Yes, that’s right, a blog entry on politics from me. Oh the horror! Peek out of your windows and you just might see a pig taking flight.
Like all Sri Lankans, I’ve been following the news today of Mervin Silva’s big day out at SLRC. From around 10, people at work sat enraptured by the breaking news updates on various TV channels of Mervin’s initial assault on the SLRC’s News Director before the tables were spectacularly turned on the silly bastard. Mervin was held hostage/trapped in a small room while a mass of SLRC employees stood outside threatening violence against the man. Made for some great TV after a long time, I must say.
As usual, the blogs on Kottu were in frenzy with plenty of updates on the goings-on. I came across a pretty interesting blog entry by Sittingnut who strangely (or maybe not) twisted the incident as another example of the peacenik gone wrong. Call Mervyn what you will - I prefer ’stupid fucking idiot’ - but ‘peacenik’? Calling Mervin a peacenik is akin to saying…well something utterly ridiculous. Like saying Jehan Mubarak is a batsman/”all-rounder” ready for international cricket.
Below is the comment that I left on Sittingnut’s blog. Agree or disagree?
That Mervin is a pest that Sri Lanka needs to get rid of is stating the obvious. To say that those peace protestors who requested Mervin deliver a speech during their rally a couple of years back were misguided (to put it lightly), once again, goes without saying.
But, pray tell, what does it say about Mahinda for not sacking Mervin after so many offences? What does it say about the political direction that our country is heading in when the President lets one of his ministers run riot like this? And what does it say about Mahinda for appointing a “peacenik” like Mervin for a ministerial position then? For Mahinda is, after all, a president who is supposedly safe-guarding the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, is it not? What is a “peacenik” - “criminals” hell-bent on “handing over innocents to terrorists in the name of peace” - doing in the cabinet of this country’s great savior? To me, those are the questions that you should be asking and attempting to answer.
To take today’s incident and mould it to fit your Bushesque if-you-are-not-with-us-then-you-are-against-us political philosophy is silly. Mervin is a disease that transcends political beliefs. The sooner we get rid of him and his ilk the better for us all. Peacenik or otherwise.
Pictures:
Source: The Daily Mirror
“Kudu” Nuwan, Mervin’s personal security guard, being taken into custody. Source: The Daily Mirror
My personal favourite. Red suits him fine, don’t you think? Source: BBC News
13 Comments
December 28, 2007 at 1:02 am
i wrote the following comment as a reply to you comment in my blog . since you have reproduced your comment here i will post my comment here as well ( with some minor edits )
all in all you missed the basic subject of my post. i wasn’t making a point about mervin silva (or a “stupid …idiot” or a “peacenik” singular ) as such, i was making a point about peaceniks.( plural ).
mervin silva the individual is a menace and should be get rid of, i agree, but i am sure everyone will make and agree with that point.
i was making different point in my post.
anyway here is the reply comment. ppl can read the original post and other comments by followng teena’s link
theena:
thanks for the comment but what exactly are you objecting to here? i think you have missed the point altogether
anyway first some facts .
the peacenik rally referred to in my post was held last year not “a couple of years back” as you say. (why that phrase? i always thought you for one did not run from facts?) anyway he was in mahinda buffalo’s cabinet then as well. (btw he is not the only peacenik there.)
yes i totally agree with you buffalo is wrong to have him( and lot of others ) in cabinet. have i said otherwise anywhere?
did i ever say there are no peaceniks in cabinet ? or did ever say i support the government in every thing?
if you read my blog, you will see i support the governments efforts to defeat the terrorists ( based on an evaluation of government’s actual actions on that front )
that does not mean i approve government’s economic policy, their having peaceniks in cabinet, or their having jvp/ jhu/ anybody else in cabinet, etc. etc. ? no. i have written against all of that .i judge government based on facts and actions
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unlike peaceniks and clueless fools like indi.padashow, i did not rub shoulders with mervin silva, applauded his words, or engaged in all sorts of others activities with him, at so aclled “peace” rallies or elsewhere.
i opposed him then i oppose him now.
