Colombo: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in a brief interaction with the press on the sidelines of a ceremony to unveil the Hambantota Commonwealth Games 2018 bid the other day at Temple Trees in Colombo, scotched off rumours about his health. Asked why he had not kept the country informed of his movements, he said he had been wary of giving Tiger backers in the US advance notice of his visit! He also indicated that he was as healthy as a horse - glad tidings for his supporters but bad news for the Tigers and the Elephants.
The rumours swung into action following President Rajapaksa’s sudden trip to the US last month, floating the story that he had been rushed there for emergency medical treatment. The overseas Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) lost no time in claiming that he was seriously ill. They were gloating over the rumours of his ill-health. In one of the e-mails they circulated around the globe about the President, they claimed he was dying and Prabhakaran (killed Tamil leader) was alive! Some of the local web publications known for their scurrilous reports amplified and jazzed up those rumours and many people, true to form, fell for them hook, line and sinker.
President Rajapaksa is known, nay notorious, for his vanishing tricks and erratic movements. One morning at the height of war, he went missing from Temple Trees and everybody was kept guessing where he was. About half an hour later, a traffic policeman conducting random checks on passing vehicles stopped a car near Nugegoda. Down went the driver’s door shutter as a harsh voice demanded the driving licence. The driver quietly produced the required document, flashing a thousand watt smile. The poor cop leaped out of his skin; beaming in the driver’s seat was the President! He drove through Colombo’s suburbs before returning to Temple Trees, which he used to call a prison at that time. (Who doesn’t want to be imprisoned there?) He thus roamed around the city from time to time throwing caution to the wind, while the Tiger Chief was doing cross-country running like a rabbit in the Vanni with the army in hot pursuit!
Controversy that President Rajapaksa’s sudden visit to US sparked reminds Sri Lankans of the fallout of US president Dwight Eisenhower’s disappearance on the evening of Saturday, Feb. 20, 1954, while he was in Palm Springs, California. When the media got wind of his disappearance, which remains a mystery to date, they demanded an explanation, which did not come soon enough. The rumour mill cranked into action claiming that the president was either seriously ill or had died! The president’s Press Secretary came out with a queer explanation; the President had chipped a tooth while having a ‘chicken dinner’ and visited a dentist at night! The story took a different twist when someone called a radio station a few days later claiming that he had photos of ‘Ike’ inspecting the wreckage of a flying saucer in the exalted company of some extra terrestrial beings! However much the White House insisted that ‘it was the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth’, some people refused to buy that explanation.
The late Sri Lankan president J. R. Jayewardene once famously said, "If you cannot beat your opponents, you must outlive them." When you try to outlive someone you despise, you naturally wish he/she were dead. In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, it was claimed that Prabhakaran, who was considered invincible at that time, had perished in the killer waves. The LTTE (Tamil Tigers) remained mum fuelling speculation that he was really dead. There were also stories of ornate coffins being taken to the Vanni. But, much to the horror of his victims, the Tiger Chief ‘rose from the dead’. Thereafter it was claimed that he was a diabetic dependent on heavy doses of insulin. Some of his enemies went to the extent of asserting that he was terminally ill. However, when the military took the battle into the heartland of LTTE terrorism causing Prabhakaran to show a clean pair of heels, people stopped worrying about his health as they knew his days were numbered anyway. When he breathed his last in a mangrove swamp hugging a lagoon in May 2009, his well maintained body bore evidence that he had been the picture of health.
So much for wild rumours about the health of leaders, democratic or otherwise, considered ‘unbeatable’!
What the opponents of the ruling UPFA should do is to make a concerted effort to revitalise the opposition as an effective countervailing force against the government bulldozing its way through. That is not something they can achieve by claiming that the President has all kinds of diseases that they would like him to have and/or by hoping and praying that he will go the way of all flesh prematurely, in a desperate bid to outlive him because they cannot beat him politically.
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