Democracy and Dynasty (Part 01)

"The tragic history of the Tamils is both enlightening and admonitory. The Tigers arrogated all power unto themselves in return for taking on the Lankan Army. Most Tamils permitted this ‘friendly occupation’, either out of fear or because they were blinded by their just anger towards the Lankan state."
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I - The Death of a Journalist

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“This might happen any day
So be careful what you say
Or do”.
WH Auden (The Two)

(January 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The murder of Lasantha Wickremetunga dealt the Lankan democratic system a blow from which it is unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future. Relieved of the ‘anxiety psychosis’ created by Lasantha’s amazing capacity to reveal the concealed, the Ruling Family will pursue its dynastic project to its tyrannical conclusion, with increased vigour and a greater sense of impunity.

Lasantha’s brand of journalism was controversial, to say the least; at times it went beyond the parameters of good taste. He was often excessive in his criticism of excesses. Yet, all in all, he performed an indispensable function – that of uncovering what the powers that be wanted hidden. His fearless journalism cast a bright, exposing light in the dark corridors of political and military power, baring to the public eye the secrets of the mighty. His exposes often impeded abuse of power by political and military leaders. His uncanny ability to find out wrongs and excesses committed under the protective cover of power and patriotism acted as a damper on some of the more outrageous plans and activities of the rulers.

Without The Sunday Leader’s investigative pieces, Minister Chamal Rajapakse would have obtained cabinet permission to buy the 250 bedroom five star Hotel Continental to house the Sri Lanka Ports Authority administration offices. The Sunday Leader’s expose on a plan to build a Rs. 400 million luxury bunker for President Rajapakse not only led the government to abandon that extravagant project; the CID almost arrested Lasantha (he was also accused by the government spokesman of indirectly helping the terrorists). In the context of current military victories, the President and the government enjoy a significant degree of popularity in the South; and yet they did not feel immune to Lasantha’s revelations about their misdeeds. This is best evidenced by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse seeking judicial intervention to prevent The Sunday Leader from publishing an obviously damaging story about him (the case is to be taken up on January 30th).

Regular, even frequent, elections do not make a democracy. Without the right to dissent, without the right of expression, without free flow of information, a democracy will be bereft of its lifeblood and shorn of all meaning. In such a system, even multiparty elections will become an empty charade, a gimmick by the rulers to gain some legitimacy. Will such a state be Sri Lanka’s ultimate destination? Would a façade of democracy be used to conceal and legitimise the Rajapakses’ dynastic project?

The Beneficiaries

Who benefit from the absence of Lasantha Wickrematunga?

Those who were annoyed, irritated, angered, embarrassed or seriously inconvenienced by his work as an editor and the exposes for which his paper was justly famous; for them Lasantha’s removal is a boon, be it accidental or contrived.

Lasantha’s murder has caused the government some image problems. But the adverse effects of the crime have been limited by the superb sense of timing displayed by his killers. Lasantha was assassinated one week after the fall of Killinochchi and one day before the taking of the Elephant Pass - a time when national attention was focused on the war in the North – and, as a bonus, international attention on Israel’s carnage in Gaza. In any case, the image problems caused by Lasantha’s killing will fade with time; not so the relief of knowing that one can commit crimes of omission and commission with impunity, without having to worry about the next week’s Sunday Leader; that will remain a lasting – and at times a critical – advantage. (The story of the killing of Vijaya Kumaratunga was similar. Initially the JVP had to face much public opprobrium, but this became less intense and less relevant with time. However the immense advantage of depriving the anti-JVP left of Vijaya’s courageous and inspiring leadership was a lasting one. Indeed taking such unacceptable risks comes naturally to extremists of all sorts).

The Rajapakses have used diverse methods to limit freedom of expression and render the media toothless. A case in point was the attempt by the government to make it mandatory for television stations to renew their licences annually, in an obvious attempt to frighten the private channels into compliance. This attempt was defeated by the Supreme Court. The continued incarceration of senior journalist Tissanayagam on the flimsiest of pretexts (if ‘bringing the government into disrepute’ is a crime, many a minister and a deputy minister should be behind bars) indicate another potential risk for those who would write and speak against the government. This trend of discouraging dissent, by any means necessary, legal or illegal, violent or non-violent, has given rise to a feeling of vulnerability on the part of the media. In the aftermath of Lasantha’s killing one anti-government website (Lanka Dissent) has suspended its activities and a couple of journalists are said to have left the country.

