Farce as diplomacy?

We must laugh, if we are not to cry. This is a credo that I have been preaching for some time, usually to many a concerned citizen, worried about the state of the land.

The Foreign Ministry seems to have decided to follow this advice and has chosen to provide a new source of entertainment to the diplomatic community in Colombo and the world at large. This has taken the form of a letter from the Golden Key Depositors Association to the UN Commissioner for Human Rights.

The depositor's association, moribund for some years, was given a sudden lease of life during the impeachment of the Chief Justice. A little cash and some empty promises were sufficient to mobilise them to support the Government position. Golden Key was tangentially involved in the impeachment process so presenting the depositors as victims of the CJ and using them to muster support for the Government position made some sense from a propaganda perspective, regardless of any questions of justice, which were in any case irrelevant.

The Foreign Ministry, using a principle of throwing everything at the enemy, including the kitchen sink, has brought the GK depositors into the fray.

Poor Navi Pillay, used to dealing with complex and sensitive questions will now have to try to work out what Golden Key was, how it failed and the relevance of the depositors request:

"We request the UNHRC to provide assistance to the 9000+ victims of human and fundamental rights violations in the Golden Key debacle and to take immediate action not against the Government of Sri Lanka, but against both Mrs Cecily Kotalawala and Dr Ms Shirani Bandaranayake for committing despicable crimes against humanity unprecedented in Sri Lanka’s history. 

 Their parting missive is:

“Sri Lanka is now headed by our national hero, His Excellency Mr. MahindaRajapaksa the President who united the country after eradicating the world’s most brutal Liberation Tamil Tiger Eelam Terrorist Organization (LTTE). The Tamil separatist war, lasting nearly 30 years, was funded by stooges of the so-called Western World. They wanted Sri Lanka divided and ruled by their lackeys,”

Surely, Navi Pillay will not know what hit her and the Foreign Ministry certainly believes in laying it on thick. Some members of the depositors association may well end up with plum diplomatic positions. Perhaps they should also change the national anthem to this ?