“Two Gordian knots are thus negating the possibility of a political solution to the ethnic problem. One is the Tigers; the other is Sinhala supremacism. But long before the Tigers came into being (and when Pirapaharan was only a toddler) the B-C Pact had to be abrogated due to pressure from Sinhala extremists. SWRD Bandaranaike was not daunted by the UNP’s infamous Kandy march. What unnerved him was the virulent opposition coming from the very apex of his hierarchical ‘Pancha Maha Balavegaya’, a ‘fast unto death’ commenced by Buddhist monks outside his residence. Rajapakse in order to win and retain state power has harnessed the same extremist forces.”
_____________________
Read Part V
by Tisaranee Gunasekara
"…going forward boldly into the future in search of an imaginary past"
Michael Burleigh (The Third Reich: A New History)
Dithering on Devolution
July 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian: It was an ethno-centric atrocity unimaginable in post-Accord Sri Lanka, until the advent of the Rajapakses. In the early hours of the morning of June 6th 2007 police teams descended on several Colombo lodges. The residents (including the very old, the very young and the very sick) were herded out and ordered into waiting buses to be transported to their villages in the North-East. The first load was already on its way before the Supreme Court intervened to stop the expulsions. The decision to expel Tamil lodgers (on the basis that some Black Tigers are lodge-dwellers) was taken at the highest level; it was subsequently defended by the Defence Secretary and the President, the former directly and the latter not so directly. That one incident, anti-Constitutional, anti-democratic and anti-Tamil, was symbolic of the distance travelled by Sri Lanka into the past, under the leadership of the Rajapakses.
Mahinda Rajapakse’s nomination as the Presidential candidate of the UPFA caused a sea change in the Lankan polity. Until then it was taken for granted that a political solution to the ethnic problem will require moving forward – and not backwards - from the 13th Amendment. Though there was no clear agreement on contentious issues such as the nature of the state, the unit of devolution and the merger, there was no doubt that Tamil people will have to be offered more than they had been granted under the Indo-Lanka Accord. Adherence to the unitary state seemed a thing of the past as both the UNP and the SLFP were in support of a quasi federal or federal arrangement. By 2003 even the JVP was indicating a willingness to consider a solution to the ethnic problem that went beyond the confines of the unitary state. Though the merger was officially a temporary one, the general belief was that de-merger would be impossible unless as part of a political package which gave the Tamil people substantially more power in exchange of de-merger. Until the Rajapakses took over a unilateral de-merger was not seen as a possibility except by the most diehard Sinhala supremacists.
Perhaps many believed that Rajapakse’s adherence to the unitary state in his election manifesto, Mahinda Chinthanaya, was merely a gimmick to win Southern vote and would be forgotten the day after the election. But the commitment turned out to be real, (possibly because genuine devolution would weaken the powers of the Presidency, something that is anathema to Rajapakse as can be seen by his determination to sabotage the 17th Amendment to the Constitution). Rajapakse indeed represented a real change from every single Lankan leader since the Indo-Lanka Accord. He was committed to a Sinhala supremacist agenda and promoted it openly once he became the President. He was truly the legatee of the 1956 Revolution and seemed committed to a revanchist programme aimed at turning back the institutional and ideological changes which happened through and as a result of the Indo-Lanka Accord.
Given Rajapakse’s commitment to the unitary state any attempt to come up with a political solution to the ethnic problem will have to be an eye wash, a deception aimed at the Tamils and the international community. So long as that commitment remains, any search for a political solution will not be a serious one; it will be a time buying exercise. This is precisely what the APRC has become. When the Experts Panel of the APRC came up with a devolution formula that went beyond the 13th Amendment Rajapakse promptly rejected it. He also imposed his untarianism on the SLFP. The party’s new draft solution represented a return to the era prior to the 13th Amendment. It advocated the replacement of provincial councils with district councils and political devolution with administrative decentralisation. In the meantime the President used his Sinhala supremacist allies to file a case in the Supreme Court against the merger; with that the road was cleared for a judicial de-merger of the North East. Under Rajapakse the maximum agenda of the Sinhala supremacists was becoming a reality.
