Marx, Ants and Hyde Park Rally - EDITORIAL

Karl Marx was right, Socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species– Edward Osborne Wilson
The argument put forwarded by Edward O. Wilson, the father was Socio-biology, was that altruism which is the very foundation of socialism, does not come naturally to human beings. Commenting on this subject in his book, “The Ants”, Wilson maintained that while altruism works for species like ants and bees, humans who are naturally selfish are unable to completely adjust to Socialism.

The above quote of Wilson was recited last Saturday to a packed audience at the Hyde Park in Colombo by Sugeeshwara Bandara who made his political debut that day. 
Attributing the fall of the former USSR regime of Russia to the same theory, Bandara said forcing people to accept Socialist ways makes people frustrated and kills the spirit of innovation. 

The leader of the newly formed New People’s Front (NPF), Bandara along with his party joined the new political alliance led by Anura Yapa. He has been appointed as its Colombo District Organizer. Bandara surely has a score to settle with the so called radical Socialists of Sri Lanka – the JVP.  Kicking off his speech with his own life story, the leader of NPF shared the gruesome facts of his childhood with the audience.

On April 24th, 1989 four year old Sugeeshwara Bandara had been with his father in the garden of their home in the Southern hamlet of Weeraketiya. Sugeeshwara’s father who had been a Lawyer was a Magistrate. He had also been a prominent figure in the Sri Lanka Communist Party, in the south.

After giving a body shower to little Sugeeshwara, senior Bandara had walked towards the grave of his father in their garden. Four year old Sugeeshwara who followed his father stood close. A JVP gunman had walked into the garden from nowhere, and all of a sudden had shot the Magistrate with a T-56 gun right in front of the four year old son. The young mother of Sugeeshwara became a widow with five young children to fend for, with Sugeeshwara being 
the youngest.

“The JVP wanted to be the only leftist party in Sri Lanka. It was out to destroy the Communist Party and the Lanka Samasamaja Party. Months before murdering my father, a politburo member of the Communist Party, L. W. Panditha was hacked to death at Dematagoda,” Sugeeshwara Bandara informed the gathering.
“There are nearly 60,000 children who became fatherless ‘thanks to’ JVP killers during the insurgency in the late 1980s. Our fathers were brutally killed for no fault of theirs” 
he maintained.

Bandara feels that most of the seniors of the JVP who gave the orders to kill people are still at large. He argues that the JVP politburo still comprises seniors who were responsible for the party’s past crimes. Insisting that it’s these who run the JVP today, he emphasized that Anura Kumara Dissanayake is just the mask that the JVP seniors wear to give a more human look to 
the party.

“Here is a party which killed more Buddhist monks than the LTTE. In 1989 alone it killed twenty-four senior monks including Venerable Kotikawatte Saddhatissa Thera. I have the lists of monks with me. This is a party which massacred the security guards of the Sri Dalada Maligawa in an attempt to cause mayhem inside the Maligawa, and bombed Sri Lanka’s Parliament killing and injuring Parliamentarians and even Ministers” he reminded the audience.
Everyone talks about “waves” these days.  It looks there are “counter waves” too.