Our Rajapakse Future

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“Long to reign over us, God save the King!” - English National Anthem

(February 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Last week the contours of our Rajapakse future became too manifest to be ignored, too unequivocal to be misunderstood. On the night of February 8th, the military police and the army launched a commando type raid on the office of retired General and former Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka and arrested him. The next morning, twenty-something law student Namal Rajapakse, the eldest offspring of the President, applied for nominations for the family enclave of Hambantota.

Neither development was unexpected, expect by the self-delusional. Both presage the anti-democratic and family-centric future that is in the making for Sri Lanka under the auspices of the Rajapakse Family.

Just two weeks after the conclusion of the Presidential election, the man who challenged Candidate Rajapakse (and is the bete noire of his omnipotent brother) was assaulted, handcuffed and dragged away like a common criminal to an undisclosed location. Such a development cannot but cause the gravest misgivings about the future of Lankan democracy, particularly given its timing - in the run up to a crucial parliamentary election, in which Gen. Fonseka was expected to play a key role. The retired general was arrested under the Military Act, possibly because getting a warrant from a civil court would not be easy, given the fantastic nature of the charges against him. He may be tried by a military tribunal, a stratagem which would enable his prosecutors to avoid media scrutiny and depict abusive allegations and conspiracy theories as hard evidence.

Both the arrest of Gen. Fonseka and the crass manner in which it was done are symbolic of the Rajapakse ethos premised on boundless arrogance, absolute intolerance and total paranoia. This action, so manifestly anti-democratic, so unmistakeably reeking of phobia, hatred and vengeance, so clearly aimed at teaching a humiliating lesson a former acolyte who dared to commit the supreme crime of lese majéste is entirely compatible with the logic of the Rajapakse power project. Without a new constitution, Rajapakse rule will wither away at the end of the President’s second term and the innumerable family members, who currently occupy the heights of the polity and society on the basis of kinship, will be compelled to retreat to less exalted and lucrative places, more in keeping with their natural abilities. Can the Rajapakses afford such a future? Would they not do anything to avoid such a mighty fall, at whatever cost to anyone? When the very survival of the Familial project of the Ruling Rajapakses is at stake, anything can happen, however heinous or grotesque.

Democracy Imperilled

The Rajapakses need their own constitution and for that they need the UPFA to win a two thirds majority (or something close to that) at the upcoming parliamentary election. Until Gen. Fonseka entered the political scene, this objective was regarded as a fait accompli by the powers that be. However the Fonseka factor energised the opposition, giving it a new sense of strength and purpose. Notwithstanding his failure to beat the incumbent (an unrealistic goal in the first place), Gen. Fonseka would have been an asset to the opposition at the parliamentary election, given his ‘independent’ image and his consequent (albeit diminished) capacity to act as a unifying factor, a ‘bridge’ between the UNP and the JVP. And going by government propaganda a UNP-JVP unity is something the rulers find particularly abhorrent. Little wonder that Mr Fonseka had to be removed, in time for the parliamentary election. When the challenge is as daunting as winning 60% of the national vote or more, any impediment would seem intolerable and unaffordable.

The arrest of Gen. Fonseka has dealt a body blow to the opposition, politically and psychologically, in the run up to the crucial parliamentary election. His arrest demonstrates the lengths to which the Rajapakses are willing to go and can go to ensure the success of their project of Familial Rule. The arrest sends a potent message to all those who oppose or would dream of opposing the Rajapakses (especially potential dissidents within the SLFP); after all if the former Army Commander who defeated the Tigers can be dragged away like a common felon, what cannot happen to ordinary citizens, if they incur the ire of the rulers?

Had the regime been content with winning the parliamentary election with a workable majority, had it not been so intent on constitution-making, democracy would not have become endangered in Sri Lanka. Though a solid but simple majority may satisfy the SLFP and the UPFA, it will not suffice for the Rajapakses; thus the need for an apocryphal tale of a ‘Bolshevik style coup’ as an excuse to crack down on key opposition figures (just as JR Jayewardene needed the ‘Naxalite Plot’ in order to crack down on the SLFP radicals, in the run up to the Referendum). Post-Presidential election, the regime commenced a multi-pronged campaign to weaken the opposition. The failed attempt to silence the para-JVP Lanka paper and the arrest of its editor were followed by the arrest of several Fonseka supporters. The JVP may well be the next in line, if the remarks by the President at an election meeting in Bandarawela about “a political party which is well-known for creating a fear psychosis among the people in the past (is) trying to sow the seeds of discontent and fear among the people again” (Daily News – 23.1.2010) are anything to go by.

