Seizing the Hour

EXCLUSIVE TO SRI LANKA GUARDIAN

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“Defence Secretary Rajapaksa said that the next six years would be of crucial importance to the country as the first government elected in a post-LTTE era had to tackle a separatist threat in a different manner. ‘They may not have artillery pieces in their arsenal and their strategy will be different, but let me tell you their goal will be the same,’ he warned”. (The Island – 17.4.2010)

(April 23, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The election is over and the UPFA is just six seats short of the two-thirds majority its leader craved for. How will President Mahinda Rajapakse utilise this transformative power? Will the focus be on economic development? Will priority be accorded to the search for a political solution to the ethnic problem? Will the Emergency and the PTA be removed, now that the war is won and the Tigers are annihilated? As a commentator asked, hopefully, ‘Will Sri Lanka seize the historic moment’?

Now is indeed a moment pregnant with possibilities, different and contradictory possibilities, and President Rajapakse is unlikely to let it pass him by. His next task is likely to be a new constitution, without which he will have to retire from politics at the end of his second term. The six-vote gap can be filled by offering the requisite number of opposition Parliamentarians suitable ministerial posts.

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"The Rajapakses cured and made whole the Sinhala ego, battered and shattered by Indian intervention and Tiger victories. Only a stagnant economy resulting in drastic deterioration of Southern living standards can dent this positive image and turn a majority of Sinhalese against the Rajapakses. The repressive measures are needed partly as an insurance against such an outcome." ...................................

What would be the shape and the form of this coming constitution? Would the Rajapakse regime opt for a strategy of normalisation based on political devolution, economic development and re-democratisation? Or would it go for a security based strategy, which would seek to achieve political conformity by quelling democratic dissent in the North and in the South? Last week, some pointers to the future were given by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse. In an interview with a clear admonitory intent, the Presidential sibling spelled out to the newly elected legislators their tasks and responsibilities and the parameters within which they must operate.

Mr. Rajapakse is a man who does not mince his words, and his words often delineate the future. Therefore notice needs to be taken when he pronounces that the main challenge before the new regime is to “thwart a fresh attempt by separatists operating abroad to throw a lifeline to the LTTE (backed by) a section of the international community….bent on reviving the LTTE and giving it recognition” (The Island – 17.4.2010). According to this analysis, though the war is won and the LTTE is annihilated as a military force, Tiger separatism is still the country’s main challenge. The recommended response is a political war, to be waged as single-mindedly as the Fourth Eelam War was. This combative worldview cannot but inform and influence the new Rajapakse Constitution, rendering prohibitive both the re-democratisation of polity and society and devolution of power and seriously impeding economic development. After all, if post-war Sri Lanka continues to be menaced by a powerful separatist conspiracy, the advocacy of human rights, media freedom and even judicial independence can become not only inapposite but even anti-patriotic.

Carpe Jugulum

So, the shooting war has ended, but the peace which has dawned is to be a peace characterised and contoured by an all out political war against Tiger separatism, its international masters and national agents. The tasks and the course of the new government are thus predetermined. For instance, the Defence Secretary speaks of the need for “new laws to meet security requirements” (ibid). And what better way to enact new laws than to include them in the forthcoming Rajapakse constitution? The new constitution is therefore likely to be a far less democratic and far more repressive document than even the present constitution.

A democracy in which the rulers appropriate unto themselves the right to decide when dissent is to be permitted and which acts of opposition should be allowed will be a democracy in name only. And this is becoming the Lankan way, under the Rajapakses. As Mr. Rajapakse points out with admirable clarity, “Suppressing the separatist movement and tackling its propaganda apparatus should be a major part of Sri Lanka’s strategy against the LTTE….. The new government should go all out against any local element promoting separatist sentiments regardless of political consequences…the country could not afford to make way for terrorists” (ibid). So no detours; no moderation; no extrinsic considerations; no weakening; go for the jugular of anti-patriots, irrespective of the consequences. Such ‘patriotic’ excesses can be made legal by the new constitution and rendered kosher by the new commonsense. Intolerance of democratic dissent becomes a patriotic virtue, because ‘divisive politics’ help the enemy. And anyone can be guilty of ‘divisive politics’, media personnel and trade unionists; civil society activists and ordinary citizens (a pointer could be the case of Sarah Malani Perera, arrested for writing a book about her conversion from Buddhism to Islam, detained for a month under a Defence Ministry order). Culprits can also include opposition politicians and government politicians. According to Gotabhaya Rajapakse, “Opposition political parties or constituent partners of the ruling coalition should not be allowed to engage in divisive politics” (ibid). Incidentally, this way any internal dissent against Rajapakse dominance of the SLFP/UPFA can be castigated as ‘anti-patriotic’ and dealt with, with suitable severity.

When the necessary distinction between the state, the ruling party and the ruling family evaporates, tyranny is half-way in. In the last four and a half years, we have witnessed a conscious effort by the Rajapakses to impose their worldview and project on not just the UPFA government but also on the Lankan state. The coming years are likely to witness the continuation of this effort to remould the state into a shape and a form that is in line with the basic tenets of the Rajapakse project. In his interview the Defence Secretary “expressed concern that a section of officialdom could help the separatist cause by trying to appease foreign governments and some funding agencies” (ibid). Senior public officials who try to act objectively and moderately, even in the hope of preventing punitive economic measures by the international community (such as the removal of the GSP) can thus be accused of ‘helping the separatist cause’. With such a threat hanging over them, state officials are likely to act as servitors of the Ruling Family rather than as public servants.

This process of ‘coordination’ aimed at making the state confirm to the partisan political project of the Ruling Family seems to include the judiciary as well. For instance, Mr. Rajapakse highlights the “pivotal importance of the judiciary, particularly the Attorney General’s Department, in supporting the government’s efforts to suppress terrorism” (ibid). An independent judiciary is an indispensable feature of a functioning democracy. Political authorities can spew charges at anyone, without even a shred of evidence; but the judiciary is not supposed to convict in the absence of convincing proof. A case in point is the decision by the Chief Magistrate and Additional District Judge of Anuradhapura, Dharshika Wimalaratne to acquit and discharge eight suspects arrested in relation to the assassination of Gen. Janaka Perera. Was the Defence Secretary referring to this incident, when he mentioned “the recent move to release some LTTE operatives held in connection with the assassination of Gen. (retd) Janaka Perera. Timely intervention by the Defence Ministry had prevented their release” (ibid)? If so, his statement that “the political establishment would have to take into consideration the security aspects of even on-going judicial proceedings as part of their overall measures to sustain maximum possible pressure on the separatist movement” (ibid) is extremely portentous. Translated into ordinary English, does this not amount to an advocacy of political intervention in judicial processes, of arresting and detaining people even when courts determine that there is no reason to do so (and re-arresting them, once they are released by the courts)? If so, another important bastion of democracy, a necessary guarantor of citizens’ rights and freedoms, an independent judiciary will also fall victim to the Rajapakse project of creating a ‘conformist state’, which accepts and adapts to the Rajapakse logos.

‘The Good Subject’

Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s interview reveals the immense scope and radical intent of the Rajapakse project which aims at nothing less than the remoulding of Lankan state, polity and society, to bring them in line with the twin goals of Familial Rule and Sinhala dominance. Such a mammoth task would have been impossible without the victory over the LTTE which turned Mahinda and Gotabhaya Rajapakse into Sinhala heroes. Their credit and credibility with their Sinhala constituency is indicated by their ability to persuade the Sinhala South to turn its collective back on the other member of the triumphant trinity, Gen. Sarath Fonseka, once he joined the opposition. The Rajapakses have succeeded in juxtaposing their partisan interests with Sinhala racial interests, thereby giving patriotism a partisan tint and flavour.

Many Sinhalese (including quite a few non-UPFA voters) are undoubtedly grateful for the Ruling Siblings for restoring the ‘balance’ between the Sinhalese and the non-Sinhalese by leading a largely Sinhala army to triumph over the Tamil Tigers (the accent, let’s admit, is more on Tamil than on Tiger). The Rajapakses cured and made whole the Sinhala ego, battered and shattered by Indian intervention and Tiger victories. Only a stagnant economy resulting in drastic deterioration of Southern living standards can dent this positive image and turn a majority of Sinhalese against the Rajapakses. The repressive measures are needed partly as an insurance against such an outcome.

But that is for the future. Currently the Rajapakse project is hegemonic, because it has the backing of the Sinhala majority. As Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s interview demonstrates, the Family is moving consciously, to use this moment of hegemony not to re-democratise or to devolve but to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the Ruling Family, as the real representative of the ‘nation’. Re-anointing Tiger separatism as the main threat facing a post-war Sri Lanka and launching a political war against this mirage, form a necessary part of this effort – because so long as a majoiryt of Sinhalese can be convinced to regard separatism as an omnipresent menace which must be battled with relentlessly and mercilessly, the Rajapakses have an ideal excuse for their misdeeds and incapacities, as well as for their continued dominance.

In a brilliant exposition of New Speak, Gotabhaya Rajapakse stated, “that those who pontificated to Sri Lanka about the virtues of human rights, media freedom and democracy were the worst culprits responsible for crimes against civilians” (ibid). Such counter-logic form a necessary part of the new commonsense which proclaims the division of society into patriots and anti-patriots, elevates Tiger separatism as the main threat and challenge (despite the annihilation of the LTTE as a politico-military force) and equates opposition to Rajapakse Rule with treachery. In such a politico-psychological landscape, even the arrest and the formal prosecution of the aged grandmother of Danuna Tilakaratne (the son-in-law of Gen. Fonseka) for not informing on her fugitive grandson seem neither excessive nor vindictive but something unremarkably normal. The Rajapakses have succeeded in imposing on the Southern society a new sense of ‘obviousness’ (the LTTE did the same vis-à-vis the Tamils) which makes us accept as normal words and deeds we would have been outraged by in the not so distant past. Un-noticed and un-remarked, there is taking place a radical transformation of our consciousness, including our sense of right and wrong. From thinking citizens we are becoming ‘good subjects’, supportive or tolerant of Rajapakse Rule.