Dilemmas of an Imperilled Democracy

“Sarath Fonseka has proven, on more than one occasion, that he is not a mere cipher of the opposition parities backing him, and that he is very much his own man with his own agenda. He is also on record telling the media that he would not be a ceremonial president but will wield some power in order fulfil his election promises.”
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By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“’Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss”.Shakespeare (Pericles, Prince of Tyre)

(December 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Presidential election is a ‘do or die battle’ for Lankan democracy. A Rajapakse victory – especially an outright one – will strengthen the Ruling Family’s intent and ability to hollow out the democratic system and ensconce within its shell a despotic rule. A Sarath Fonseka Presidency will be the greatest unknown in Lankan politics. If Gen. Fonseka does keep his promises, Sri Lanka can be saved from the Cimmerian darkness of tyrannical rule. But if he does not, if he tries to rule Sri Lanka the same way he ruled the Army – as a private fiefdom – democracy will die. The choice before us therefore is not a straightforward one between democracy and dictatorship. Both options present dangers, deadly dangers, because neither candidate can be trusted not to disembowel Lankan democracy. This is truly our Scylla and Charibdes moment.

Familial nature of power is an essential characteristic of Rajapakse rule. The real power-wielders of the Rajapakse dispensation are the President and his brothers; there can be non-family strongmen from time to time (such as Mangala Samaraweera, Sarath Silva and Sarath Fonseka) but their hold on power is derivative and ephemeral. Power has thus become personalised and family-centred, a possession to be owned and enjoyed and a gift to be bestowed, at will, by President Rajapakse and his brothers. This Familial nature of power has not only made disloyalty to the Ruling Family coterminous with treachery; it has also encouraged a tendency towards arbitrariness and an intolerance of other wills and projects bordering on (and presaging) tyranny.

During the Fourth Eelam War, as the LTTE’s power of life and death over Tamil people began to ebb under the onslaught of the Lankan Forces, the Rajapakses’ power over Sri Lanka grew, until it reached a degree of arbitrariness and absoluteness incompatible with democratic norms. As the Tigers went down to a crushing defeat, the power of the Rajapakses reached dizzying heights. This was the context in which Mahinda Rajapakse was hailed as High King (a practice begun by the state media, either at the instigation or with the concurrence of the Family) and ministers began to talk of a long Rajapakse rule. As President Rajapakse once remarked, his main constituency is the Sinhalese. A military solution to the ethnic problem - defeating the LTTE without devolving more power to the Tamils – was an undertaking he gave this constituency. In return he expected Sinhala consent to a dynastic democracy. The existence of a weak and divided opposition increased exponentially the viability of this ‘tyranny within democracy’ project. This was the path the Rajapakses wanted to follow, post-war, and may yet follow, if Mahinda Rajapakse wins the Presidency outright and the UPFA inflicts a crushing defeat on a demoralised opposition at the parliamentary polls.

Gen. Fonseka’s criticism of Rajapakse rule is sourced not in principle but in opportunism, a distinction which can become vital if he wins the Presidency. Sarath Fonseka was a key participant in the Rajapakse project of breeding tyranny within a democratic cocoon, until he was deposed him from his own perch as the Army Commander. Gen. Fonseka is accurate when he talks about the dangers of a Rajapakse dictatorship but what he either fails to comprehend or chooses not to mention is that this is not a new danger. In fact the Rajapakses were at their most violently intolerant, most arrogantly despotic, before their monolithic rule fissured with the Fonseka fallout. It was when the Rajapakse-Fonseka triumvirate was intact that the onslaught on democratic rights and freedoms was most potent and dissenters (including the media) experienced the greatest moments of peril. The Rajapakse – Fonseka schism has weakened the regime, reducing its capacity to dominate and control, thereby providing the democratic system with a (desperately needed) breathing space.

The Threat of Dictatorship

The regime is howling about the non-existing danger of a military dictatorship to cover up the very real threat of a Family dictatorship, the fundaments of which are already in place. Sarath Fonseka is not contesting the election as Army Commander; nor is he mounting a coup or a rebellion against a democratic leadership. He is retired from the Army and is contesting the election as a civilian; consequently his challenge to the Rajapakses is neither unconstitutional nor anti-democratic. The claim that a Fonseka victory would be tantamount to the creation of a military dictatorship is nothing but a lie and a hypocritical one at that coming from an administration which permitted the Army Commander to dabble in politics by making incendiary remarks about sensitive political issues. The second most powerful man in the Rajapakse administration is a retired Colonel. The Rajapakses have appointed retired military men to key positions across the state, as Governors and ministry secretaries, diplomats and corporation chairmen. The ruling party has a policy of giving nominations to former soldiers at local and national elections. None of this turned Sri Lanka into a military dictatorship, anymore than a Fonseka victory would, because retired military men are civilians and their elevation does not change the essential character of the regime.

Though there is no threat of a military dictatorship there is a very real and very potent threat of a civilian dictatorship, backed by the military. This is not a new danger but a peril which emerged and gained momentum in the last four years. Under Rajapakse rule, a process of concentrating all effective power in the hands of the Ruling Family came into being. This process of empowering the family has been accompanied by a parallel and corresponding process of disempowering everyone else, from elected representatives and state officials to the ruling SLFP (note that the recent SLFP convention was turned into an extravaganza celebrating the Rajapakses). Under a Rajapakse Presidency this process of empowering the Family at the expense of everyone else will continue, though a non-outright victory at the Presidential election for Mr. Rajapakse and a marginal victory at the parliamentary election for the UPFA may lessen the potency and toxicity of this process.

Sarath Fonseka has proven, on more than one occasion, that he is not a mere cipher of the opposition parities backing him, and that he is very much his own man with his own agenda. He is also on record telling the media that he would not be a ceremonial president but will wield some power in order fulfil his election promises.

Given the man’s past conduct and present utterances, the common sense conclusion is that the UNP, the JVP and Mangala Samaraweera will have very little control over Mr. Fonseka, if he wins the Presidency. This presents a clear danger which needs to be understood. Given the sorry state of the opposition and the obvious incapacity of Ranil Wickremesinghe to mount an effective challenge to President Rajapakse, the decision to field Sarath Fonseka makes political sense (in any case the acrimonious break up of the triumvirate is a positive outcome). Given the nature of the Rajapakse regime, the opposition’s determination to defeat it is commendable, although the opposition must understand the flawed nature of the means with which it can even come close to achieving this object. The Fonseka candidacy may be a necessary gamble but it is also a dangerous one; it can backfire not just on the opposition but on the entire country with the explosive power of a volcano. In this sense the Fonseka candidacy is a double edged sword; it can be used to weaken the Rajapakses and prise open democratic spaces; it can also spin out of control wreaking havoc on polity and society.

Just as Mahinda Rajapakse turned against the very entities (and personalities) which enabled his victory, so can Sarath Fonseka. The attack on state media personnel during the UNP convention demonstrates that intolerance is not the sole prerogative of the regime but is a living force within the opposition as well. If Gen. Fonseka wins the presidency, the state media will become his organs and the non-state media (including the ones which are supporting him currently) can find themselves at the wrong end of the totem pole of power, again. The trajectory of Mahinda Rajapakse, from saviour to villain, is a morality tale which should caution his erstwhile allies (at least) of the dangers of sanctifying allies and demonising opponents. Hero-worshipping is dangerous in politics, especially in democratic politics. “What does a perfect group of followers do? It doesn’t think and it doesn’t even feel anymore…it follows”, wrote Victor Klemperer in ‘The Language of the Third Reich’. ‘Perfect followers’ are a threat to democracy because they, with their habit of unquestioning obedience and unthinking adulation, encourage the metamorphosis of imperfect democratic leaders into perfect tyrants.

The Minorities

President Rajapakse has rendered a political solution to the ethnic problem irrelevant by the simple expedient of denying the existence of the minorities (tellingly, he has not decreed the abolition of the majority!). He refuses to admit the existence of a Tamil problem which goes beyond the linguistic and the economic and seems to think that addressing some remarks to the Tamil people in Tamil at some public functions, together with a modicum of development, would suffice to make Tamils feel Sri Lankan (giving a Sinhala name to the state’s development programme for the Tamil North – Uthuru Vasanthaya – is symbolic and symbiotic of the regime’s ingrained Sinhala supremacism). In this sense Gen. Fonseka seems marginally better; he has accepted the existence of a minority problem and expressed a willingness to go beyond the 13th Amendment in search of a solution. If he does not change his line under JVP pressure, the conditions of the minorities may improve under a Fonseka Presidency (though he may attribute this promise to a misquote, post-polls, just as he says that his remark about Sri Lanka being the country of the Sinhalese was a misquote!).

When Gen. Fonseka expressed his willingness to accept help from anyone, including Mr. Pirapaharan’s parents, the regime raged against him, citing his remark as proof positive of his new penchant for treachery. Mr. Pirapaharan’s parents never joined the LTTE; nor are they responsible for the crimes of their son. The avalanche of government criticism of Gen. Fonseka’s sensible remark reveals the feudalistic mindset of the Rajapakses and their propensity to see a Tiger in any Tamil with a child, a spouse or a sibling in the LTTE. No wonder the government incarcerated the entire population of Killinochchi and Mulletivu districts in open prison camps! The regime has also consistently turned a blind eye to attacks on Christian and Catholic churches by Buddhist extremists, some of whom are stakeholders of the Rajapakse administration. The minorities have nothing to gain from a Rajapakse victory; unfortunately they also have very little reason to trust Mr. Fonseka’s promises, given his Sinhala supremacist past.

Post-election, the country would have very few recourses to prevent a President Rajapakse or a President Fonseka from undermining the democratic system from within, turning it into an empty shell which functions as an effective cover for a growing tyranny. In any case the key to the safeguarding democracy is not the abolition of the Executive Presidency but the abolition of those repressive laws, such as the Emergency and the PTA, which render ineffective the freedoms and rights granted to citizens in the Constitution. Post-war, post-LTTE there is no reason for the continued existence of these laws and yet they exist. The failure of the opposition to mount an effective campaign against the continued abuse of these wartime measures in peacetime is inexplicable. These anti-democratic measures played a key role in enabling the Rajapakses to abuse power in the last four years; their removal is a sine qua non for preventing the next president from disembowelling Lankan democracy completely.

-Sri Lanka Guardian