Leaning on foreign intervention

We began the week with increases in the prices of gas, milk powder and cement thus justifying the main slogan of the Joint opposition May Day rally held in Jaffna, which was the call to bring down the cost of living.  If not for the Damoclean threat of foreign intervention in this country, the present government would have begun going downhill  like all governments do in their second term. The victory over the LTTE certainly gave this government an unusual boost, but if this country had been left alone after the war, by now the victory would have begun receding in the public memory and they would be judged on other criteria. There is no greater enemy of a government than the absence of tension.

In a situation of peace, the people are not all keyed up and motivated as during a war and governments fall for no other reason than they have been in power for too long. We saw this happening to the UNP in 1994. After the death of President Premadasa in May 1993, the political tensions in the country subsided even though the LTTE continued to wage war. It was this very political peace that proved to be the undoing of the UNP.  The field was left open for political dacoits like Chandrika Kumaratunga to shout and elbow their way into power. The peace made people complacent, cynical and even careless. In that respect, the greatest boon to the Rajapaksa regime is this pressure coming from the West and Tamil Nadu.

If not for this constant pressure which reminds the people that this is a country under siege and the threat of division, by now the war victory would be a distant dream. After the end of the war, this government has committed infringements that in normal circumstances would have led to a rapid deterioration in their support base.  Prominent members of the government have fatally shot one another in public, one has even shot dead a foreigner. Ministers of the government run amok with no attempt to control them. Allegations of corruption abound.  Price hikes are coming one on top of the other. This government is now in its eighteenth year and all the above factors should by now be eating away at its support base.

If nothing of the sort is happening, it is because of the threat coming from overseas. In Sri Lanka, the majority of voters vote on the basis of party loyalties and no matter what a party does, their party vote bank remains largely intact. What needs to be swayed is the floating vote and these constant threats coming from overseas tilts a critical mass of the floating vote towards the government and that is what ensures their longevity. The government too is obviously aware of this factor and they have begun exploiting Western antipathy as a useful survival tool. It was with days to go for the Geneva showdown that the government made unprecedented increases in the price of diesel. In most other countries that would have been a tenure shortening event.  But in Sri Lanka, it has had no repercussions at all and for that the government is indebted to the West.

Acknowledging economic

Turbulence

Even last Friday’s price increases coming as they do just as the country prepares to celebrate the third anniversary of the destruction of the LTTE may soon be forgotten especially as one item at least has been increased for apparently patriotic reasons. The increase in the price of milk powder is being touted as a means of providing a livelihood for local dairy farmers. The image of local dairy farmers releasing large quantities of milk onto the road in protest at their inability to sell their produce have been relayed by all the TV channels and this has provided the excuse that the government has been seeking.

Of course it has to be said that import substitution makes good sense if the livelihoods of a large number of people rely on it. Back in the 1980s, the J.R.Jayewardene government also tried much the same by promoting Moneragala as a sugar producing district. The price of imported sugar was kept artificially high so as to enable the entire production of Pelwatte Sugar Co to be sold. After a few years in fact world market prices of sugar caught up with the Pelwatte price. At that time however members of the opposition (who are now in the government) were screaming blue murder in parliament saying that the UNP government was making the consumer pay extra to keep the capitalist enterprise of Pelwatte Sugar Co afloat.

What the UNP did not have at that time were TV cameras that would capture images of dairy farmers literally bathing in their own milk to convince the public that import substitution makes sense even if the locals have to pay a little more for their milk. Given the time between now and the next election, the government may well be able to pull this one off if they manage to increase milk production and reduce reliance on imports. Another reason is of course the need of the government to reduce imports. Be that as it may, these price increases coming so soon after the Joint opposition declared the rising cost of living to be their main concern, certainly adds grist to their mill.