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since you seems to have lost the point (as your totally false analogy about about my beng “Bushesque etc .. ” clearly illustrate) i will explain what i am doing in my post
what i am doing there is pointing out ( and reminding ppl like you in blogosphere ) ,
that peaceniks did support a person with a well known record of thuggery solely by their own free choice ( after all unlike even the buffalo who perforce has to deal with 225 ppl in parliament, peaceniks were never forced to choose from limited options. they can make a purely moral choice ; they could alway hold so called peace rallies with the usual 20 ppl if they don’t want the political thugs as for a crowd).
and that should be pointed out ( and reminded) because,
this kind of choice is typical of peaceniks and is not limited to mervin silva. as i pointed out in the post all the politicians peaceniks support invariably have the worst reputations for corruption or thuggery from mano ganeshan to others mentioned there (rajitha senaratne, ravi karunanayake, mangala samarasinghe, rauf hakeem, etc etc. )
peaceniks make the same mistake again and again bc anyone who is willing to hand over millions of fellow sri lankans in mass to terrorist oppression in return for ” peace” is not capable of judging morally.
when these choices of peaceniks and peaceniks themselves get into inevitable and very predictable scandals, like mervin silva did today, i will keep on pointing out and reminding that peaceniks are bound to do that. esp when paeceniks try their best to deny that he they have supported these thugs.
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if you think that any of your points are still valid please be kind enough to reply.
December 28, 2007 at 1:41 am
to make the point using your own totally inappropriate example,
say certain “muppets” say that jehan mubarak (others with similar talents and attributes) is a batsman/”all-rounder” ready for international cricket and back, push, and applaud him i was pointing out that since we know the “muppets” actual totally irrelevant criteria for backing we should expect the same sort of disappointing results from other selections of “muppets “. in fact as long as they select based on such criteria expect the same results. in that case getting rid of jehan mubarak (with which everyone would agree ) will not make any difference.
teena took it the other way up
(and if we carry this, i repeat, inappropriate example further, blaming and questioning mahela for jehan’s performance is only partly justifiable, he had only 225/2 sorry 15 ppl to choose from, while muppets has the whole sl pool )
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my sincere apologies to jehan, mahela and sl selectors, none of whom deserved mention in such a post.
December 28, 2007 at 1:48 am
to make the point using your own totally inappropriate example,
certain “muppets” say that jehan mubarak is a batsman/”all-rounder” ready for international cricket and back, push, and applaud him. i was pointing out that since we know the “muppets” actual totally irrelevant criteria for backing him, we should expect the same sort of disappointing results from other selections of “muppets “. in fact as long as they select based on such criteria expect the same results. in that case getting rid of jehan mubarak (with which everyone would agree ) will not make any difference.
teena took it the other way up
(and if we carry this, i repeat, inappropriate example further, blaming and questioning mahela for jehan’s performance is only partly justifiable( but still justifiable), he had only 225/2, sorry 15, ppl to choose from, while muppets has the whole sl pool )
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my sincere apologies to jehan, mahela and sl selectors, none of whom deserved mention in such a post.
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sorry for duplication of this, please delete the erroneous copy of this comment.
December 28, 2007 at 7:10 am
Police should arrest and take action against all those in that picture who hit a minister. This is crazy. Some bloggers here think they can write anything without knowing who Mervin is and the service he has done to our country. I tell them all to puck-off..
December 28, 2007 at 8:00 am
This guy - YOUIDIOT said, on December 28th, 2007 at 7:10 am - “Police should arrest and take action against all those in that picture who hit a minister. This is crazy. Some bloggers here think they can write anything without knowing who Mervin is and the service he has done to our country. I tell them all to puck-off..”
OK,
Is that you Mervin? Nice Nickname (”YOUIDIOT”) . Up so early, are we? heh heh …. got rid of the red paint? pity … I thought the paint will be a regular feature from now on! btw Nice entertainment value though! Great ratings! Pop corns anyone?!!!
December 28, 2007 at 10:15 am
elama kiri..siraa paara..shud’ve killed ‘em both..
December 28, 2007 at 11:27 am
Theena, don’t bother with sittingnut, it’s a waste of time. Whilst I personally agree with him that it’s wrong in principle to appease terrorists, I disagree with his attacks on Indi etc and other silly attempts to cast “peaceniks” as being criminals/evil/insert-insult-here.
He has turned what could be a valuable discussion between differing points-of-view into a childish playground farce. Until he accepts that there are people who have different points-of-view than his, and can argue with them maturely and politely, his comments are a waste of time, and usually not a very constructive addition to any debate.
