Gajalakshmi Paramasivam – 20 February  2015

The Rapidly Changing Sinhalese Mind

When we are above 60 and are still driven by benefits rather than by the heritage we leave behind, we are no longer leaders. Those who value the heritage that supported them would naturally progress towards leaving a stronger heritage for their juniors. The higher heritage is human mind. We carry with our mind, the minds of those we believe in. True leaders would leave behind such a mind for their juniors.

We get to know reality through common living – as in family and community grouping as well as workplace.  Those who pay their dues through respect and gratitude - take a part of the system with the benefits from such common living – and carry the higher  minds of  others in the system. They develop into natural leaders.  Others who merely benefit from collective living would tend to be followers even when occupying leadership positions. Such occupiers tend to be ‘I’ oriented – especially when they are clever. Their limitation through this ‘I’ factor prevents them from becoming good leaders who ‘share’ their cleverness for the progress  of the whole.

 Where we do not have common structures and/or common living – we are ‘outsiders’.  We identify with the Truth of such others  through our own Truth. To my mind, in my case, most Sinhalese leaders fall within the last group – especially after I left Sri Lanka in 1982.   Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka is one of them.  I  am still trying to work out the level of leadership provided by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka to those who seek to be Sri Lankans – especially the likes of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Champika Ranawaka and Sajith Premadasa – all of whom Dr. Jayatilleka promoted during the 2015 Presidential election campaign.

This morning I received an email directing me to the following link http://www.youtube.com/embed/LuEuk0zZZXc .  This helped me conclude and place Dr. Jayatilleka as a follower for personal reasons – a poor combination of local and global positions. The above link  was about a rally in Nugegoda in support of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The opening speaker in the picture  was Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka. I must say I was most disappointed to see a person who represented Sri Lanka at the UN level engage in emotional ground level politics – as if he was the political leader of Nugegoda.. I concluded that Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka’s living in the UN was largely for personal benefits and not of  heritage value.

I invested in the position of Sri Lankan President through Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga and later through Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa. As per my observations both were strong players – and I was able to identify with their strengths through mine. I personally met with Mrs. Kumaratunga but did not meet with Mr. Rajapaksa. I still carry a large part of my investment through Mr. Rajapaksa in that position. The current occupant of that position – President Sirisena is also become a medium for such investment – even though I disapproved of his action in becoming the opposition of his boss – President Rajapaksa just before the Presidential Elections. Having learnt through my own experiences – that sometimes the Truth works for us through our own opposition – I reconciled to that aspect and started restructuring my own investment in that position to suit the incumbent’s strengths. To me, like our current Australian Prime Minister the Hon Tony Abbott, President Sirisena is a good President. This will hold good until I learn otherwise. The more time I get to invest in that position through a good occupant – the stronger facilities we would develop especially for Tamil and Muslim minorities – so that they would balance through their global status the loss of power due to being a minority in a subjective system.

I believe through my own experience here in Australia – that we can work the government through our belief. When we are not able to identify with the occupant through our belief – we need to become their opposition by raising our grievances to the top level. I believe that when we are deeply in need of guidance – we hear the Lord – often through people. My conflict in relation to Administration of University of New South Wales was thus escalated to the Prime Ministerial level  after a lady who did not have a classroom due to strong rain related damage said to me and Lorraine Brooks – an Administrator in the School of Anatomy – ‘If I do not get a room  I will take the matter  right up to the top’.  I thought to myself – that if a fellow Australian could use the top position to get some working space – then I had every entitlement to take my damage and pain to the Prime Ministerial level. I did not get the hearing I deserved from Mr. John Howard. I was dismissed by the Courts. But I continued to believe that the position had the responsibility to hear me – due to my higher contribution to maintaining the ‘Common System’ of Administration at global standards. My most recent experiences towards preventing the execution of Bali 9 leaders – have confirmed that my investments back then are now working for me – including through a direct response from our  good Prime Minister – the Hon Tony Abbott. I am hoping that President Sirisena would likewise become a facility for the return of my investment including through Mr. Rajapaksa. The Bali 9 leaders may still be executed but they would have an honorable farewell through fellow Australians to which I am also a contributor. That is how the global system works to satisfy all our genuine expectations. The gap is filled by the Lord in us.

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke has failed to produce this return for my investment in UN values. This confirms to me yet again that when we follow the subjective path – we are not able to rise above the level of the subject we follow. When we are independent – the outcomes we produce are of global value and hence the Objective path in Democracy – facilitating each user to interpret outcomes as per her/his own mind for her/his own purposes – but without damaging the value and opportunity of another user. Dr. Jayatilleka wrote in condemnation of the Hon Wigneswaran – the Chief Minister of Northern Province of Sri Lanka – in relation to the Genocide Resolution passed under the leadership of Mr. Wigneswaran. Becoming political in support of Mr. Rajapaksa is also effectively a demotion. If done for higher purpose – others must be allowed the same degree of self-demotion. A good Politician would have not criticized Mr. Wigneswaran’s move.

The UN is such a facility for all users of the Objective path of Democracy. But there are political users of the UN.  If Dr. Jayatilleka was working to save his Master’s name in UN then he had the obligation to not express criticism of that Master at all times. But Dr. Jayatilleka failed to stay in that subjective path as a follower.  As per my observations, after the US led UN Resolution Dr. Jayatilleka was critical of the Rajapaksa government and later during the period preceding the 2015 Presidential Elections, Dr. Jayatilleka demonstrated allegiance towards the current regime:

Having argued in the print and electronic media for years that Ranil Wickremesinghe should not be the Opposition’s presidential candidate, that a viable Opposition candidate must be one whose profile would cut into the incumbent’s monopoly of populist-patriotism, and as someone who has commended Maithripala Sirisena on many of my fortnightly TV shows, I am delighted at his candidacy. However, I am unconvinced about his electoral prospects and platform….. Even if he loses the Presidential election, he would hopefully have founded a dissident SLFP; a centrist alternative to the populist neo-conservatism of the Rajapaksa regime….. There is only one way to rectify and thereby save the Maithripala campaign and the political space he has opened up. Only one way to prevent this moment from ending up like the Arab Spring, with the Empire striking back due to the dumbness of the democratic Opposition. That is  to bring in Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Champika Ranawaka and Sajith Premadasa — sharp young personalities and compelling speakers, none of whom are yesterday’s men — to the centre of the policy process, the campaign planning and the head table, flanking Maithripala.  Mr. Sirisena is a brave and decent man; possibly our last hope. He deserves better than to be overshadowed or drowned out by his current companions and patrons who represent and recall the failures of a past from which Mahinda Rajapaksa, to his lasting credit, rescued the country. https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/the-sirisena-surge-and-why-mahinda-is-still-way-ahead/

Now, we see Dr. Jayatilleka campaigning for the return of Mr. Rajapaksa. I conclude that Dr. Jayatilleka is yet to mature to the higher stage of contributing to ‘systems’ and ‘heritage’. This according to my analysis is  due to attachment to personal benefits. Dr. Jayatilleka is neither a good practitioner of the Subjective system that Sri Lankans are used to nor practitioner of the Objective system required at global level. As they say in Sinhalese Dr. Jayatilleka seems to change with the wind – Vaasi Pathatta Hoiyah! Such a mind will ‘forget’  the skills learnt in a higher position. What a waste of our common resources!