by Wakeley Paul; published April 9, 2004
SINISTER STRATAGEMS AND ODD ENTANGLEMENTS
The situation in Sri Lanka seems so tenuous, that it is very likely that a vote of no confidence on a single major issue raised can lead to a toppling of the present government in the not too distant future. The present struggle is not between the Sinhalese and the LTTE. It is between the Sinhalese parties that are vying against each other for power.
That is combined with a sinister set of stratagms that the President and her advisor Kadirgamar are engaging in to retain power in their hands at a cost to the nation as a whole. It is not the Tamils alone who will be the victims of their villainy. It is everyone on the island who will be affected.
Mrs. Kumaratunge has 105 seats plus one from that Sinhala stooge Douglas Devananda of the EDPD, totaling 106.
The UNP with 82 has been promised the backing of 5 from the SLMC, and the 3 from the CWC, and 1 from the UPF totaling 92 seats seats.
Who can Mrs. Kumaratunge lure to join her to get a majority? No one will join except on very favorable conditions. They all know how vulnerable she is and can afford to demand the sky or the earth to be won over, because she herself has been elected by a narrow slice of the electorate. The JVP gave her 40 votes, leaving her with a mere 66 seats in a parliament full of inconsistent possible alignments.
The conflict over the selection of a Prime Minister speaks volumes for what the future portends. She had to backtrack on her choice of her bosom advisor and guide, Lakshman Kadirgamar, for the position of Prime Minister, on two grounds. First, she had to appease the Sanga and that segment of the Buddhist population who helped her win the election. They angrily demanded that the Sinhala Buddhist Rajapakse be appointed in favor of this other Christian oddity who has spilled into their ranks. The ethnic-conscious JVP detest Mahinda Rajapakse more than they do the Tamils for winning a seat in their stronghold at Hambantota. They preferred to support Lakshman over this pristine Sinhala Buddhist. The more compelling objection, however, to Lakshman, was that he would be an impediment to continuing with the peace talks, since the LTTE despises him for having them branded as terrorists in the foreign capitals of the world. Actually, they despise him for more than that. They regard him as the most despicable traitor of his ancestors.
In their continuing effort to appease the international community, everyone of any significance in the government insists that the peace talks are their top priority. It is for that reason, that even Lakshman Kadirgamar stated, that they did not give a cabinet position to their ever-loyal stooge and ally, Douglas Devananda.
While all that is very salutary, Mahinda Rajapakse¹s insistence that India must be included in the peace process will be the government’s ultimate subterfuge for toppling the peace talks and blaming the LTTE for its demise. The government anticipates a strong objection by the LTTE to India’s infusion into the peace process if India enters talks backing the government. They will use this objection to claim that it was the LTTE that wrecked the talks. This technique is old hat among Sinhalese leaders.
The governments second desperate priority is to abolish the post of an Executive Presidency. This has its own sinister significance. Mrs Kumaratunge cannot run for President again, but she wants to avoid the possibility of Ranil¹s becoming the next President if the post is kept alive. She knows what a powerful position the Executive Presidency is and does not want to be at the receiving end of it. Power is delightful when it is yours to possess; it is mortifying in the hands of another.
The President has to be ready to sell her soul to survive. The objects of her entreaties know how vulnerable she is. How much Sinhala Buddhist supremacy does she have to jettison to win over the SLMC or the CWC to give her that much-needed majority of 113? The JHU with 9 seats is more than ready to sit on the sidelines and exert their own pressure without joining her and winding up being tied to her political apron strings. The revolutionary¹s wings are clipped when the politburo tells him how to behave.
In order to Amend the Constitution, Mrs. Kumaratunge can by a simple majority create a Constituent Assembly, but to grant it legislative power equal to that possessed by the legislature, she will require a 2/3 majority*.[See Part II on this] She cannot rely on the UNP to get that majority, as they not only want to retain the Presidency. They cannot wait to overthrow her and bounce back into power.
Will the SLMC and CWC give her even the simple majority to create a Constituent Assembly, to enable her to perpetuate the undemocratic and much dreaded concept of a Sinhala Buddhist Constitution? Will they not demand positions in the cabinet with guarantees that their constituents’ fates will be uplifted and protected rather than rejected as second class citizens? How will the JVP or the JHU react to such overtures? Will they be willing to defile their altar of Sinhala Buddhist supremacy to keep her in power? Or will they in turn spin the coin and demand an even more heightened Sinhala Buddhist supremacy to support her to retain the throne? A host of crosses and cracks stand in the way of her implementing her will upon the parliament on the one hand, and her own cabinet on the other. Power is more attractive when you court it than when you have it.