The APRC charade continues, because it is the only fig leaf available to the regime. Whenever Indian/international interest in Sri Lanka mounts various ministers (and at times the President himself) set deadlines for the APRC to come up with a political solution. Each deadline comes and goes with nothing happening. The only ‘product’ of the APRC is a document which recommended the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. This ‘consensus’ was imposed on the APRC by the President himself (despite the opposition of some of the delegates) and was ceremonially presented to him by a cowed Committee as its ‘solution’. Though the APRC continues its ‘deliberations’ only the wilfully blind can any longer believe in its ability to come up with a devolution package that can serve as a political solution to the ethnic problem. In fact given Rajapakse’s own commitment to Sinhala supremacist forces and their agenda, such a solution would be impossible during his tenure. The only way it can happen is if it is imposed on him by some international actor, the way the 13th Amendment was imposed on Jayewardene by India.
Rajapakse does not believe in the existence of an ethnic problem. He has stated so openly on a number of occasions, another first. It is irrational to expect him to come up with a solution for a problem the existence of which he does not believe. A recent statement made by Minister Nimal Siripala Silva in an interview with the Sri Lanka Guardian seem to summarise the Rajapakse thinking on the war and a ‘political solution’: “First thing we wanted to do was to finish off LTTE terrorism from the country. After that we want to find a good solution to the North like the East. Now we have introduced Pilliyan as a Symbol of Democracy in the East. It will be model for our next step….We can’t accept the APRC proposal. It should be changed to conform to the Mahinda Chinthana policy”.
The deadlock, therefore, is set to continue for the foreseeable future. The Rajapakses obviously want the Northern and Eastern provincial councils to function under the control of two Tamil parties, which in turn are completely under the control of the President and his brothers. According to this formula the Northern and Eastern PCs will function like all the other PCs; they will be mere appendages of the ruling party. Devolution will be devalued to the level of administrative decentralisation and the Chief Ministers will function as the enforcers of the will of their political masters in Colombo. In return they will be granted the right to treat their fellow Tamils very much the way the Tigers treat them. If this plan is implemented in full Tamil politics will become polarised between the Tigers (and their stooges) and the Lankan state (and its Tamil appendages). The space in which anti-Tiger Tamils who are not acolytes of the regime can function will shrink to the point of disappearance. The end result will be the Tigers becoming ‘sole representatives of the Tamils’ since the only anti-Tiger Tamils in existence obviously represent the will of the Rajapakses.
The situation is further complicated by the regime’s inability to see a distinction between Tigers and Tamils, except in the limited case of Tamil leaders who are completely under its control. This creates the danger of the government taking steps which it believes to be anti-Tiger but turns out to be anti-Tamil as well, the expulsion decree being the best case in point. The more the LTTE attacks in Colombo the greater the likelihood of such measures by a regime eager to show the Sinhala constituency its willingness to do ‘whatever it takes’ to defeat terrorism. This mindset would be an added fillip to the Tigers (quite apart from their anti-civilisational mentality) to engage in atrocities in the South, in the hope of igniting a governmental/societal overreaction. The Trinco mini-riot and the manner in which the regime responded to it have given the Tigers new hope. With Champika Ranawaka playing the role of Cyril Mathew, some repetition of Black July can happen under the Rajapakses.
Tiger Eelam can be achieved only if it can be depicted as Tamil Eelam, a safe haven for minority Tamils denied their basic rights and persecuted by the majority Sinhalese. This necessitates the identification of Tamil with Tiger and Tamil interests with Tiger interests. If the Lankan government demonstrates its willingness to share power with the Tamil people, if it comes up with concrete proposals to devolve power to the periphery, the international community will accept that Tamils can expect justice from the Lankan state without the violent mediation of the LTTE. Unfortunately so long as Rajapakses are in the saddle a political solution is unlikely to materialise. The obdurate presence and the inflammable rhetoric of Sinhala supremacists serve as a living reminder of this unwillingness to compromise, to accept the Tamils as the co-owners of this country. Every time a politician in the South reiterates his opposition to ‘moving even an inch beyond the unitary state’ the Tamil people would be left with the impression that nothing much has changed in the Sinhala polity and given half a chance it will act towards the minorities with the same old arrogance and contempt. It is this feeling that is sustaining the Tigers and will continue to sustain the Tigers, irrespective of all their sins.
