If this is the plight of the Sinhalese people one can imagine that of the Tamils and their basic aspirations. Considering the fact that immediately after the conclusion of the war in May 2009, thousands of Tamils in the IDP camps and outside were summarily killed by the Sri Lankan soldiers at their own whim leads us to believe that the Tamil people can in no way expect any justice under the new system.
(September 28, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Deserving of a despotic monarchy if not just short of it, in its traditional sense, the overwhelming majority of Sri Lankans both directly and through their parliament in the latest constitutional amendment have either wittingly or unwittingly endorsed Mahinda Rajapakse restoring an autocratic rule over them in its almost absolute sense in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, within a matrix of unresolved contradictions peculiar only to Sri Lanka. This was coming to them from 1972. They would rather have despotic governance and be its subjects than give what is rightfully due to the Tamil people. Indeed, the Sinhala polity has finally got the governance they deserve for which they had worked hard and they will have to bear with it unless it is thrown out either constitutionally or through violence. The question is: will they ever have the moral strength to do so?
In their increasing political immaturity and the lack of vigilance and ignorance the overwhelming majority of the Sinhalese polity could not have aspired for anything better for their own welfare than to make the Tamil people second class citizens and keep them oppressed, a trend begun in 1956. For them, it is not the escalating price of food, the rising cost of transport and fuel that are the threats to their livelihood but the demonised Tamil menace constantly made out to be their greatest enemy, a mindset, having come down for centuries and manipulated by their leadership. This, they are made to believe has now been finally eradicated by the great liberator, Mahinda Rajapakse who has been given a free hand in consolidating his destiny and along with it his dynasty in return, to be rewarded with the sky as the limit. It is in the interests of the Rajapakses to keep the people politically ignorant for their own survival. This is easily done with the complete suppression of the free media, having now been accomplished.
Former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s Constitution of 1972, regarded illegal by many experts, while making Sri Lanka a Sinhala Buddhist State, took away, amongst other things, the meager safeguards provided to the minorities by the one preceding it. The separate judicial power that had been vested in the judicature was abolished and along with it the separation of powers. Its successor, the 1978 Constitution, an amalgam of the US, Gaullist constitutions and the Westminster system, tailor made by his brother, a brilliant Queen’s Counsel to suit the whims and fancies of a megalomaniac JR Jayewardene (JR) whose childhood dreams of emulating the autocratic British colonial governors of prior 1900 and early 20th, century was made possible by an unprecedented 5/6th majority afforded to him at the 1977 elections.
Jayewardene’s overwhelming victory in 1977 was made possible by the misrule and the short sighted economic policies of Mrs, Bandaranaike exceeding her powers through her political ignorance, leading to starvation and the abject inconveniences of the poor, and above all, the monumentally rising popularity of Dudley Senanayake, the leader of the United National Party (UNP), who predeceased the 1977 elections making his despised deputy JR, inherit an illegitimate victory that was least meant for him. The other was the electoral support given by the Jathika Vimumthi Peramuna (JVP) in the belief that it would be easier to defeat the UNP than the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) underestimating JR’s ruthless cunning, and ironically, it was the UNP regime that summarily executed Rohana Wijeweera the leader of the JVP in the most obscene manner.
JR sustained himself in power by State sponsored anti-Tamil racist Pogroms put in train in 1977 and carried on periodically until 1983, the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979 a piece of legislation that was without any question aimed principally against the Tamils to punish them for agitating for their legitimate rights comparable only to the most obnoxious Terrorism Act of the Apartheid South Africa of 1967, the torture, disappearances and deaths of Tamils suspected of militancy and by the burning of the public library in Jaffna, an irreplaceable icon of Tamil culture, supervised by three of his cabinet ministers.
Often referred to as Hitler within his party circles but imagining himself to be another Napoleon Bonaparte, JR went about the countryside masquerading also as a true Sinhala king. For example, he would tell the starving Sinhalese villagers in the drought stricken areas that he would bring them rain, resurrecting a belief that a good and righteous king could bring them rain for farming and thereby prosperity. Judiciary and the public service were under threat and his first chief justice who had stated that the executive action had eroded the position of the Chief Justice and the judges of the Supreme Court (Ceylon Daily News, 18 November, 1982) had to flee to Australia in November 1982. The steady and rapid decline in the justice system and the working of independent commissions had already begun.
It is in a culture of misplaced beliefs and the deification of a saviour against the Tamils that the mediocrity in Rajapakse has succeeded in emerging as the great protector of the Sinhalese to be an absolute autocrat. To complete the picture of Rajapakse as the true antagonist of the Tamils has to be seen in the image of king Dutu Gemunu of 2300 year vintage, who according to the Sinhala Buddhist chronicle, Mahavamsa written, 6th. Century AD, by a Buddhist monk was forgiven by the Gods for killing thousands of Tamils “for they were all were men of evil”, beginning the culture of impunity for crimes against the Tamils. We cannot say for certain whether Dutu Gemunu was responsible for the killing of innocent civilian Tamils to qualify to be a war criminal in the modern sense but we can certainly say that in the 2009 war more than 30,000 Tamil civilians paid the supreme price for being Tamils.
Both at the Presidential and the general elections, Rajapakse kept the people confused and guessing as to what his intentions were in regard to the future of the of the Head of State. He then unilaterally and conveniently chooses to be a true despot, a reflection on the declining political consciousness of the Sri Lankan body politic so as to be so debased. The voting by the government members and some members of the opposition including some so called Marxists, and Tamils given to traditional political begging is evidence of this. Opportunism, corruption, greed, racism, the psychosis of fear, all permeate the Sri Lankan political scene making the constitution in the present form a national disgrace.
Here is a leader who underestimates the intelligence of his own people who reposed in him complete freedom and their unqualified trust to use his powers in the hope that these would be reciprocated to be used with responsibility for their benefit, while of course, providing the security to keep the Tamils at bay as against consolidating himself and his dynasty. Abusing his powers, Rajapakse has converted their trust into absolute dictatorship.
If this is the plight of the Sinhalese people one can imagine that of the Tamils and their basic aspirations. Considering the fact that immediately after the conclusion of the war in May 2009, thousands of Tamils in the IDP camps and outside were summarily killed by the Sri Lankan soldiers at their own whim leads us to believe that the Tamil people can in no way expect any justice under the new system. The latest example is the refusal by the farcical Reconciliation Commission to hear the evidence of the Tamils in the north as to the plight of their relatives taken into custody who have now disappeared without a trace. Tamils have therefore to be on the lookout. There is more to come and they, the Diasporas included, have to play their cards with caution.
9The writer is a editor of the eelamnation)
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