Then there is this new pretense of falling in love with India and telling this lynx-eyed neighbor, how impossible it is to manage without her [India], at little old Sri Lanka’s side at all times. Based on this sudden explosion of dependence on this new kissing cousin, one what might wonder how in the name of the triple gem did Sri Lanka possibly exist without India in our bosom in the past. Prime Minister Rajapakse told the Hindustan Times that a ‘strong defense cooperation with India was a must for the defense of Sri Lanka.’ Defense against whom? ‘India will play a more decisive roll in putting an end to the ethnic conflict, the longest running conflict’ says Lakshman Kadirgamar. The Indian Ambassador Sen keeps flitting between the President and Prime Minister and flying off to India like an excited hornet ready to sting the island with her renewed venom once again. ‘India has some ideas on how India could be more directly involved with Sri Lanka’ says Sen ominously. The Sinhalese and Tamils and Muslims might well ask, and what might that involvement be? That despised enemy of the LTTE, Lakshman Kadirgamar says, ‘Norway will certainly remain as a facilitator…not a mediator, arbitrator or anything else,’ adding that the new government will continue talks on the India Sri Lanka Defense Agreement initiated by the former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. It is quite obvious from all this that the government is not preparing for peace, but is gearing up for war. They are setting the stage to blame the LTTE for scuttling the talks by refusing to abide by any Indian participation in that peace process which backs the Sri Lankan government.
This is then followed by the kicker that should send shivers up the spines of of any self respecting Sinhalese. That is Kadirgamar’s summary of the new attitude of the new government toward India: ‘We are on the verge of a golden era in relations between India & Sri Lanka,’ he said ‘India has a natural, legitimate and historic interest in the destiny of Sri Lanka.’
Lakshman Kadirgamar says the JVP, which was virulently anti Indian in the 70’s, is now totally supportive of this fresh subordination to India, which according to Prime Minister Rajapakse will also involve seeking India¹s help to set up Industries and for the development of Agriculture in Sri Lanka²
It is not difficult to discern the new government’s intentions, which are porous to the core. Being fully cognizant of their own military inability to overpower the LTTE, which has demonstrated beyond a doubt, its popularity as the sole representative of the Tamil people in the Northeast, the government wishes to quash Tamil aspirations once again by force, using an Indian cloak.
What is alarming about this to every ethnic group on the island is that this Indian intrusion will become an Indian infusion into every aspect of power in this island.
On the one hand, every Tamil should cry out to call their bluff and do everything possible to expose this false pretense of placing the peace talks as the government’s highest priority.
The Sinhalese in the south should be equally wary of this absorption of India into handling their affairs like the much awaited return of some long lost prodigal son. Before they bend their knees to pray, they will be dominated by Hindi speaking Hindus instead of Buddhist monks.
India is a mini super power in the region. Soon after the Independence from Britain, they extracted an unholy allegiance to them from all the land locked kingdoms above them, by threatening to cut off their access to the ocean if they did not bow to this threat. That is how ruthless Nehru, who posed as the saintly leader of the non aligned world, really was. He was ready to let them drown in their own bathtubs to gain his own ends. India attempted to extend its reach down South when J R Jayawardena signed a pact with Nehru¹s grandson, permitting the Indians, among other things, to fight to eradicate the LTTE. It was the LTTE and not the government that thwarted their ambitions and helped the then Prime Minister to have them pack their bags and retreat in ignominy. Let the Sinhalese never forget this debt of gratitude that they owe to the LTTE.
This President with her ruthless advisor is embarking on a Machiavellian adventure to throw both the Sinhalese and Tamils out with the bath water in a pointless bid to remain in power. She and her unscrupulous are dangerous to all concerned and should be constrained before they develop a kissing fondness for India with its own dangerous agenda.
The only consolation is that no other party would join Mrs. Kumaratunge in this sinister venture. The danger however is that they could be sucked into this endeavor without even realizing it, under the pretext that they are doing this to end the ethnic crisis. Prime Minister Rajapakse has fallen for it. If anyone imagines that the Indians can be trusted an inch, they are naive beyond belief. They will first sneak out concessions to have access to the Trincomallee harbor and its oil storage facilities as they tried to do in the 80’s. They will then control and steer Sri Lanka’s internal and external policies to suit India’s own ends. No nation acts except in its own self interest. Australia looks upon India¹s expansive ambitions with deep suspicion. America and Western Europe likewise will be concerned, but not enough to intervene at this stage. The only ones who can have a disciplining effect on the present President and her ruthless cohort, are the people themselves.