But whether the UNP will really be able to harvest the political fallout from the price increases is open to question. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe clearly won the contest with the Sajith faction by having a better attended and livelier May day event than the dissidents who opposed him. Though there were expectations that the Premadasa commemoration may dwarf the UNP’s official event in Jaffna, that did not happen. But this does not mean that the UNP is out of the woods.  The slogan shouted most often by the UNP marchers in Jaffna was "Apata oone aanduwak!" One heard this same slogan being shouted repeatedly outside Sirikotha just before that riot in December last year. But that was understandable because the very reason what that crowd had gathered outside Sirikotha was because they felt that the present party leadership  was incapable of leading the party to victory and they wanted a change in the top seat. Hence the slogan "Apata oone aanduwak" made sense.

However to hear the same slogan repeated again and again in the UNP’s main rally, made no sense. They were just advertising their desperation to the whole world.  Never before has the present writer ever heard the members of any party shouting at a May day rally that they wanted a government!  Such slogans were never heard at SLFP rallies even towards the latter end of the 17 year UNP rule between 1977 and 1994. What actually happened in Jaffna is probably something that may make their stated goal recede even further. When the present columnist first heard that the government owned ITN was broadcasting images of the LTTE flags being carried in the joint opposition rally in Jaffna, I thought the government may have planted some people in the procession to display flags to discredit the UNP. But when watching the camera footage, it was clear that nobody would have done such a thing at the risk of being mauled by a hostile crowd. The LTTE flag was displayed in TNA contingents marching in the joint opposition rally. It was not for nothing that the TNA is still referred to by even the international media as the pro-LTTE TNA. It is quite clear that there are LTTE sympathisers in the TNA. When the UNP leader made this decision to hold the UNP May day rally in Jaffna, the reason why there was so much resistance from within the party was because of the fear that they would be coupled together with the pro-LTTE TNA thus damaging their electoral prospects once again in the south.

Now  that has happened in the worst possible way, with LTTE flags displayed however furtively in the UNP led may day rally. There is no excuse that the UNP can offer. Anybody could have foreseen that such a thing may happen. Even RW’s justification that they decided to hold the UNP May Day rally in Jaffna to stress the oneness of the country would have been better accepted if the UNP had organised a May Day rally in Jaffna on its own without the TNA. When the UNP went to Jaffna, they were already in a bad way as can be seen from the plaintive cry heard most often in the procession "Apata oone aanduwak!"

Now with this Tiger flag scandal they have fallen from the frying pan into the fire. RW obviously has not heard of Murphy’s Law which says that "If something can go wrong, it will". It will take a few years for the UNP to recover from the Jaffna fiasco. Even the triumph that RW clearly scored over the dissident faction by getting bigger crowds to Jaffna has been wiped out in one fell swoop. The lame argument that parliamentarian Harin Fernando has been trotting out, to the effect that if there were Tigers in the May day rally in Jaffna it is the government that is to blame,    will only boomerang not just on the UNP but the entire joint opposition. The TNA which is a constituent of the joint opposition has been constantly calling for the demilitarisation of the north. How will that be possible with the opposition itself waiting to blame the appearance of LTTE flags in their own procession on the government saying that the LTTE has not yet been eliminated completely?

Unstable outpost in Geneva

If the opposition is in deep ordure, so is the government and in an area which it can least afford – the foreign office. It has always been known that the foreign service is one of the most intrigue ridden sections of the government – naturally perhaps because the pickings are so rich. We’re talking of postings to developed Western countries with the prospect of being able to educate your children in those countries and all other advantages that a foreign posting offers. A few backroom manoeuvres may position you strategically in some foreign location just when you need it. Little wonder that members of the foreign service spend more time intrigue than on anything else. A natural enemy of the career diplomat are the political appointees to diplomatic positions who are seen as interlopers who take what is rightly theirs.

Geneva is a particularly jinxed posting with nobody being able to hold the posting for long. In just the past three years, we have seen a rapid turnover of ambassadors just when we needed a steady hand handling that office. When the war ended it was Dayan Jayatilleke, then it was Kshenuka Senewiratne, followed by Tamara Kunanayakam and apparently even she has now been given marching orders.

