Back to the future, forward to the past

Back to the future, forward to the past

- Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

This space is named the ‘Lanka Guardian column’. The title Lanka Guardian is from the two-decades-defunct magazine of which my father was Founder-Editor. I was Assistant Editor, Associate Editor and (for two years) Editor of that once-celebrated fortnightly journal.

I realised that the conjuncture in which I was commencing this new column in February 2020 upon (collective) recall from Moscow where I served as Ambassador, is rather reminiscent of that in which Mervyn de silva chose to launch the Lanka Guardian on 1 May 1978, and especially evocative of what Kumari Jayawardena judged “the best…the first ten years of the LG” (as it was dubbed by readers).

Last week, an Army staff sergeant found guilty by the Colombo High Court and the Supreme Court (in a unanimous verdict by a five-judge bench headed by the CJ), of the evil atrocity of murdering unarmed civilians in captivity including three boys aged 15, 13, and most cruel of all, five, by slitting their throats after torture (some bodies were dismembered), was pardoned by the President in the midst of the COViD-19 lockdown. The move was hailed by those including a religious figure (on video) who had long campaigned for his release as a “war hero”.

In a colourful set of slides dated 30 March 2020, Gevindu Cumaratunga, longstanding Alt-Right ideologue, Chairman of the Yuthukama national organisation, Editor, ‘Yuthukama’, and SLPP National List nominee whose allegedly vanguard, catalytic ideological contribution to the MR Movement’s speedy revival in 2015 was publicly felicitated by the SLPP chairperson recently, poses the questions: