Fortress Sri Lanka

"The Rajapaksas will pursue their dynastic ambitions at any cost to the country"
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“Persecution mania is one of the many devices employed by a regime to ensure the cohesion of its internal front…” —Umberto Eco (Turning Back The Clock)

By Tisaranee Gunasekara
Courtesy: The Sunday Leader

(October 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The war is over; the crisis continues. The endless search for enemies, the sprawling internment camps, the perilous economic conditions and the mounting international opprobrium are rendering normalcy as elusive as a distant dream. The idea of a conspiracy, nebulous, multi-dimensional and omni-present, seems to be bedevilling the thoughts, words and deeds of the regime. A Herculean endeavour to exterminate this hydra-headed conspiracy has become the main preoccupation of the rulers, overriding every other consideration, from economic relief to democratic rights, from the rule of law to equal justice. In post-war Sri Lanka, obsessed with plots and plotters, a war psychosis reigns.

Perhaps this is no accident. Post-war, normalcy has not come to Sri Lanka because the Rajapaksas cannot afford normalcy. If normalcy prevails, the Rajapaksas will have to let go of the reins of power, as J.R. Jayewardene and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga did at the end of their two terms. This isn’t an option, since perpetuating familial rule has become the Rajapaksa monomania. Since the Rajapaksa dynastic project cannot be realised without a two-thirds majority in parliament, reaching this goal, by whatever means necessary, has become the preoccupation of the regime. This obsession has become the primary impediment to the restoration of normalcy via a just peace, the fons et origo of the post-war crisis.

Victory not so impressive

On the surface, the outcome of the Southern Provincial Council election seems to demonstrate that a two-thirds majority is a possible goal, despite the structural obstacles inherent in the PR system. The UPFA did win the Southern election with a two- thirds majority. However – and this is the crux of the matter – this victory was caused not by an increase in the UPFA vote but by a massive decrease in the UNP vote. Had the UNP managed to retain most of the votes it obtained at the presidential election, the UPFA victory would have been just a marginal one. But the UNP’s vote dropped abysmally, by 42.6%, enabling the UPFA to score a two-thirds majority despite a 3.2% decrease in its own vote. Therefore, the UPFA’s dazzling performance in the Rajapaksa heartland was caused not by a groundswell of post-war support for the regime but by the weak leadership of Ranil Wickremesinghe. The regime’s claim of a 200,000-vote increase in the UPFA’s vote base is pure fantasy. In fact, the UPFA’s vote base in the South decreased by 25,491 between the presidential election of November 2005 and the recent provincial council election. This drop happened despite a phenomenal campaign led by the President and augmented by all the powers of the government and the resources of the state. More pertinently, this drop happened despite winning the Eelam War decisively. If the UPFA cannot increase its vote in the Southern Province in such a singularly favourable context, can it better its performance elsewhere in the country?

Drawing generalised conclusions from the UPFA’s performance in the South would be misleading for another reason. In the presidential election, Mahinda Rajapaksa obtained 61.2% of the votes in the South, 11% more than his national average of 50.29%. The South is thus one of the provinces in which the UPFA has a natural advantage. But in a general election the UPFA will have to do equally well in provinces with much lower support bases and fewer natural advantages, if it is to reach the two-thirds mark. Consequently, though the UNP will not be able to defeat the UPFA, it can deprive the Rajapaksas of the two-thirds parliamentary majority they desperately crave. Its pose of sanguinity notwithstanding, the regime cannot but be aware of this less-than-palatable truth. This knowledge – and the fears it will generate – will be a, decisive factor in Lankan politics in the coming weeks and months.

The Rajapaksa doctrine

Familial rule is narrowly-based; this structural flaw would suffice to give its practitioners a chronic sense of insecurity, resulting in unremitting searches for enemies, a siege mentality and an aggressive mode of governance. In a “Very Special Discussion” with the ITN (broadcast on October 7), Defence Secretary and Presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa declared that the country abounds with conspiracies hatched by pro-Tiger elements within and outside the country. The objective of the conspirators is to resurrect the lost dream of Eelam. To achieve this purpose they are endeavouring ceaselessly to bring the dead Tiger back to life. The removal of President Rajapaksa from power is the prerequisite for the success of these conspiracies. Therefore, the Defence Secretary said the conspirators may try to assassinate the President or defeat him politically.

“This can cause us tremendous challenges in the future,” the Defense Secretary said. “(They) might send various zombies (pilli)…We know our country is a democratic country. There are plenty of people willing to do anything for narrow gains. There are politicians; there are people who have become degraded; there are people filled with hatred…All they want is to come to power. They will be used by national and international conspirators, those who want to protect the LTTE and to regain Eelam…It is very easy to mislead people through false propaganda…”

Opposition equals treason

A mindset that equates the government with the nation will automatically equate any opposition to that government, however peaceful or legal, with treason. Is the Defence Secretary equating the interests of the regime with national interests and patriotism with loyalty to the regime? Is he intimating that anyone who works against the government, democratically, is a traitor? Is he implying that democratic opposition and peaceful dissent are part of an anti-national, pro-Eelam conspiracy? Such a perspective would bode ill for democracy.