Tamil people fear Sinhala supremacism because they have suffered as a result of it. The Tigers thrive on this fear; that is why they always make it a point to talk about the unwillingness of the Sinhala polity to share power with the Tamil minority. Mahinda Rajapakse’s determination to identify himself with this divisive 1956/SWRD tradition will not help in winning over the Tamil people to the idea of an undivided Sri Lanka. A self-confessed adherent of the spirit of 1956 who has turned his insistence on the inviolability of the unitary state into an article of faith – that brings back old, unsavoury memories of an arrogant and insensible Sinhala majority riding roughshod over a powerless Tamil minority. Just what the Tiger needs to keep the Tamils scared and subjugated and the world equivocal.
Two Gordian knots are thus negating the possibility of a political solution to the ethnic problem. One is the Tigers; the other is Sinhala supremacism. But long before the Tigers came into being (and when Pirapaharan was only a toddler) the B-C Pact had to be abrogated due to pressure from Sinhala extremists. SWRD Bandaranaike was not daunted by the UNP’s infamous Kandy march. What unnerved him was the virulent opposition coming from the very apex of his hierarchical ‘Pancha Maha Balavegaya’, a ‘fast unto death’ commenced by Buddhist monks outside his residence. Rajapakse in order to win and retain state power has harnessed the same extremist forces. He is in thrall to them, the same way Bandaranaike was. Even if international pressure and politico-economic realities compel him to come up with a reasonable political solution, in the end he may find it impossible to withstand the opposition from his Sinhala supremacist allies. They had made him; they are setting his agenda; and if he tries to escape they will break him, with the full backing of the LTTE and Ranil Wickremesinge (Jayewardene was able to resist the pressure from Sinhala extremist because he was not in alliance with them; in fact they were with the Opposition). Rajapakse, like his political ancestor Bandaranaike, has made a Faustian bargain; and like in the case of Bandaranaike any attempt to escape this devil’s pact is likely to end in ignominious – and possibly violent – failure.
To be continued.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
Read Part V
by Tisaranee Gunasekara
"…going forward boldly into the future in search of an imaginary past"
Michael Burleigh (The Third Reich: A New History)
Dithering on Devolution
July 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian: It was an ethno-centric atrocity unimaginable in post-Accord Sri Lanka, until the advent of the Rajapakses. In the early hours of the morning of June 6th 2007 police teams descended on several Colombo lodges. The residents (including the very old, the very young and the very sick) were herded out and ordered into waiting buses to be transported to their villages in the North-East. The first load was already on its way before the Supreme Court intervened to stop the expulsions. The decision to expel Tamil lodgers (on the basis that some Black Tigers are lodge-dwellers) was taken at the highest level; it was subsequently defended by the Defence Secretary and the President, the former directly and the latter not so directly. That one incident, anti-Constitutional, anti-democratic and anti-Tamil, was symbolic of the distance travelled by Sri Lanka into the past, under the leadership of the Rajapakses.
Mahinda Rajapakse’s nomination as the Presidential candidate of the UPFA caused a sea change in the Lankan polity. Until then it was taken for granted that a political solution to the ethnic problem will require moving forward – and not backwards - from the 13th Amendment. Though there was no clear agreement on contentious issues such as the nature of the state, the unit of devolution and the merger, there was no doubt that Tamil people will have to be offered more than they had been granted under the Indo-Lanka Accord. Adherence to the unitary state seemed a thing of the past as both the UNP and the SLFP were in support of a quasi federal or federal arrangement. By 2003 even the JVP was indicating a willingness to consider a solution to the ethnic problem that went beyond the confines of the unitary state. Though the merger was officially a temporary one, the general belief was that de-merger would be impossible unless as part of a political package which gave the Tamil people substantially more power in exchange of de-merger. Until the Rajapakses took over a unilateral de-merger was not seen as a possibility except by the most diehard Sinhala supremacists.
