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The State Versus The People

The State, knocked down in the early rounds of Aragalaya, is back,

sparring and dodging and delivering upper cuts again as if nothing

 

has happened, as if the struggle is a distant memory. So here come

the secret services in plain clothes knocking on doors of the tuk tuk

 

driver who had a moment of delirious pleasure sitting in the former

president’s armchair. And here is the Criminal Investigation Department

 

taking away the man who counted millions of rupees in a presidential

suitcase before delivering it to the police for safekeeping. Now, that man

 

is marked, charged, taught a lesson. And so it goes. Then further up

the protest chain, the secretary general of the teachers union, he too,

 

captured in the dragnet for having called for a protest on a day when

protests were not allowed. And so throughout the island people are going

 

to bed afraid and angry that they might get visited for their bold

entrances into the presidential quarters, the Family secretariat,

 

the Rajapaksa Temple Trees, and any other monument to the pre-

Aragalaya, business as usual, I take my ten percent. The inventor

 

of the phrase, by the way, is still too on the island creating a brief

lift in the hope quotient that the striking back of the Empire is not

 

complete, that Aragalaya Force will resist, that we will not forget,

not only recent events, but 1958 and 1983 and 2019 and all other

 

sad years of our democratic breakdown, our arriving at the gates

of hell, without food or petrol or medicine but the miracle

 

on the Green, not only the Pope speaking there in 2015

but now, the tent city, the light in the darkness,

 

the Aragalaya Residences, made by the people,

with the people, and for the future of the people.

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