The question is on the economic front, we have had only one Secretary to the Treasury all these years and only one Central Bank governor. Why is it so difficult to find someone who can stay in Geneva and handle the human rights issue on a steadier basis? The government is certainly benefiting in the short term from the pressure emanating from Geneva. But to keep this beneficial tension at a manageable level, one needs someone to ensure that the pressure does not build up to unmanageable levels. A question that has to be asked is, whether career diplomats have the competence to handle the political pressure coming from the West? Everybody knows that the average career diplomat is a Kultur, alienated type dreaming not of things local, but of everything foreign. Do they have the savvy to handle political issues?

The diplomatic service in Sri Lanka has never before been called upon to counter Western governments. In former days the most they were called upon to do was to counter Eelamist propaganda and that too was never done to anybody’s satisfaction. Before this current round of sparring with the West began, the most important diplomatic offensive launched by the Sri Lankan government was to get the LTTE banned in the EU and other countries. Former foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera has told the present writer how that was done, but he never mentioned the name of any career diplomat who was of any help to him in getting the LTTE banned.

Sensitive spots like Geneva have to be dealt with by someone with political savvy. The first instinct of a career diplomat would be to think that smiling, bowing and scraping and agreeing would get us out of the woods. Such individuals do not have the repertoire of skills needed to handle the kind of situation the government is faced with. The Western powers dealing with Sri Lanka do not give this country even the standard warning given to any criminal in the West - "Anything you say may be used against you". Everything that Sri Lanka says or does has been consistently used against her. Even the confidential letters that were exchanged between the Ban Ki-moon expert panel and the government of Sri Lanka have been used by them to show the world that they were in fact in contact with the Sri Lankan government.  Career diplomats aren’t competent to handle an inquisition like situation of this nature.

Tamil pawns in international power game

If foreigners left this country alone, the Sinhala and Tamil political leaderships are quite capable of arriving at a formula for co-existence. What has happened now is that Eelamists have been given renewed hope that what could not be achieved through terrorism can be achieved through diplomatic offensives launched by the West. There are expatriate Tamils – members of the Tamil diaspora – who have a good theoretical understanding of the issues that Sri Lanka is confronted with. Some days ago, a former Jaffna University  lecturer in sociology  currently residing in Toronto Canada, Sam Rajendran, made a speech at a belated Sinhala and Tamil New Year festival  in Toronto which we should all take note of.

Rajendran went to do his PhD on a scholarship in Canada and stayed on. He is married to a Sinhala lady from Kandy and has been living in Canada for more than 25 years. Soon after he arrived in Canada, he joined an organisation of expatriate Tamils called Thedagam (The search). About five years ago, this  Toronto based Tamil organisation suffered a split. The reason for the split was multifarious. Originally the members of Thedagam were not Eelamists but over time, some members of the organisation began to feel that they were whistling in the wind by opposing Tamil nationalism.

Some of them had begun to feel that the Tigers were invincible and they cannot be defeated. Yet others had more mundane reasons. One member of Thedagam who was a dramatist found that if they staged a drama, there were only around 100 to 200 people to attend it whereas if a nationalistic, pro-LTTE drama was staged, there would be thousands attending it. Considerations like this also led to the majority in Thedagam tilting towards the LTTE. What happened in Thedagam has echoes in what has been happening in Sri Lanka as well.

It was this same feeling that the LTTE was ‘invincible’ that motivated even formerly anti-LTTE Tamil writers like D.P.Sivaram to change his stance and become pro-LTTE.  Sivaram has told even the present writer about the advertisement that some expatriate Tamil had inserted in a Fijian newspaper which simply had a photograph of Prabhakaran with the single sentence, "By the grace of God, Invincible". If an intelligent and perceptive man like Sivaram was taken in by that kind of propaganda, it is hardly surprising that lesser Tamils fell for it and Prabhakaran was at one point being hailed as the Sun-god.

