THE UGLY AMERICAN
The leader of the opposition Ranil Wickremesinghe has called the secretary to the Ministry of Defense Gotabhaya Rajapakse an ugly American. Wickremesinghe has also said that few Americans are ruling the country, referring to the Rajapakse brothers and may be to Dulles Alahapperuma. It is said that these gentlemen are citizens of the United States of America and hence have been referred to as Americans. I am not sure whether the said gentlemen are American citizens or not by I presume that they are Sri Lankan citizens, even if they are American citizens as well.
The term ugly American is used in a political sense, and not in a derogatory way to the ordinary American citizens. The ugly American interferes with the politics, economics and governance of a given country, and often dictates terms to the relevant country. The term has nothing to do with the citizenship and what we have to decide is whether the American state as represented by the diplomats, statesmen, congressmen and others is interfering with the politics and governance Sri Lanka. The defense secretary of Sri Lanka is not an official of the USA in the above sense or any other sense and cannot be considered to be a person representing the interests of USA.
Similarly even if one assumes that the Rajapakse brothers and few others are actually running the country it is very unlikely that they do so as Americans by any stretch of imagination, even though they may be citizens of United States of America as well as Sri Lanka. They are functioning as Sri Lankans, and not as agents of USA or any other country.
It is a well known fact that the western countries are interfering with the politics and governance of the country especially with respect to the so called ethnic problem. It was none other than Gotabhaya Rajapakse himself who came out with this fact the other day, and it may be that he is the first official to come out with this all important fact. In any event he has to be congratulated for calling a spade a spade, as many Sri Lankans holding high office are not inclined to do so. According to the Defense secretary who should know these things more than most of the others, the west is trying to bully us.
We have been saying this for sometime and we also blame the west, specially the British for creating and nurturing the so called ethnic problem. There was no Tamil kingdom that the Dutch inherited from the Portuguese and there was no so called Tamil homeland during the time when the Dutch ruled the Maritime Provinces or even during the early nineteenth century. There had been no Tamil kingdom in this country any time in the History and even if the Pirate Arya Chakravarthin kingdom that was defeated by the Portuguese is considered as a kingdom where Tamil people lived together with the Sinhalas and Malayalam people who spoke Malayalam and not Tamil, there is no continuity between the polity of that kingdom and what the Dutch ruled in the areas presently called the Northern Province. The polity under the Dutch was different from the polity under the Arya Chakravarthin as well as the Portuguese and as such it cannot be said that there was a Tamil kingdom that existed from the thirteenth century that eventually came under the British.
The British in particular and the west in general have created a so called ethnic problem where the Sinhalas are said to discriminate against the "minorities" and where the Sinhalas are ruling over a Tamil kingdom. If there is an ethnic problem in Sri Lanka, it is due to the determined effort by the west not to give the due place to the Sinhalas and especially to the Sinhala Buddhists in the country. The west led by the British is trying to give their own solution to a problem they have created thus undermining the Sinhalas further.
Gotabhaya Rajapakse had replied to Howell the state minister from Britain when the latter tried to impose the views of the British. In that sense or any other political sense Rajapakse cannot be considered as an Ugly American or an American citizen trying to interfere in politics of Sri Lanka in the interests of United States America.
However, that does not mean that there are no Americans and Sri Lankans who are engaged in politics and/or interfering in politics in the interests of the United States of America. I would rather call them ugly Americans and not Gotabhaya Rajapakse, though I may not agree with him all that he does. Though there may be LTTE cadres in lodges in Colombo, and that they have to be arrested it is not in the interests of the Sri Lankan state to pack some three hundred lodgers off to Vavuniya, though the number may be insignificant. However while he has been the Defense secretary the Eastern Province has been cleared, and he and the armed forces have to be congratulated over it.
It is known that the west is interfering with the limited operations of the armed forces and would do everything possible even by bullying, to block the operations in the crucial Northern Province. The Defense secretary as I understand refers to this kind of interference from the west and thus he does not qualify to be an ugly American.
However, there are politicians, especially in the UNP from Rosy Senanayke to Ranil Wickremesinghe who would follow the west to undermine the Sinhala Buddhist base of the country. This country is Sinhala Buddhist in the sense that the USA and the UK are Anglo Saxon Christian. India which claims it to be a secular country in the constitution is a Hindu country polity wise and in practice. Malaysia is a Muslim country and so are Pakistan and Bangladesh. While we have no objection for those countries to be identified accordingly, what is preventing the west and those who act in the interests of the west in identifying Sri Lanka as a Sinhala Buddhist country?
In our mind the Ugly Americans are those who act in the political and other interests of the United States, and they may or may not be citizens of that country. Neither they may or may not be ugly or beautiful or even beauty queens. The word ugly has no reference to physical beauty nor does the word American have any reference to the citizenship of a person in a particular country. If the UNP leader is interested in identifying ugly Americans he does not have to go very far and intrude into the camps of the others.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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