Sowing Dragon’s Teeth

The Presidential election has so far claimed four lives on both sides of the political divide. Many more have been injured while damages to property have been considerable.

If the nature of the campaign is an indicator, this election is likely to be an exceptionally violent, unfree and unfair exercise. And one of the many negative firsts we have witnessed during this campaign is the use of serving army officers, in uniform, as propaganda mouthpieces for the ruling party. The electorate is being told that voting against the President would be an act of ingratitude and as well as an anti-patriotic act.

“A vote for the opposition candidate is a vote for separatism”
Mahinda Rajapakse (Rupavahini News – 22.1.2010)

An electoral exercise, in which the necessary line of demarcation between the ruling party/family and the state is violated persistently, at every point, is likely to harm rather than help democracy. This election is being fought by the regime as if the opposition is a national enemy rather than a democratic opponent. Repeated requests by the Election Commissioner to cease abusing state resources, to abide by election laws and the laws of the land are being ignored, blatantly.

The cancer of impunity which has afflicted Sri Lanka in the last several years has become more rooted and pervasive during the election campaign and because of the manner in which it is being conducted.

Though this is an election to choose the executive president of the country, a rational and thorough discussion about issues besetting the country and the people is conspicuous by its absence. Both sides seem to prefer charges and counter-charges, mud slinging and innuendos, stirring slogans and vague promises to a reasoned and informed discussion about the nature and trajectory of post-war Sri Lanka. What passes for policy debate is really the overuse (and abuse) of such emotive and nebulous terms as patriotism and change.

\When the war ended, the priority should have been accorded to the task of restoring normalcy as soon as possible, especially in the North and the East. The focus should have been on the resettlement of the displaced people and the reconstruction of damaged infrastructure. Equal emphasis should have been placed on installing democracy and the rule of law, as well on as providing the space and the time to the people on all sides of the multiple ethno-religious divides to mourn their dead and come to terms with their losses. Genuine reconciliation among the communities which make up Sri Lanka cannot be brought about if there is no opportunity for the wounds of war to heal; and wounds, the existence of which cannot even be acknowledged, will not heal but fester out of sight, until they infect the entire body with their venom.

An Unnecessary Election

The challenge before the government, post-war, was, thus, momentous. The regime had to begin acting as the government of all the people of Sri Lanka rather than the government of the Sinhala majority. There was an urgent need to reach out to the devastated Tamils, to reassure them about the future, and to involve them in the nation building process. Instead, the administration did the opposite.

The President repeatedly declared the abolition of the minorities, without a corresponding abolition of the majority. His government went a step further and tried to bring in legislation to effectively outlaw minority parties. The President also made it clear that a political solution to the ethnic problem is not on his agenda. The repressive security measures put in place to defeat the LTTE were continued, post-LTTE, while almost the entire populace of the Killinochchi and Mullaitivu districts were incarcerated in internment camps. With each repressive, illegal or insensitive measure the regime undermined whatever opportunities there existed to achieve genuine reconciliation by involving Tamils and Muslims in the nation building effort as willing and fully equal partners.

In the South too, much remained to be done, post-war, in addition to restoring democracy and the rule of law. Even if no immediate economic relief to the masses was possible, given the precarious financial situation in the country, there were other more doable (and arguably urgent) tasks to fulfil. For instance there was an urgent need to improve education and health standards in the country such as a concerted effort to control the spread of swine flu (and other preventable diseases such as Dengue). According to media reports 45 patients have died of swine flu in Sri Lanka, between Jan. 1st and Jan 15th, 2010 – which amounts to 3 patients a day. These numbers warrant the declaration of a state of health emergency – but the government, including the many national and provincial health ministers, is too involved in the election to bother about the wellbeing of the populace. Instead the issue is neglected and the repercussions of this neglect are under-reported.

This is an unnecessary election, an election which need not have been held for two more years. This untimely election is being held at great cost, for no other reason than to enable President Rajapakse to gain the maximum electoral benefit from the victorious war.

Previously the regime held the provincial council election on a staggered basis, at enormous cost, because it wanted to test the mood of the electorate and to maximise its electoral performance.

Intent on perpetuating its rule via a massive win in the presidential election, the regime focuses its energy on wooing the masses, not with deeds but with elaborate promises and costly propaganda campaigns. Given the regime’s lackadaisical performance on the development/governance front, most of its pledges seem too fantastic to be taken seriously. After all, can a government, which is incapable of clearing the garbage in Colombo and the suburbs, take Sri Lanka from the Third World to the First World, as one campaign poster promises?