Members of Thedagam, who left the organisation after it began to tilt towards the LTTE, found that after the LTTE was defeated and the ‘invincible’ Prabhakaran killed, there was an even greater demand for nationalism than there had been earlier.  One reason for this renewed hope is the tantalising possibility held out by the so called international community that they may take the place of the LTTE on behalf of the Tamils of Sri Lanka and wage war on the Sri Lankan government by other means. The expatriate Tamils are used to having others pull their chestnuts out for them. Formerly it was the LTTE to whom they gave money. Now it is the Western governments they live under to whom they give votes. Either way, it’s a proxy war.  Community leaders like Rajendran are well aware of the implications this has for a community that has known no peace for over three decades. He said in his speech in Toronto:

"Today power is created and exercised mainly through media and propaganda – more than by military dominance. Power is wielded by those who control the discourse – the narrative. In this struggle Sri Lanka at the present moment is facing a formidable convergence of forces that would like to dismantle the peace that has been achieved by defeating one of the most ruthless terrorist organizations in history. Because they want to keep the conflict simmering in order to gain leverage over developments in Sri Lanka, outside powers are acting in their own geostrategic interests, while some forces are trying to achieve through foreign intervention what it couldn’t achieve militarily.

``The ordinary Tamils in the Diaspora seem to go along with it as an image of "victimhood" brings benefits and special treatment. As for the majority of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, there is a sense of relief that the war has ended, and now they can enjoy the benefits of peace and economic development. But this story is not what is heard in the West. Unfortunately it is the story narrated by those who want to derail the peace that has been achieved in Sri Lanka that is dominating the world media.

"So, even though human rights organizations, NGO’s and western powers talk incessantly about reconciliation in Sri Lanka – they are actually working in the opposite direction. They never talk of the positive things happening in Sri Lanka. They are opening old wounds in order to bring about a unilateral foreign intervention. Will such an interventionist approach from outside really help reconciliation on the ground? We know from the experiences of other countries that such an internationalist model of intervention can only bring disastrous results."

We are resolute in our conviction that Sri Lanka - despite the many challenges and trials it had to undergo due to the 30-year war against terrorism exacerbated by foreign machinations - has emerged as a model for the future of many countries stricken by terrorism due to similar ethno, religious, and sub-national conflicts. Contrary to the much publicized "story-telling", compared to other wars, Sri Lanka, while defeating terrorism, has shown restraint, magnanimity and humanity in the way it conducted the war even under provocation and pressure and in its efforts towards post-war rehabilitation and reconciliation."

"We know in our hearts, as most reasonable people do - that in spite of all the media hype and spin doctors - this is the truth. Of course there are shortcomings and we don’t deny them, but Sri Lanka’s efforts are sincere and enlightened. What Sri Lanka needs at this crucial hour is help, not further victimization, in order to heal and bring relief to the long-suffering people. We have to help our brothers and sisters back home - both in the north and south - in their efforts to rebuild their lives after much suffering over the past 40 years."

"Critics accuse Sri Lanka of majoritarianism. It is unfortunate and ironic that the same critics in the west bow to the pressure of vote banks. Human rights and equality should go hand in hand; you cannot be partisan in advocating human rights." 

"I would like to most humbly appeal to Canadian and other western governments to please ensure the human rights of your own citizens in your own soil before trying to protect human rights around the world. Isn’t it the height of irony we Sri Lankans in Canada, especially Tamil Canadians, are able to exercise our rights under the Charter more fully only after the present Sri Lankan government defeated the LTTE? Only now we are able to express our views in public without fear of repercussions. But unfortunately there are ominous signs our new found freedom may be short-lived as enemies of Sri Lanka’s progress are regrouping again."

(The Island)