Seeing the current protest movement as a planned putsch for power is advantageous, some who want to push that line for one reason or the other have decided. They have therefore come up with a suitable narrative-line that would promote that theory and make that line of thinking, the prevailing view in the community.
There are many variations of it. They say that the rebellion was an insurrection of sorts that was planned by an ex-army doctor Pethum Kerner in 2021. They say that he cooked up the operative hashtag in December of 2021, which is proof according to them that the current troubles are nothing but a planned putsch for power.
In the past there were various interpretations given to events we experienced as a country. For example, a theory was floated that the JVP insurrection of 1971 was mounted by the North Koreans.
The LTTE was a part of a grand plan for a pan-Tamilian state encompassing the Tamil Nadu and the Sri Lankan plantation region, it was once said.
JR Jayewardene gave his then Army Commander ‘Bull’ Weeratunga three months to wipe out the LTTE, and made a show of a special decree which he had prepared purporting to make that order. In such ways, there have been efforts both big and small, significant and insignificant, to detract from the real nature of previous challenges to the orthodoxy.
UNRESOLVED
This time around there are belated efforts to say that the current crises and the protests are entirely the work of the virulent anti-government types, hell bent on usurping power through fair means or foul.
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| People waiting in a queue to buy fuel in Colombo. Picture by Saliya Rupasinghe |
The armchair analysts who have cooked up various bogeys to explain away the current crisis hope that saying the current troubles were all the work of a ‘master planner’ such as Kerner or say the Peratugamis led by Kumar Gunaratnam, would shame some of the Colombo middle-classes and others who have in some ways lent their support to the protests.
Misreading the crisis in this way would be dangerous. It would detract from the real issues that have contributed to the current spiraling events which have to be addressed by focusing on their root causes. Such a misreading would in turn exacerbate the crisis as there would be a paranoid reaction against various elements, while the real issues would remain ignored and unresolved.
Kerner may very well have conceptualized the operative hashtag of the protestors at Galle Face. But the protests at that location in the first place are hardly the be all and end all of these efforts to engineer ‘systemic change.’
Time and again, it has been apparent that where the Galle Face protests have left off the protest baton has been taken over by various amorphous groups. Who are they? Are they all affiliated to some shadowy group led by Kerner or by the Peratugamis?
Such a conclusion seems to be totally misguided. It is not known how the State intelligence has advised the government, but it seems clear that most of the protestors come out on the streets because they have no gas or diesel etc, period.
UNREST
People getting about their ordinary lives faced immense difficulties. They were challenged on so many different fronts, such as hour long quests for diesel and sometimes, shortages that meant they could not operate their buses or their tractors etc.,
This meant denial of livelihoods. The gas shortages and then the long power cuts meant that many urban households were faced with the issue of having virtually no means to cook family meals on time.
In addition there was a shortage of medicines, and even everyday items such as Panadol.
The diesel and gas shortages and the power-cuts brought people onto the streets. There were spontaneous protests launched, aimed at ensuring that the then Mahinda Rajapaksa led government delivers the goods.
These mostly spontaneous campaigns had everything to do with people expressing their anger at the loss of livelihoods, and the travails they faced.
The situation was exacerbated by mounting inflation and rising prices. Commodity prices seemed to go up in price by the minute.
Bus fares were up, and there was no escaping the all enveloping economic crises that seemed to hit the smallest the hardest, even though all elements of society were equally affected. That the people would come out on the streets would be expected under these circumstances.
The struggles of the people of the country were not felt by those in the diaspora, and also for the most part by politicians and other Sri Lankans working abroad for instance.
They were all too eager for various reasons to deflect blame for the crisis on ‘crazed terror groups’ and various masterminds hell bent on usurping power. There is no doubt that there are various political elements that are trying to cash in on the current wave of protests and the social unrest.
But take for instance the fact that some 2,000 unions have essentially come under one banner. Is this also a result of a planned putsch for power, carefully scripted in some master plan devised in 2021 or thereabouts?
There is no evidence of that whatsoever, and it would be ludicrous to think that all actors in this protest drama are following the lead of some sinister band of putschists.
Such a conclusion would be cynically purblind.
Most of all, it would detract from responding rationally to the situation by addressing the people’s struggles.
The initial protests were carried out in Kohuwela by some environmental activists. Of course there may have been some people who were inspired by the hashtag campaign, never mind that it has been initiated by Pathum Kerner operating from all the way in London, England.
But very soon, the protests became spontaneous expressions of displeasure with the difficulties in obtaining essentials. No doubt they have taken a very virulent turn, sometimes. This is the nature of the mob.
When the mob is whipped into a frenzy, there is no telling what it could get up to. This is clear from the history of race riots from the fifties and the eighties, and the more recent sporadic acts of violence targeting Muslims for instance.
HAMPERED
What are those folk who want to read a sinister plot into the recent people-power protests trying to achieve? Are they hoping for a crackdown that would presumably benefit the government of the day?
In the first place, such a hope is completely misguided. Those who want to father the riots on insidious elements hoping that they will go away if people learn about their ‘true nature’ are totally insensitive to the struggles the people are facing in their homes.
Children have had their education disrupted. The long power-cuts have sometimes interfered with Internet transmissions, and it has meant that online education is also hampered.
It would be surprising if there were no protests under these circumstances. For the most part these acts of dissent have also been peaceful though the recent pyromaniacal arson campaigns were extremely violent.
But discounting the mob mentality, it would be rather futile to try to father the entire protest campaign on an organised putsch for power by a sinister and shadowy group. As far as this writer knows, there is no official intelligence that indicates such a situation either.
All finger-pointing is on the basis of people — amateurs — putting two and two together. These are mainly those abroad who are monumentally disconnected from the real travails of the people back home who are waging an epic battle to get by everyday with the minimum facilities at their disposal.
Those who try to detract from this reality are not doing any Sri Lankans any favours. Obviously the true nature of issues at hand have to be acknowledged before they are addressed. Promoting sundry bogeys and canards peddled in the hope they would detract from the real issues, would be suicidally misguided.
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