamour for protection money. He chose to apply his research skills and enter the circle of dissenters who had gathered that Norway was merely a wolf in sheep’s clothing. To that end Susantha decided to hitch a ride on the back of patriotic organisations formed by expats such as SPUR in Australia.
However, we notice that his sound and fury firewalled his Power Point and other presentations on Norway. Susantha did not reveal that Norway served as no more than a NATO weapon selected by the USA. The USA itself had lacked an image that under the Indira Gandi legacy, India would like surfing near its southern coast. What’s more, the USA backed Pakistan.
Therefore Norway was chosen to come in from distant Scandinavia and serve as US bellows in stoking the furnace for India. This was the old threat of the breakaway of the Dravidian south. Similarly, US ally Japan -- out in the Far East -- was tasked with a back-up role when Sri Lanka served as the furnace to plant fear in India Congress that had relied on the USSR until it suddenly declined in the 1990s.
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Over the years, the scenario changed. Because the USA and Germany tackle economic depression at home, they have no need now for Susantha as deconstructor. He therefore turns for influence to the country he helped deconstruct. He needs more attention from policy makers in Sri Lanka.
The ‘Daily Mirror’, of Oct 8, 2009, allows Susantha to pen an other-worldly story in which he parallels Sri Lanka’s needs (in the recession today) with ‘denazification’:
“These denazification processes strongly influenced the contents of the subsequent German Constitution (Grundgesetz) and Germany’s new polity. The total re-education through denazification and removal of the ideological virus has been successful. Germany is today a very peaceful country averse to war. Two generations of Germans have grown up after denazification and most of them are extremely embarrassed by what their Nazi forefathers did.”
As distinct from this detour by Susantha, observers know that an alien ideology is supported by Tiger billions. These billions exploit kids in the Tamil diaspora for rallies. Tiger billions are also applied to climb to Western kingpins such as David Milliband and Hillary Clinton. Tiger billions are used to place propaganda productions in Western media too. These are the external challenges that impinge on Sri Lanka but Susantha has firewalLED Tiger overseas forces in his denazification story.
So what does he aim for?
Susantha desires a re-alignment of the PA government. It must help him rise above those who managed to gather together in solidarity to respond with campaigning overseas against the Tigers. Susantha wants to rise above those who worked together to battle Tiger armies -- despite deconstructionism by him and spoiling like that of the media men of the Wijewardena clan and their fellow travellers in Maharajah media. He stands for forgetting patriots in SPUR … and patriotic sections of the government too. His denazification patter represents his bid to occupy the position of brains-trust to Sri Lanka. That is the allegory he uses to smear other men.
Some years ago a competitor of his claimed in public debate that Susantha Gunatileka suffered from megalomania. Big-headedness comes naturally to any cynical, hardened and ossified deconstructionist of society.
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