Raising the Separatist Bogey

Antonio Gramsci defined commonsense as “traditional popular conception of the world; the conception of the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed” (Prison Notebooks). From 1956 (the year of Sinhala Only) Lankan commonsense permitted, excused and even justified naked, unbridled Sinhala supremacism at every level of polity and society.

This era of impunity reached its apogee in the Black July of 1983 and ended in 1987 with Indian politico-military intervention. The shock of Indian intervention caused a paradigmatic shift in the prevailing Sinhala supremacist commonsense. Racism became unfashionable and racial riots unacceptable. The notion of Sri Lanka as the country of all her citizens rather then the exclusive preserve of the Sinhalese began to gain ground. A bipartisan consensus emerged between the two main parties of the need to offer Tamils a political solution based on enhanced devolution, which goes beyond the confines of the unitary state. From 1087 until 2005, these became the contours of the dominant political commonsense.

In 2005 Mahinda Rajapakse contested the Presidency on a revanchist platform, which included explicit adherence to unitary state structure and open rejection of the concept of traditional homelands. This marked the commencement of a return journey to the pre-1987 paradigm of Sinhala supremacism. Today that retrogressive journey is almost complete. The evidence of this ideological relapse is clearly discernible in the current election campaign, with the President himself using coded racism in his speeches, especially in relation to the TNA’s decision to back General Fonseka.

Had the TNA abstained from supporting any of the candidates and urged the Tamil people to abstain from voting, as the LTTE did in the past, it would have meant a continuation of the old separatist politics.

That would not have boded well for the future of Sri Lanka. The TNA’s decision to support a candidate, any candidate, was a positive departure from its earlier, separatist mode, and should have been welcome for that reason. Ironically, unfortunately and perhaps predictably, this positive step by the TNA is being castigated by the regime as separatism. The demands of the TNA, just as the demands of the EPDP, are reasonable, moderate and viable, and can in no way be equated with separatism. Therefore the Rajapakses’ equation of the TNA’s demands with separatism is as outrageous as the equation of the EPDP’s demands with separatism by a segment of the Fonseka camp.

The Fonseka campaign does sprout racist slogans and ideas, tactically, while the Rajapakse campaign is doing so strategically. Realising that a majority of minority votes would go for Gen. Fonseka, the Rajapakses are using Sinhala racism to attract Sinhala voters, to make up the shortfall. This seems to be the main purpose of its increasing focus on the ‘separatist issue’. To equate a vote for Gen. Fonseka with a vote for separatism is ludicrous in the extreme, grotesquely so. The President also claims that the Tiger supporters would use the votes cast for Gen. Fonseka to prove that ‘30% of Sri Lankan people are for separatism’. Does the President believe in these absurd charges? If so it is a reflection on his level of intelligence; if not it is a reflection on his cynicism. One can hear in this racist and xenophobic rhetoric the echoes of a previous campaign carried out by Rajapakse supporters (especially the JHU) to deny Lakshman Kadiragamar the post of Prime Ministership, in 2004.

In his speech to the nation on the Independence Day, 2009, President Rajapakse said, “We are today a nation that has defeated a powerful enemy that stood before us. Similarly we should have the ability to defeat all internal enemies that are found in our midst”. Post-war, he began to talk about a new divide in the country, between patriots and anti-patriots. Currently he is equating anti-patriotism with voting for Gen. Fonseka. And his campaign speech in Bandarawela may presage the fate in store for opponents of the Rajapakses, if the incumbent wins with a wide margin: “The President said that a political party which is well-known for creating a fear psychosis among the people in the past in trying to sow the seeds of discontent and fear among the people again. He emphasized that he has ordered law enforcement authorities to arrest anybody engaged in undemocratic activities, irrespective of their status…. President Mahinda Rajapaksa stressed that he will not allow such unscrupulous elements to breach democracy nor disrupt the peace and co-existence among the people under any circumstances. The President stressed he has already ordered the Police to take stern action against the elements engaged in activities detrimental to peace and democracy in the country. ‘I will not hesitate to call for the Armed Forces if the Police and the STF fail to ensure peace and democracy in society,’ he said” (Daily News – 23.1.2010).

This presidential election will end with the victory of either Mahinda Rajapakse or Sarath Fonseka. Lankan democracy will be safe with neither, if past performances are anything to go by. If neither candidate wins outright, a second count will become necessary; this may act as a deterrent on the eventual winner, restraining him from acts of excess, because he would know that the majority of the voters are not with him. Which is why voting for some third candidate, any third candidate, may make sense from the point of view of Lankan democracy.

- Asian Tribune -