The loss of Lasantha would not have had such a critical impact if the country possessed an opposition worth its name. Under Ranil Wickremesinghe the UNP has become increasingly weakened, politically, organisationally and psychologically. The party’s once massive base is eroding and even its most hardcore supporters are becoming sceptical about chances of electoral victory in the near future. The UNP’s crippling inability to inspire and energise anti-government masses was symbolised in the lacklustre speech made (in an even more lacklustre manner) by Ranil Wickremesinghe at the funeral of Lasantha Wickramatunga. Lasantha’s role in keeping afloat the UNP (and thus oppositional forces) burdened by the deadweight of Wickremesinghe’s lackadaisical leadership is well known. In his absence, the opposition too will be freer to sink into the mire of defeatism and inertia. Without Lasantha’s rallying cry every Sunday, the UNP (and perhaps even the JVP) will be less politically armed and psychologically able to face the onslaught of the triumphant Rajapakses.

A state within a state

An adventure story by a Baroness Orczy on a mysterious man known only by his sobriquet ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ was a popular read with my generation (as it was with my father’s generation). This mysterious stranger rescued French aristocrats from revolutionary justice, confounding repeated attempts to unmask him. A doggerel in the book describes the effect his elusiveness had on both his friends and enemies:

‘We seek him here, we seek him there,
The Frenchies seek him everywhere,
Is he in heaven or is he in hell,
That demmed elusive Pimpernel’.

In Sri Lanka, an entity as mysterious and as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel, seems to be targeting opponents and critics of the Rajapakse administration. Lasantha Wickremetunga is but the latest of a long line of victims of this unknown agency. There was the abduction of Keith Noyahr of The Nation and the attack on freelance journalist Namal Perera. The government blamed third parties but they were never caught. When parliamentarians Nadaraja Raviraj and T Maheswaran were killed in broad daylight in Colombo, the powers that be absolved themselves from blame and pointed the finger elsewhere. The same procedure was followed when parliamentarian Joseph Pararajasingham was killed as he was attending the midnight mass at St. Michael’s Church in Batticaloa on the Christmas Eve of 2005. In between other journalists were assaulted (including several employees of the state owned Rupavahini) or killed and The Sunday Leader press and the MTV/Sirasa studio were attacked. Each time the culprits got away scot-free while the government ordered yet another useless investigation.

The regime would have us believe that some third party was behind all these crimes, a group of anonymous conspirators who want to discredit the administration. In his address to the nation after the fall of Elephant Pass, President Rajapakse gave a list of the deeds of the conspirators. Firstly his ‘friend’ Joseph Pararajasingham was killed to ‘embarrass’ Sri Lanka internationally. Did the government go out of its way to catch the killers and expose their evil machinations? No; the killers got away, as if by magic. Next came the bombing of the Uthayan newspaper office in Jaffna, on World Press Freedom Day, with the purpose of ‘tarnishing the country’s image internationally’. Once again the security establishment of Gotabhaya Rajapakse failed to identify, let alone apprehend, the culprits, who vanished into thin air.

Then the President mentions the abduction of Keith Noyahr ‘at a time when Toppigala was being freed from the hold of the terrorists…to distract from the importance of this victory’. Yet again the conspirators got away. Next they torched a camp for Tamil civilian refugees in Vavuniya the day after the fall of Vedithaltivu; naturally they escaped.

As a rhetorical exercise let’s take the government’s argument to its logical conclusion. So there exists in Sri Lanka an entity which can, with total impunity, attack, abduct and kill politicians and media people/organisations often in broad daylight and in public places. The police, despite Presidential decrees cannot catch them. They come, commit their gruesome deeds and vanish. If one were to believe in such an obviously apocryphal tale, the question cannot but arise – can any responsible government worth its name permit such a situation of dual power to exist within its territory, in its own capital city? Will Mahinda Rajapakse, Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Gen. Sarath Fonseka tolerate the presence of such a deadly force which strikes where it wills and when it wills, and does so with the aim of bringing the government into disrepute? Is such a possibility believable except by the congenitally unintelligent?

The demeanour of Lasantha’s killers demonstrates that they had no fear of being apprehended by the security forces, that they were confident in their ability to complete their task without any intervention. According to newspaper reports, the killers had been circling his house and subsequently following him in plain sight. What is the source of such supreme confidence? Is there a state within the state, an omnipotent entity which executes the sentence whenever the plaintive cry of ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome monk’ escapes the lips of an exasperated ruler?

The tragic history of the Tamils is both enlightening and admonitory. The Tigers arrogated all power unto themselves in return for taking on the Lankan Army. Most Tamils permitted this ‘friendly occupation’, either out of fear or because they were blinded by their just anger towards the Lankan state. In the end, the LTTE used that power to subjugate the Tamil people, to deny them the most basic rights which even the Lankan state did not deprive them of. If the Sinhala state turned Tamils into second class citizens in their land of birth, the Tigers made them into subjects of a self-anointed deity. The Sinhalese may well find themselves in a similar plight if they allow the Rajapakses to act with impunity in return for defeating the LTTE. Will the gradual undermining of democracy and the enthronement of a family oligarchy be the wages of Lankan reunification, Rajapakse style?

To be continued - Sri Lanka Guardian