The regime is also planning to clamp down on the internet, reportedly with Chinese help. In her weekly column, Namini Wijedasa mentions an interview she had with the Director General of the Media Centre for National Security, Lakshman Hulugalle on the subject. His remarks indicate that a future in which internet is as unfree for Sri Lankans as it is for the Chinese or the Iranians may not be far: “If you go through the internet, SMS and e mails, a lot of damage was done over the last one month by circulating rumours and unproved allegations… We are not talking only about the Rajapakse family or about a single political party. Even if a government official has something bogus circulated about him he has no way of answering or correcting it…. We can’t allow these people to do whatever they want. We want to go into these details, find out the people behind this and stop it” (Lakbima News – 7.2.2010). Given the trends we may live to see a day in which a man can be considered an anti-patriot for being less than optimistic about the blessedness of the Rajapakse future (like the character in the Fellini film Armarcord - I remember – who was arrested and tortured for just saying ‘If Mussolini continues like this, I don’t know..’)

Speaking about the nature of German nationalism (from the womb of which Nazism emerged) Thomas Mann said, “The German concept of liberty…. behaved internally with an astonishing degree of lack of freedom, of immaturity, of dull servility. It was a militant slave mentality….” (Germany and the Germans).These words are as applicable to Sinhala supremacism of the Rajapakse variety just as they were to Tamil separatism of the Tiger variety: Vellupillai Pirapaharan offered Tamils an implicit Mephistophelian bargain – their basic democratic and human rights in return for ‘liberation’ from Sinhala dominance via a separate state. A majority of Tamils accepted, however unhappily, because of the Tigers’ proven capacity to take on the Sinhala state. The journey that was premised on that bargain ended on the shores of the Nandikadal lagoon and in the Northern internment camps. By voting for Mahinda Rajapakse in overwhelming numbers, a majority of the Sinhalese too renewed their consent to a similar deal, trading democratic and human rights for a Sinhala supremacist state, a state which keeps the minorities in their place and tells the Western world to mind its own business. By the time the South realises the consequences of the choice they made on January 26th, irreparable damage would have been done not only to Lankan democracy but also to Lankan national interests (the loss of the GSP+ is just the beginning).

The arrest of Gen. Fonseka is not an anomaly but an inevitable outcome of the Rajapakse way. His fate can become the fate of any one of us who opposes or criticises the Ruling Family. To condemn Gen. Fonseka’s arrest, to insist a fair trial in a civilian court for him, under the watchful eyes of the country and the world, one does not have to believe that Fonseka is a hero or a democrat; I do not, any more than I would apply these epithets to his former companions, the Rajapakse brothers. What is applicable here is the Niemöller principle – if one is silent when others are persecuted (even if the victims happen to be ‘aliens’ or ‘enemies’) one is undermining one’s own democratic future.

The history of the Rajapakse era is littered with occurrences which were hitherto inconceivable – from the defeat of the LTTE to the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunga and the incarceration of almost the entire populace of two districts in internment camps.

The arrest of a Presidential contender who obtained 40% of the national vote (4.17 million votes), just two weeks after the end of the election, is just another instance of the Rajapakses’ willingness and ability to do what other leaders (including President Jayewardene) were unwilling to. If the Rajapakses manage to win their two thirds and promulgate their own constitution, the Kafkaesque may become the norm in Sri Lanka.

Devolution Abandoned

A Rajapakse constitution, apart from ensuring the perpetuity of Rajapakse rule, will contain two absences – the independent commissions of the 17th Amendment and the provincial level devolution of the 13th Amendment. President Rajapakse’s antipathy to the 17th Amendment need not be belaboured. As his remarks at the Independence Day demonstrate, his constitution is likely to substitute a system of village or district level administrative decentralisation for the provincial councils: “I am certain that the people in the North and East could stand on their own feet through a solution wrought by devolving power to the villages and empowering them in the entire country” (emphasis mine). A Rajapakse constitution is therefore likely to deprive the minorities of even the devolution they have currently, thereby completing the post-2005 paradigmatic shift to the Sinhala supremacist status quo ante (pre-1987).

The Sinhala majority (like the Tamils of yore) will remain hypnotised by triumphalism, until economic distress intrudes. The minorities however are in a position to realise, anew, that they can expect nothing positive from this administration. The minorities acted sensibly when most of them voted against Candidate Rajapakse, at the last Presidential election. Had they voted for him, he would have taken it as proof positive that they are happy with his Sinhala supremacist agenda (this, after all, is the man who said, publicly that Tamils are happy in the Northern internment camps). A protest vote therefore was the only realistic choice open to the minorities.

The parliamentary election will afford the minorities a chance to play a more positive, proactive role, by becoming key partners in the necessary effort to impede a Rajapakse constitution. They should vote in numbers to ensure that those minority parties capable of standing up to the Rajapakses obtain the maximum possible parliamentary representation. This democratic strength can then be used to block a Rajapakse constitution or at the least to minimise its retrogressive characteristics. If the Tamils and the Muslims fail, they may be compelled to live in a Sinhala supremacist Sri Lanka, just as the Sinhala South, if it permits the UPFA to obtain a two thirds majority, will be compelled to live in a Rajapakse supremacist Sri Lanka, a country in which a democratic façade hides the anti-democratic rule of a Family Oligarchy.