Head-to-Head, Going off the Head

By?N Sathiya Moorthy

Sad but true. Opinion on former President Ranil Wickremesinghe?s Al Jazeera?s Head-to-Head interview with Mehdi Hasan in Sri Lanka is divided on predictable poll-time lines from the previous years.

The Tamils in the London audience clapped when the anchor was firing his questions at Ranil, left, right and centre, up and down, without giving him breathing time even to say ?Jeez?. As Ranil pointed out repeatedly ? thank god, not all of them were edited out, like the rest of the two-hour open-house interview, to half the time ? the interviewer did not give the interviewee time to even collect his thoughts, let alone have his say in full.

Going by social media posts and regular media analyses, even among the mainstay Sinhala community, educated opinion is divided on known lines. The traditionalists are hurt that Hasan has insulted Ranil, a former President, who was not even addressed with an honorific, say, ?Mr?, leave alone ?Mr President?, which is the appropriate way to address a former President. In so doing, Hasan and Al Jazeera had insulted ?Sri Lankan? pride, too.

They are further sub-divided between those who back Ranil for fielding the questions clearly, and after a time, as casually as the questions were callous. The other section feels that Ranil should not have accepted the invitation for the interview, when he knew the way Mehdi Hasan bullies and bulldozes his ?intellectual targets?, with the sole aim of demolishing their self-confidence first and public image, or whatever was there, for all time to come.

Having the cake?

There is the third, ?liberal? types among the Sinahala majority, mostly from an urban middle-class background. Ask them individually and pose them individual questions, they would readily concede that Ranil alone was the chosen man for the hour, when the nation faced multiple crises on the social, political, economic fronts, and not in that order, in the summer of 2022.

Ask them, why still they were opposed to him from day-two if not day-one, they, like Mehdi Hasan now, would tell you how Ranil depended on the ?evil? Rajapaksas for his survival. They were/are dismayed that the Ranil Government, hence, he did not bring forth criminal cases of every kind, possibly barring rape against the family. At least, no one has accused any of the Rajapaksas on ?rape charge?, not thus far, at the very least.

That is the irony of the nation?s urban middle-class. First and foremost, they are the self-styled ?know-alls? of Sri Lankan society. They do not want to be identified as representing the majority Sinhala society, too. But scratch the surface even when the LTTE war was on, they would then tell you more about Prabhakaran & Co?s terrorist atrocities.

Their animosity against the LTTE at the time used to be much more than the ?war-crimes? charges against the armed forces being levelled against in the UNHRC the West-led ?Core Group?. They feared that they or their near and dear ones might be caught in the next of the LTTE?s unpredictable terror-attacks on the capital, Colombo.

Both the West and hence the UNHRC were/ are selective about timing or reviving their old charges against the armed forces. The Colombo elite would also do likewise, taking their cue, not even from Geneva, where the UNHRC is located, but from Washington, DC, long before a particular matter comes up before the UN affiliate.

What however the home-front critics of Ranil forget, or want to forget is that without the Rajapaksas? parliamentary support, he could not have stayed on in power, to address the economic crisis. To be fair to the ?non-political? critics of Ranil then and now, they too did not see any other leader who could tide over the crisis, if at all, anywhere in the horizon.

The closest they could consider was Harsha de Silva, but even there, they were not sure if he could succeed without the political leadership, guidance and speed-breaker of an experienced leader as Ranil. They were convinced, then and possibly now, too, that the JVP leaders of the ?Aragalaya? protests that got President Gota ousted through a ?bloodless coup?, if it was one, were not capable of doing anything more.

Unique, ultimate leader

It is anybody?s guess if Al Jazeera?s Mehdi Hasan had done a personality profile of his target from Sri Lanka. For, those who have been following Ranil?s politics and leadership for the past decades would readily agree that his words, deeds and body-language resemble that of someone who thinks that he was a unique, ultimate leader for this nation at least ? and that god had not been kind or perspective enough to have him born in a bigger, better and more powerful nation.

Even in casual talk with strangers, when quizzed about his political opponents nearer home, Ranil used to be in the habit of running them down, as having no knowledge of international politics and economy, or contacts with world leaders. ?On occasions, he had also seemingly flipped his mobile phone and told the man sitting across, how he could call any world leader, and he or she would pick it up at the first ring. In contrast, he would tell you how his adversaries in the country may not even have their numbers in the Contact list of world leaders.

This over-estimation of self/selfish pride may have done more harm to Ranil, the otherwise sharp political leader, only that he does not seem to have learnt his lessons, even at this distance in time. His mind is full of ideas, it would seem, and he is always a ?thinking leader?, that his eyes are bereft of a smile at any given point in time.

Ranil does not look into the eyes of the man sitting across, nor does he make a large audience sitting in front of him in public rallies that he was addressing them and from his heart. If there is a vague idea of a smile on his face, it is possibly a twitch at the edge of his lips, which looks like a cynical commentary on what the other man was saying.

With Mehdi Hasan, Ranil put this quality of his to good use. Every time the interviewer went overboard, Ranil?s face, more than his words, said it all. After ignoring his taunts and insults for a time in between, he even told the other that he was ?going off the head?, only that Mehdi Hasan was even more full of himself, to listen, understand and assimilate the full force of what was being hurled at him ? this time with certain justification, though.

?Peace? on camera

For all this, there is a lesson for Sri Lankan leaders who would be tempted to have them interviewed on an international TV channel, by someone as well-known as Mehdi Hasan. Of course, after seeing Ranil at work, they themselves would be having second thoughts, where they have not already buried the very idea.

