President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Independence Day speech contained three main themes/ideas.
It reiterated national sovereignty, which, in today’s Sri Lanka, is a cover for Rajapaksa absolutism. The Siblings want a free-hand, and, as the impeachment-travesty demonstrated, they abhor even judicial restrictions.
The speech also indicated that devolution is not on. The Rajapaksas do not want even a minute-dilution of their power; they are as allergic to separation of powers as they are to devolution. Their current concern is how best to do to the 13th Amendment what was done to the 17th Amendment, the Chief Justice and judicial independence.
The President’s speech also contained a tacit acceptance of the anti-pluralist version of Lanka’s past and a coded endorsement of the Sinhala supremacist vision of Lanka’s future peddled by the JHU and the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS).