Programmes of Hope: Debating the elections and the minority question

By Sivamohan Sumathy

(January 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Recently, I was stopped at this checkpoint just outside Colombo. It was about 8 pm and I was in a three wheeler. Perusing my identity document, the security person queried in Sinhala: ‘Are you Tamil?’ Taken aback by this query, I paused a little before saying ‘yes.’ But what I actually wanted to say was ‘Hasn’t the President said there are no Tamils, Muslims or Sinhalese? That everybody is one?’ Yet, going against the President’s pronouncement, I said, ‘yes’. This is one of my check point stories. Many of us have a bag full of them. What does this nondescript story reveal to us? It is telling in its very ordinariness. It is uncannily revealing of a predicament for many of us as we enter the new year and face a decisive election. Check points may come and go. High Security Zones may disappear tomorrow. We welcome all this. But the question that I pose today is not just about checkpoints that are visibly there, but is about the check points that dot our path of struggle for a clear sense of belonging to this country.

Election Fevers: commissions and omissions

While the elections climax to a feverish pitch of frenzied activity with promises and counter promises, a question that we are confronted with again and again, in all its multiple configurations, is: Is there a minority question in the country? For the security personnel, yes. If we observe and carefully follow the concerns and demands made by various political alliances of minority groups, the question seems ever present. If one consulted and worked with minority communities, one would see a more nuanced and yet forthright response to this in the affirmative. All in all, for many of us, who identify with the Muslims and Tamils of the country and with other marginal(ized) communities, there is a minority question that plagues our existence in every way.

Over the long 30 years of war and the even longer years of the ethnic conflict which has permeated and dominated the political scene in Sri Lanka, any attempt to address the politics and the political of the minorities has been stymied by the thorny issue of centralized control. Centralized control manifests in constitutional terms in both the executive presidency and the unitary structure. But the issue is fundamentally more complex than one of merely addressing and reforming the state at the top. One has to look at the political dynamism of the last 30 years as well in this scenario. On the one hand, the state has entrenched itself as a unitary structure and is unwilling to move from that position, though the promise of the abolition of the Executive Presidency does raise people’s hopes. On the other hand, and in the tragic irony that accompanies all contestations, people’s lives, particularly those of the north and east, have been thrown completely out of joint in the intervening years of the conflict. People have lost control of the centre. The anger and clamour for change all round, in the north, east, south and west, speak of this urgency. Here, I speak both concretely and metaphorically. While people on the whole feel more and more alienated from the centre, despite the increasing number of politicians and multiple elections that run all year round like super star contests, actual power is steeped in and entrenched in the centre and has become even more centralized in the hands of a few. The rise of the Rajapaksa family is only one manifestation of this.

One wonders why the Rajapaksa regime did not press forward with a political solution to the conflict, following on its triumph in the battlefield. It was hugely popular in the immediate aftermath of the war, but lacked both the courage and the political vision necessary for such a step. Intent on preserving its own control on the state, the regime made a calculated mistake. Their action of disregarding the concerns of the minorities, particularly with regard to the IDP situation, served to alienate a community that was eager to be drawn into the political process of nation(s)-building. But the singular programme of regime building of the Rajapaksas lost sight of what would have in effect stabilized their position within the state at least to some extent. Also, displaced Muslims from the north, evicted by the LTTE in 1990 have been waiting for a clear response for a solution to their uncertain status in Sri Lanka. The government announces dismantling high security zones today. Why did it wait for so long to do this? Maybe the answer has to be found somewhere else. Any devolution package leading to a solution and addressing the concerns of Muslim and Tamil minorities, would have been fundamentally detrimental to the centralized control that the Rajapaska regime relies on so heavily for its continued state of dominance.

At the same time, one would like to ask from those minority parties and persons rallying around the opposition today, namely Sarath Fonseka, what programme of action do they offer their constituencies? Today, at this critical juncture, where we are trying to debate about our futures, it is important for those who speak for minority groups and peoples to have a clear assessment of the situation. Their rhetoric should match their strategies for political negotiation and engagement with the state and other parties/groups. I would like to ask them to work out a viable political programme and engage in dialogue at multiple levels with the people on the pressing issues of the day.

In order to do this, we perhaps have to move from a discussion of regime changes to a discussion on how to exploit the spaces for discussion that the conclusion to the war and the run up to the election has opened up: a discussion on democracy and the minority question at multiple levels, building links between different peoples and communities.

Crumbs from the table of the high? The politics of state patronage and the ethnicisation of state and civil society

Centralized control has enshrined and fine-tuned to the most disgusting level the politics of patronage, which in my view, takes on a dangerously ethnicised form, particularly in the east, where ethnic tensions had been steadily on the rise, from the very beginning of the postcolonial state, if not before. LTTE’s reign of terror in the north and the east, served to exacerbate these tensions, while the state and successive governments did nothing to alleviate rampant violence, even in the aftermath of the LTTE’s defeat in the east. Centralized control and the politics of state patronage, merely served to fragmentize communities, pitting one against the other. On the other hand, the rising cost of living, hitting not only the poorer classes, but also the struggling middle class, brings all communities together.

The Rajapaksa regime’s only ‘positive’ response to insistent appeals by minority groups and alliances to address their grievances has been the grand idea of development and development projects in the east and the north. Development is touted as the panacea for all ills. But development projects, real or proposed, have increased the fears of the minorities. On the one hand they did not bring any relief to the people on the ground. Development today is perceived as another form of corruption. At the same time, they increased ethnic tensions, leading to, in some cases, violence. ‘Development’ has further exacerbated the issue of displacement. While the country and the people grappled with the issue of there being large numbers of displaced persons, running into several hundreds of thousands, the government did not put forward or implement a thought-out, and, more importantly, collaborative plan of action to settle and resettle displaced persons, leaving them and us in a limbo, feeling more and more alienated from the centre and, as a consequence, powerless. While the current government has made some headway with regard to the Official Language Policy by bringing in legislation regarding its implementation, in the absence of any sense of actual relief and in its sad isolation from all that is seen as important in the lives of the people, this remains a forgotten and minor achievement.



Do we belong? And how?: the memory of Lasantha Wickramatunge

As long as the minority question persists, the urgent question of democracy too will remain unattended to and unresolved to any satisfaction. Some of the most pressing concerns of minority groups, including plantation or Malaiyaha communities have been security. Security comes with a sense of belonging to the land, to the places in which one resides and the country at large. The question of unlawful detention, the still existing PTA, and the still prevailing act of emergency raises questions concerning security, whatever the regime might be. As we remember Lasantha Wickramatunge this month on his tragic death a year ago, who with unstinting courage challenged the ruling regime, we hope that the human and social rights of people become focal points of action of political activists and groups, regardless of ethnicity.

Speaking of courage and political action, I would like to bring up another crucial failure of our time. The minority question is hydra headed and can be posed in multiple ways. I, too, am multiple. I belong to another significant minority group in the country, and that is that of a left orientation. But today the left tradition of the country is in shambles and has caved in to, for the most part, majoritarian Sinhala nationalism. It is too late for the ‘traditional’ left to change direction. They are a lost cause and have acted with a singular lack of courage. But it might be about time for a new generation of thinkers and actors to forge out on a path of critical thinking, and to forge a dialogue across ethnic communities to discuss issues of class and gender and importantly, the minority question itself. The war economy has created multiple minority communities, including displaced Sinhalese and injured soldiers among others. Do they become a part of the minority question? Will there be other minority communities arising out of the post-war economy? These are questions that we need to seriously ponder.

In this spirit of reassessing the situation on the ground and as a way of pressing forward the advantages that any space for discussion opens up, I raise these questions that concern us as minorities in this country. For us it is a time of reflection, reevaluation and the plotting of a programme, both in the singular and the plural, which would be meaningful to everybody in this country in the short and the long term.