If trying to defeat the Rajapaksa administration electorally is a pro-Tiger conspiracy, it would, ipso facto, turn opposition politicians and dissenting media personnel into Eelamist conspirators. Such a perverse logic would enable the regime to make greater use of the PTA and the Emergency against the opposition and the media.

As the outcome of the Southern election demonstrated, there is no seismic shift in political opinion in favour of the regime, even in the deep south, the supposed cradle of Sinhala nationalism. Consequently, even with the UNP vote dropping drastically the regime may not be able to score a two-thirds majority in parliament freely and fairly. Will the Rajapaksas be tempted to employ tactics similar to the ones used by Jayewardene to justify and win the Referendum of 1982?

Beware of the government

If so, in the coming weeks and months the country will see a version of that old Naxalite plot as a prelude to the ‘legal’ removal of key opposition (and perhaps even media) figures from the political scene, in time for the upcoming elections. Juxtapose the comments made by the Defence Secretary about conspiracies with a warning by President Rajapaksa to his ministers “to keep their eyes open since certain activities which are a threat to democracy may take place” (Daily Mirror, October 15) and the direction in which Sri Lanka is headed will become clear.

The government can win both the presidential and parliamentary polls freely and fairly. This may suffice for the SLFP and the UPFA. But it would not suffice for the Rajapaksas. They need a two-thirds majority to usher in the Rajapaksa Constitution that will enable the family to stay in power beyond 2018. That is why the provincial council elections were held on a staggered basis, despite the fact that it cost cash-strapped Sri Lanka a staggering Rs.1,540 million extra. That is why the regime does not want normalcy, because in the absence of a highly charged political situation, in the absence of an overwhelming political cum national security crisis, economic factors will gain predominance.

Given the non-appearance of the peace dividend, this reassertion of rice-and-curry politics will render the goal of a two-thirds majority all the more elusive. The government therefore has to keep the war mentality alive, to keep the public focused on traitorous external and internal enemies. A political war is needed to subvert democracy and further weaken the opposition. The crisis must continue, because without the crisis, the Rajapaksa dynastic project cannot prevail.

Incarcerating the innocent

Just as the Tigers will be remembered by posterity for suicide killers and child soldiers, the Rajapaksa administration may be remembered for incarcerating more than a quarter of a million of its own citizens extra-judicially. One of the most important factors keeping Sri Lanka in a state of limbo between war and peace is the government’s obdurate refusal to free the civilian Tamils in the northern internment camps. Without this shameful injustice Sri Lanka would have been able to put her past (especially the disputed events of the last stages of the Fourth Eelam War) behind her and obtain the necessary international support to build the future.

However, from the point of view of the regime there is a very sound reason for keeping the displaced Tamils so incarcerated – the electoral factor. In the upcoming parliamentary election every vote matters. And the camp system will enable the government to obtain the votes of the population of the Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi districts, en masse. The IDPs in the camps are captive voters, who can be driven to the polling stations like so many sheep. This block vote would enhance the regime’s chances of getting that two-thirds majority which is necessary for the survival of the Rajapaksas.

Velupillai Pirapaharan wanted Sri Lanka and the world to treat the Tigers and the Tamils as one, thus his insistence that the LTTE be accepted as the sole legitimate representative of all Lankan Tamils. He refused to allow the Tamils an existence independent of the LTTE and enforced this rule with brutality. Post-war, President Rajapaksa and his cronies are acting as if there were no difference between the Tigers and those Tamils who lived in the LTTE-controlled areas of the north.

Collective punishment

How else can the continued and illegal incarceration of the entire population of the Mullaitivu and Killinochchi districts be explained? And to justify this abomination the Rajapaksas are appealing to the Tamil-phobia deeply ingrained in the collective psyche of the Sinhalese. Intoxicated by the victory over the LTTE and freed from the fear that acts of iniquity against Tamils will further strengthen the Tigers, the Sinhalese are becoming willing dupes of a ruling clan which is trying to achieve its ambitions by “making the community more fanatical and exploiting the resulting fanatics” (Victor Klemperer, The Language Of The Third Reich).

The northern internment camps are symbols of the recrudescence of Sinhala supremacism, of the regression to a notion of Sri Lanka as a hierarchically pluralist country. Consequently, they constitute a key impediment to any post-war reconciliation based on justice and equality. Victory has brought a greater sense of freedom to the south but a greater sense of bondage to the north. Under the Tigers, the populace of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu were hostages; post Tigers, they are prisoners. A war billed as “the greatest hostage rescue operation in the world” has ended with the hostages becoming prisoners. The Tamils seem to have escaped from one hell only to become enmeshed in another hell. If the Rajapaksas continue their single-minded pursuit of dynastic rule at the cost of development, justice and democracy, a similar fate may await the Sinhalese.

-Sri Lanka Guardian