Danger: Rajapakse government running out of enemies!

"The Rajapakse boys still have their favourite whipping boy — the Western powers. How much these Western powers helped President Rajapakse to win the provincial council elections will never be acknowledged. The more these Western nations objected to his military offensives and asked him to call them off, his popularity rocketed sky high among the Sinhalese."
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By Gamini Weerakoon

(August 30. Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Venetian writer, Michael Dibdin in his novel, Dead Lagoon says: ‘There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot be what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century of and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them, deny their family, heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves. They will not easily be forgiven.’

This quotation is extracted from one of the most controversial political theories in recent times: The Clash Of Civilisations by Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington who describes the writer Dibdin as a nationalist demagogue and notes that ‘the unfortunate truth in these old truths cannot be ignored by statesmen and scholars.’

Huntington comments further: ‘For people seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity enemies are essential and potentially the most dangerous occur across the fault lines between the world’s major civilisations.’

Friends and enemies in Lanka

All this of course goes against well known accepted beliefs and norms of Sri Lankans down the ages such as: ‘Hatred does not cease with hatred but by love alone’ and ‘Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other’, while we also sincerely believe what Hollywood keeps blurting out: ‘love makes the world go round and around.’

Our interest in recalling this quotation of the Venetian writer is not for in depth scholarly analysis but with regard to a rather mundane development in the Sri Lankan political horizon: The Rajapakse administration and its cheering squads appear to be running short of enemies!

Absence of enemies in politics is usually considered to be a tremendous advantage but is it really so? In the Sri Lankan context, can a contestant say of his opponent: ‘He’s a jolly good fellow but I am better, so vote for me?’ To us it appears that without a strong political enemy whom you can smear with mud, you will be only shadow boxing.

Velu and others

Just five months ago there was the devil incarnate, Velupillai Pirapaharan who is no more with his chief disciples, now presumed dead. After Pirapaharan and his cronies were gone, the enemy of the government was presumed to be the expatriate Tamil community who appointed K.P. Kumaran Pathmanadan (or did he appoint himself) leader of the LTTE. Sri Lanka’s James Bonds apparently had bundled up KP out of a Malaysian hotel and now he is with interrogators in Colombo, and is singing like a canary, state and pro state publications say.

So, President Mahinda Rajapakse is left — or robbed — of his most powerful enemy; the greatest threat to the nation eliminated. Despite their murders and mayhem it was the burden on the President of the country to bring the terrorist’s head home. But with the terrorists eliminated has Rajapakse’s importance been vastly diminished?

Danduwam Mudalali

LTTE terrorists may still remain under the grass or hidden in bushes but not so the all powerful International Danduwam Mudalali — the IMF. What a punching bag it was for Rajapakse propagandists in recent months till the billion dollar loan was granted! The IMF we were told was in cahoots with terrorists. Western powers particularly America was behind moves to prevent the loan coming through with the objective of bringing the Rajapakse administration to its knees. How dare they block the loan? they asked. Mahinda Rajapakse with his financial giants like Nivard Cabraal stood firm and the IMF caved in, we are told! That’s the stuff Mahinda and his men are made of — real war heroes. Could Ranil have ever done that?

But now the International Danduwam Mudalali is no threat. So why whip a dead horse even after the loan was given at a concessionary rate of 0.2 per cent? But then the government has also lost one of its enemies by him becoming a friend. It’s one less whipping boy. Instead Cabraal et al are thumping one another’s back saying that the grant of the billion dollar loan is a measure of appreciation of the stability of the Sri Lankan economy! The Chinese prediction about the Year of the Ox appears to be true.

In the bad old UNP days when the IMF or World Bank gave assistance to Sri Lanka, dyed-in-the-red Marxists and fellow travellers in the SLFP calculated the number of years future generations would take to pay back such loans. Now we measure it in terms of our economy’s robustness.

Western assistance

The Rajapakse boys still have their favourite whipping boy — the Western powers. How much these Western powers helped President Rajapakse to win the provincial council elections will never be acknowledged. The more these Western nations objected to his military offensives and asked him to call them off, his popularity rocketed sky high among the Sinhalese.

Our President is standing up to the mighty powers and asking them to go to hell, they said, buoyed up by a surge of patriotism. Someone should carry out a survey to gauge the extent to which Western powers boosted Rajapakse in his recent provincial council victories.

But now these Western nations are looking benignly at our intransigent President. Only last week an American court rejected an appeal to lift the ban on the LTTE. Is President Rajapakse losing this enemy too?

Only in Britain where an election is round the corner, where Tamil expatriates may be able to tilt the election results in some electorates, noise is being made against armament supplies that were given to Sri Lanka. Will Rajapakse lose this enemy and whipping boy too after elections and a change of government in our former mother country?

UNP friends and enemies

What of enemies within the country? The one time hot-shots of the UNP are now calling the shots for Mahinda’s government — GL, Sarath Amunugama, Milinda Moragoda etc. In fact they are still de jure UNP. But more important is that a leading contender for UNP leadership in the UNP, S.B. Dissanayake, last week publicly declared that the UNP can’t win the Southern Province elections. With leading ‘enemies’ like that does Rajapakse need friends or enemies, some ask.

But imagine Mahinda Rajapakse’s plight? He can no longer get on a platform before southern yokels and take on the IMF, World Bank, Western powers or even UNP leaders like SB. What is he to tell them now? They are all jolly good fellows if they do not keep company with Mangala Samaraweera and Ranil Wickremesinghe?

Mahinda Rajapakse should realise that making friends is easy but vicious and hard enemies are also very essential.

-Sri Lanka Guardian