Perhaps many believed that Rajapakse’s adherence to the unitary state in his election manifesto, Mahinda Chinthanaya, was merely a gimmick to win Southern vote and would be forgotten the day after the election. But the commitment turned out to be real, (possibly because genuine devolution would weaken the powers of the Presidency, something that is anathema to Rajapakse as can be seen by his determination to sabotage the 17th Amendment to the Constitution). Rajapakse indeed represented a real change from every single Lankan leader since the Indo-Lanka Accord. He was committed to a Sinhala supremacist agenda and promoted it openly once he became the President. He was truly the legatee of the 1956 Revolution and seemed committed to a revanchist programme aimed at turning back the institutional and ideological changes which happened through and as a result of the Indo-Lanka Accord.
Given Rajapakse’s commitment to the unitary state any attempt to come up with a political solution to the ethnic problem will have to be an eye wash, a deception aimed at the Tamils and the international community. So long as that commitment remains, any search for a political solution will not be a serious one; it will be a time buying exercise. This is precisely what the APRC has become. When the Experts Panel of the APRC came up with a devolution formula that went beyond the 13th Amendment Rajapakse promptly rejected it. He also imposed his untarianism on the SLFP. The party’s new draft solution represented a return to the era prior to the 13th Amendment. It advocated the replacement of provincial councils with district councils and political devolution with administrative decentralisation. In the meantime the President used his Sinhala supremacist allies to file a case in the Supreme Court against the merger; with that the road was cleared for a judicial de-merger of the North East. Under Rajapakse the maximum agenda of the Sinhala supremacists was becoming a reality.
The APRC charade continues, because it is the only fig leaf available to the regime. Whenever Indian/international interest in Sri Lanka mounts various ministers (and at times the President himself) set deadlines for the APRC to come up with a political solution. Each deadline comes and goes with nothing happening. The only ‘product’ of the APRC is a document which recommended the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. This ‘consensus’ was imposed on the APRC by the President himself (despite the opposition of some of the delegates) and was ceremonially presented to him by a cowed Committee as its ‘solution’. Though the APRC continues its ‘deliberations’ only the wilfully blind can any longer believe in its ability to come up with a devolution package that can serve as a political solution to the ethnic problem. In fact given Rajapakse’s own commitment to Sinhala supremacist forces and their agenda, such a solution would be impossible during his tenure. The only way it can happen is if it is imposed on him by some international actor, the way the 13th Amendment was imposed on Jayewardene by India.
Rajapakse does not believe in the existence of an ethnic problem. He has stated so openly on a number of occasions, another first. It is irrational to expect him to come up with a solution for a problem the existence of which he does not believe. A recent statement made by Minister Nimal Siripala Silva in an interview with the Sri Lanka Guardian seem to summarise the Rajapakse thinking on the war and a ‘political solution’: “First thing we wanted to do was to finish off LTTE terrorism from the country. After that we want to find a good solution to the North like the East. Now we have introduced Pilliyan as a Symbol of Democracy in the East. It will be model for our next step….We can’t accept the APRC proposal. It should be changed to conform to the Mahinda Chinthana policy”.
The deadlock, therefore, is set to continue for the foreseeable future. The Rajapakses obviously want the Northern and Eastern provincial councils to function under the control of two Tamil parties, which in turn are completely under the control of the President and his brothers. According to this formula the Northern and Eastern PCs will function like all the other PCs; they will be mere appendages of the ruling party. Devolution will be devalued to the level of administrative decentralisation and the Chief Ministers will function as the enforcers of the will of their political masters in Colombo. In return they will be granted the right to treat their fellow Tamils very much the way the Tigers treat them. If this plan is implemented in full Tamil politics will become polarised between the Tigers (and their stooges) and the Lankan state (and its Tamil appendages). The space in which anti-Tiger Tamils who are not acolytes of the regime can function will shrink to the point of disappearance. The end result will be the Tigers becoming ‘sole representatives of the Tamils’ since the only anti-Tiger Tamils in existence obviously represent the will of the Rajapakses.