Avoid.
December 28, 2007 at 2:23 pm
It’s actually pink on his shirt and what’s on his head is clearly blood. Let’s be reasonable here, Mervyn is not a peacenik, but neither is he a Sinhala nationalist or a Mahindian. The peacenik ngots, desperate to show their donors that the dollars have been well spent, hired Mervyn Silva and his thugs to get together something resembling a decent crowd to attend their peace rally. They have been even more desperately trying to distance themselves from him afterwards, for example by accusing him of breaking up another peace rally that no one was going to attend anyway. The nationalists would have nothing to do with him, and despite his intermittent outbursts in support of the war and against media firms owned by people of “Indian origin”, they would not forgive him for manhandling the JHU monks not just once but twice. He has always been a source of acute embarrassment to Mahinda Rajapakse. If it wasn’t for Chandrika Kumaratunge, the man would not be in the parliament after being flatly rejected by the people in his constituency. But it wasn’t like he was ever loyal to the Bandaranaikes either.
The only reason Mahinda couldn’t sack him was because of their tiny majority in the parliament, and having the government toppled is not a reasonable cost for getting rid of one little thug. I think the best thing to do now is to take away his ministry, and then prosecute him for something serious enough to have him barred from holding office, allow him to seek refuge at the Sari pota, and then replace his national list seat with Dr Nalin de Silva.
December 28, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Sittingnut,
I’ve already acknowledged that the peace protesters were plain wrong in asking Mervin to take part in the rally (thank you for reminding me that it was a year back; I tend to flush bullshit from my memory so it’s hard to recollect accurately). I couldn’t fathom why they did so then and am still at a loss to explain now.
Once again, that’s besides the point. As Justmal (above) put it, the issue isn’t his politics - Mervin’s neither here nor there; not peacenik nor a “Mahindian”. This is about him and what he represents. As I said, he transcends political beliefs, and symbolizes everything that is wrong with our political system. If a man of his ilk can get in and run amok like he has for the past few years, what’s going to stop others like him - the ‘Kudu’ Nuwans and the ‘Kudu’ Lals - from doing so in the near future?
You say that you have questioned Mahinda’s economic policy, the jumbo cabinet, among other things. Could you not have used yesterday’s incident to question the political direction of the country as well instead of solely focusing on Mervin’s association with peaceniks? Balance is all I ask for.
-Theena
December 29, 2007 at 5:46 am
Mervin is a thug anyone who considers him a minister before a thug is a thug themselves. We all know Mervin and his son Malaka’s exploits they have harassed, beaten up and destroyed public and prvate property. Have you forgotten clancy’s? Was Malaka not in prison recently for assault? Dont glorify or twist this incident to anything other than what it was, Mervins Silva and his underworld thug went to Rupavahini and assaulted the Director. For one shining moment the masses stood up! Power to the people!
December 29, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Oh wow…JustMal is back after being MIA for some time. Welcome back…
Oh so you want Nalin De Silva in Parliament is it? What are you, a closet LTTE supporter? Our good Dr (Nalin not Mervin) will not be able to say anything without using ‘Christian Conspiracy’, ‘Western Conspiracy’ and ‘Neo’ every other word. I just love the way he finds many uses for the word ‘neo’. With a blatant racist like him in Parliament the LTTE might as well disband their propaganda unit. Why don’t we get his beloved friend Malinda Seneviratne into the Parliament as well?
Genius….
January 4, 2008 at 12:55 pm
The best bit about this was when some woman chanted”Manamalaya danaganin Janathawage Bale”
Mervins status should be stripped and he should be shot in the head. What an idiot he is turning out to be- Sirara TV went to town with the whole story. I was LMAO
Honestly this guy should be strung from a tree and people should be given the chance to line up and have their pick of rotten tomatoes to rotten eggs to throw at him
January 12, 2008 at 11:10 am
First of all:it’s “MERVYN” not Mervin.
What I believe is MR will never sack Mervyn due to everything he has done for the party.It’s hard to believe but let’s admit he has contributed alot.
I am not a fan of him,but if you walk down the streets of Kelaniya/Kiribathgoda area you’ll be suprised to the massive support he’s getting.But I agree with Justmal’s statment he’s not a Nationalist.
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