To be fair, there is no other Sri Lankan leader who could have withstood this volley of questions that were aimed solely at embarrassing the interviewee, and forcing him to shout out, ?Peace?, on camera. After all, none of them would still be ready to say that they have lost the game, nor charge someone in Mehdi Hasan?s place of being in the pay-role of a domestic political adversary or that of the nations and forces that worked for a ?regime-change? even when they were friends with someone as ?liberal? and identifiable as Ranil.

There is a lesson in it for all Sri Lankan leaders, and their Third World counterparts from Ranil?s interview. Mehdi Hasan is not just one of a type. He at least seems to be a born-actor, but he still gives the impression that he has rehearsed his lines, rather the entire script that was possibly written with a particular quarry, too, in mind.

To be fair to them, the likes of Mehdi Hasan have excellent research teams that spent hours doing the background work on which alone the questions are based. Hence, the factuality and actuality of the question cannot be contested, but the contextualisation often suffers from at least two impediments, both not at all accidental.

One, deliberately, such interviewers as Mehdi Hasan are aggressive by training, whether or not they are so by upbringing and attitude. In South Asia itself, you have such creatures wanting to creep through the skins of their guests at Talk-shows, and make the other person silly and stupid. In doing so, they would have also succeeded in making at least a section of their audience, at least for a time, believe that the other man was silly and stupid. ?Silly and stupid, they are, for accepting the invitation for being interviewed by Mr X in the first place.

Two, and even more important, the interviewer knows full well the composition of his audience and their disposition. Rather, the invited audience is chosen with the interviewee in mind. Or, is it vice versa, too, at times. So, when the camera pans away from the dais to the audience section, the interviewer knows full well what kind of reaction he can expect when editing this part, full of derision for his quarry and applause for him.

The irony still is that the interviewer knows his questions, but not the interviewee, who would still need time to collect his thoughts, quickly think out his response in careful words lest he should be misunderstood on camera. Because it is a prepared questionnaire, the interviewer has the back-up research material to throw at the interviewee, where he chooses, not otherwise.

Worse still, it was not a ?Live? interview, according to news reports. Instead, the open-house interview reportedly went on for two hours, and Mehdi Hasan, as the author and copyright owner, got it edited to half the time. Of course, it is a clean production in the department of cuts-and-insertions, but then, it was again unfair to the interviewee. One can only assume if Ranil at all got the time he was begging for to make his points, give his responses, and if any, if all of them, have found their way into the final product, full and proper.

Ferrari licence-holder

Remember the segment in which Ranil repeatedly asserted that the report of the commission of inquiry that probed the ?Second JVP insurgency? was never tabled (in Parliament), and you had one of Mehdi Hasan?s back-up team-member, this one a BBC veteran who had covered Sri Lanka for a time, could simply pull out what looks like a copy of the report that should have been decades-old by any reckoning.

On issues of ?war-crimes? and ?accountability issues?, which have been

It was deliberate that Mehdi Hasan did not give any time to Ranil to respond, leave alone respond in full. His purpose seemed to be to leave serious allegations and accusations hanging in the air without obtaining Ranil?s responses so that the shoe shall remain eternally on the other foot. And only the wearer knows where the shoe has bitten. ?If nothing else, at least this aspect of the interview should have become obvious even to the worse critics of Ranil nearer home.

None of it means that Ranil could be absolved of all the accusations levelled at him. On committing contempt of the Supreme Court by not allocating enough funds for the delayed conduct of the local government elections, he was also committing a ?fraud on the Constitution?. But Mehdi Hasan too was so full of himself that he acted silly, one more time, by not focussing on this aspect, and went on to ask how then Ranil as President could find funds to attend the funeral, first of Queen Elizabeth in London, and of slain former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. ?Cheap,? did you say?

Call it a coincidence that Tamil parliamentarians nearer home are busy debating the delayed Budget in the House when the UNHRC is meeting this time. Hence they had a reason not to be present at Geneva during the ongoing UNHRC session, as some of them used to do through the past years (barring of course the Covid years), Mehdi Hasan has asked all the questions that should be asked in the context of war-crimes and accountability issues.

Or, have the Diaspora groups tired of local Tamil leaders, who cannot be remain united and thus let the centre-left JVP-NPP of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to capture Jaffna electoral district, the ?linguistic and cultural capital? of the island?s Tamil population. Already, they are known to have given up on support-groups in the south Indian State of Tamil Nadu, for the same or similar reasons.

In such a background, for adversaries of ?Establishment Sri Lanka?, where Ranil remains a key figure, if not player, wants the AKD dispensation to table the report of the commission on the ?JVP insurgency? and bring the former to book, as Mehdi Hasan seems to be wanting. Already, the FSP, the breakaway JVP group, has made the demand ? for reasons that are obvious.

Yet, when the former President was careful not to embarrass the present dispensation, whatever be his pronouncements nearer him, for Leader of the House and senior minister Bimal Rathnayake to have made that ?Ferrari comparison? was in bad taste, to say the least. Of course, he was giving back to Ranil for taking a jibe at the ?inexperienced? JVP government, by saying that ?someone with a Ferrari licence does not spend time with L-Board drivers?.? The reference was to high-speed sports cars manufactured only with track-races in mind.

Of course, Minister Bimal drew the parallel by declaring that the ?Ferrari has crashed into Al Jazeera? ? and left it at that. But then, this Ferrari licence-holder has already crashed into the L-Board driver months ago, and is still licking his wounds when the other side got away without any hurt or injury!

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)