The situation is further complicated by the regime’s inability to see a distinction between Tigers and Tamils, except in the limited case of Tamil leaders who are completely under its control. This creates the danger of the government taking steps which it believes to be anti-Tiger but turns out to be anti-Tamil as well, the expulsion decree being the best case in point. The more the LTTE attacks in Colombo the greater the likelihood of such measures by a regime eager to show the Sinhala constituency its willingness to do ‘whatever it takes’ to defeat terrorism. This mindset would be an added fillip to the Tigers (quite apart from their anti-civilisational mentality) to engage in atrocities in the South, in the hope of igniting a governmental/societal overreaction. The Trinco mini-riot and the manner in which the regime responded to it have given the Tigers new hope. With Champika Ranawaka playing the role of Cyril Mathew, some repetition of Black July can happen under the Rajapakses.
Tiger Eelam can be achieved only if it can be depicted as Tamil Eelam, a safe haven for minority Tamils denied their basic rights and persecuted by the majority Sinhalese. This necessitates the identification of Tamil with Tiger and Tamil interests with Tiger interests. If the Lankan government demonstrates its willingness to share power with the Tamil people, if it comes up with concrete proposals to devolve power to the periphery, the international community will accept that Tamils can expect justice from the Lankan state without the violent mediation of the LTTE. Unfortunately so long as Rajapakses are in the saddle a political solution is unlikely to materialise. The obdurate presence and the inflammable rhetoric of Sinhala supremacists serve as a living reminder of this unwillingness to compromise, to accept the Tamils as the co-owners of this country. Every time a politician in the South reiterates his opposition to ‘moving even an inch beyond the unitary state’ the Tamil people would be left with the impression that nothing much has changed in the Sinhala polity and given half a chance it will act towards the minorities with the same old arrogance and contempt. It is this feeling that is sustaining the Tigers and will continue to sustain the Tigers, irrespective of all their sins.
Tamil people fear Sinhala supremacism because they have suffered as a result of it. The Tigers thrive on this fear; that is why they always make it a point to talk about the unwillingness of the Sinhala polity to share power with the Tamil minority. Mahinda Rajapakse’s determination to identify himself with this divisive 1956/SWRD tradition will not help in winning over the Tamil people to the idea of an undivided Sri Lanka. A self-confessed adherent of the spirit of 1956 who has turned his insistence on the inviolability of the unitary state into an article of faith – that brings back old, unsavoury memories of an arrogant and insensible Sinhala majority riding roughshod over a powerless Tamil minority. Just what the Tiger needs to keep the Tamils scared and subjugated and the world equivocal.
Two Gordian knots are thus negating the possibility of a political solution to the ethnic problem. One is the Tigers; the other is Sinhala supremacism. But long before the Tigers came into being (and when Pirapaharan was only a toddler) the B-C Pact had to be abrogated due to pressure from Sinhala extremists. SWRD Bandaranaike was not daunted by the UNP’s infamous Kandy march. What unnerved him was the virulent opposition coming from the very apex of his hierarchical ‘Pancha Maha Balavegaya’, a ‘fast unto death’ commenced by Buddhist monks outside his residence. Rajapakse in order to win and retain state power has harnessed the same extremist forces. He is in thrall to them, the same way Bandaranaike was. Even if international pressure and politico-economic realities compel him to come up with a reasonable political solution, in the end he may find it impossible to withstand the opposition from his Sinhala supremacist allies. They had made him; they are setting his agenda; and if he tries to escape they will break him, with the full backing of the LTTE and Ranil Wickremesinge (Jayewardene was able to resist the pressure from Sinhala extremist because he was not in alliance with them; in fact they were with the Opposition). Rajapakse, like his political ancestor Bandaranaike, has made a Faustian bargain; and like in the case of Bandaranaike any attempt to escape this devil’s pact is likely to end in ignominious – and possibly violent – failure.
To be continued.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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