Who is this Sampanthan or Sam the Pantham?

By Catapult Thangavelu from Kappang Highway

(February 27, Jaffna, Sri Lanka Guardian) Torch bearing or more pointedly “pantham carrying” is a clumsy craft of the crafty that have no sense of honour or dignity. A practice of the “pandamkaraya” often a coward is that he will for private and personal gains dance a tango with a monkey.

Conscience is furthest from such a person and his sheer existence is dependent on the crumbs that fall from the table or sparingly distributed among fellow pandamkarayas. Creating one’s own source for the traditional needs with self-esteem is not habitual to the pandamkarayas. Glare, glower and a puckered brow are the tricks of their trade. Or they sail a vicarious journey believing that the very person to whom they hold torch is them too.

A good example would be a cinema hero. If such a person acts with a beautiful heroine hugging and kissing her, the fixated fan feels that he is in the act himself; perhaps fantasizes even more for himself. Or if he drives a luxury car, the fan is in the driving seat. So much also for the Tamil National Alliance Members of Parliament and how they prostrate in front of Velupillai Prabhakaran. This is the guy who has to answer for 70,000 brutalized deaths and today he holds hundreds more using them as his final act of revenge.

Sam the Pantham or call him Sampantham has strange ideas about elections and what people seeking elections to legislatures or what are expected of them. He has simply no ideas about party politics, obligations to constituents and even how one should behave in a House of Parliament. Not long ago, he and his TNA MPs mistook the legislature for a funeral house and conducted the final rituals for a supposed dear departed amidst fellow law-makers of the state making asses of themselves.

Sam the Pantham has his strange bedfellow mates too, indeed a confused lot who thought all their obligations were to a dictator who had the belief that he was presiding over a sovereign state in the style of Pol Pot of Cambodia. It was this Cambodia guy who caused the deaths of two million Cambodians having had strange ideas about governing people just like the Wanni dictator. Sam the Pantham did have some visions too, and one was to train an heir apparent to the Wanni dictator on the quiet so that he could have control of Eelam.

His trainee chap was another TNA MP Gajendran who was sent on a rowdy mission to cause havoc in the precincts of the University of Jaffna and ensure Professor Jeevan Hoole never took office as the Vice Chancellor there. Here is another tragic example of how the community was denied the services of an excellent educationalist. The hell Gajendran created in and around the university reflects the type of material Tamils have as their representatives in the House of Parliament.

Sam the Pantham and his sishyas not to be mistaken with Aviiviveka Poorana Guru and his fellowmen Maddi, Madayan, Pethai and Milaychan, want to seek elections from the people but not to represent them. They want to represent the Tigers of Wanni, the band of the dictator, just the way they have done the last few years. But this could all change.

If by any chance the Wanni dictator does a Marcos with the help of the Norwegian Erik Solheim or becomes trapped like the Iraqi Hussein in a hole, Sam the Pantham will look immediately for another organ grinder. The other day Sam the Pantham held a meeting in the port town of Trincomalee to make a public announcement that the Wanni dictator is assured of his support and of his muddled orchestra; in other words, to show the world that all talks about terrorism coming to an end is all cock and bull. Sam the Pantham wants to hold the torch for terrorism.

It may even be his ambition to take over the terror contraption once the Valvettiturai brand, not the Subramaniam orange barley, fizzes out. After all this terror business attracted millions of dollars, Sterling, and Euros and Sam the Pantham would love to lay his hands even if it would be a small part of it. May be he sounded to the terror group that he is ready to take over should the current leader bite the cyanide that has been waiting to be bitten for many years now. Yes of course, he didn’t have the courage to do it himself when he forced others to do just that in certain situations.

What will be Sam the Pantham’s alternative to the cyanide vial? Some say he will take the rope or even lay his neck on the Tampalakamam rail track, once the train to Colombo had passed just like Tamilnadu Thirumavalavan’s 36-hour fast unto death. Of course in the case of the Chiriththai Puli (Leopard) from Tamilnadu his medical condition demands regular fast to stay alive!

However, most of the TNA guru’s sishyas have already done the beat ready for seeking refuge anywhere from Solomon Islands to the Dominican Republic. Some may never return while one or two may make brief visits to sell their properties. One such property in Colombo has already been placed on sale.

And Sam the Pantham knows for sure the game is up now and yet he was very foolish to announce in public his vicarious fixation to the Wanni dictator. May be he had his reasons and there was something to gain from making a statement in Trincomalee in support of the LTTE. One can presume, involved in it must be something substantial for his gain.

How can a Member of Parliament hold the torch for terrorism? No Sri Lankan with even an iota of honour in him can tolerate such a stand. This is an insult especially to the Tamil community.

-Sri Lanka Guardian