Editorial

Beware The Ides Of March

The sledging match now in progress between the JVP and President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga cannot be bettered even by Australia's National XI. Kumaratunga and her JVP "allies" have made it a habit to dog each other's movements, sledging abuse in a fashion that would make even the battle-hardened board members of the MCC blush with shame. They hate one another, and with biblical passion, too.

Last week the battle of words reached fever pitch with JVP Agriculture Minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Small and Rural Industries Minister K. D. Lalkantha hitting out unremittingly at Kumaratunga. In a scathing attack, Dissanayake claimed that the government's water policy would not see the light of day so long as the JVP remained part of the cabinet. Accusing the Kumaratunga administration of seeking to privatise water and hand this resource over to multinational corporations to plunder, Dissanayake rebuked Kumaratunga for attempting to smuggle the policy through cabinet by taking it up through the Mahaweli Ministry rather than the Water Resources Ministry. Subterfuge, according to the JVP, is Kumaratunga's strong suite.

And then there was Lalkantha, who has become the principal thorn in the President's side. Accusing Kumaratunga of being like the emperor without clothes, he reminded her that only the JVP's childlike innocence enabled it to point to the President's many weaknesses. In the wake of the tsunami, he rebuked Kumaratunga for not even putting the disaster on the cabinet agenda, and carrying on instead to take up other issues such as tenders. In a clear reference to the LTTE, he pointedly asked Kumaratunga how she could bring unity to the country when she could not maintain unity in the government.

For her part, Kumaratunga, at a three-hour meeting with her central committee last week, offered to "clarify" matters with the JVP. Whether the President will choose to meet personally with the leadership however, is doubtful, for she has insisted that she will not do so unless Somawansa Amarasinghe or the JVP as a party tenders a written apology to her for the grievous insults their party has hurled at her. In all likelihood, she will look to Managala Samaraweera and her brother Anura to see whether the Reds can be prevailed upon to put up or shut up.

But as much as Kumaratunga and her JVP bedfellows might pour scorn and derision on one another, both know that neither can survive without the other. The JVP is helping to keep an alliance government in place, but only nominally. As last month's terrible tsunami demonstrated to everyone's content, there is no government in Sri Lanka. The JVP however, went to great pains to mobilise its cadres at least to make a show of caring for those affected by the disaster. However, it was clear from the beginning that the government was tying itself into knots, patently inept and unequal to the crisis. Even today, a month after the tragedy, the primary source of care for the displaced is the NGO sector, with the government looking on helplessly, unsure of what to do.

There again, the JVP has put its finger on the nub of the problem: the President's disaster committee is dominated by her pals and cronies, with no real representation from the JVP, and even the Prime Minister saying that he had been left out of the loop. Estranged from government and the civil administration, the government's disaster management strategy has been relegated to endless pie-in-the-sky meetings on how to plan relief (including, laughably, extension of the railway from Matara to Kataragama, which was miles away from the tsunami), while for its part civil society has taken the bull by the horns and begun reconstruction and rehabilitation projects on its own, completely ignoring the government. Sri Lanka's First Sister hit the nail on the head when she asked Tara de Mel if she had ever been in a bus: ram acu tetigisti, Sunethra! Into this fray has stepped the Mahanayake of the Malwatte Chapter, whose conduct has been suggestive of that of a minister without portfolio of the Freedom Alliance government.

Be that as it may, the JVP has made life doubly difficult for the President and would be urban planners such as Mangala Samaraweera by urging people displaced from beachside housing to return to and reconstruct their homes, flouting the 300 metre reservation dictated by the Coast Conservation Act. For its part, the government has instructed GAs not to permit reconstruction within the zone, bringing the authorities into direct conflict with refugees. For their part, the refugees take the view that the government has not offered them anything by way of relief, and they have no choice but to help themselves.

The tsunami, it would seem, ruined not only all of Sri Lanka's coasts, but even the slim prospect the alliance government had of getting its act together. Now, with Kumaratunga and the JVP with daggers drawn, and the astrologically significant month of March drawing ever nigh, Kumaratunga finds herself in a right royal tangle. She needs desperately to seek to win a referendum so as to prolong her political life. She needs also to seek to extend her term to the duration of her second secret swearing-in. To do either of these, she needs to maintain some semblance of popularity with the people, something she has signally failed to do. And with the JVP's populist needling from within her ranks, her discomfiture is palpable. In the colourful metaphor of K. D. Lalkantha, Kumaratunga's nudity is beginning to show, even though her own ministers are too shy and diffident to point to it.

The JVP's distress is understandable given that it is arguably more alive to the pulse of the people than the mainstream political parties. It knows full well the disaffection in which the alliance government is held, and has done all it can to distance itself from it, bringing it into conflict with Kumaratunga. The question now is whether the JVP can afford to stick with the government much longer without seriously eroding its own popular base. One year in office has resulted in little more than a damp squib: there have been no tangible results, no development of any kind. On the negative side, the cost of living has spiralled, and thanks largely to the JVP's own efforts, the peace process is dead in the water.

Into this turmoil, Kumaratunga in a rare show of transparency, stated a fortnight ago that there would be no elections for the next five years. In the storm of ridicule that followed, she claimed she had been misquoted. But millions of Sri Lankans saw her utter those fateful words on television, yet another occasion on which her mouth and her brain were clearly out of synch. Indeed, it had opposition MP Rajitha Senaratne quipping, in trite post-tsunami allegory, Rata wat‚ vetak haduwath, kata wat‚ vetak handanna ba!

Not without good reason then, just a year out of office, the UNP has smelt blood. Ranil Wickremesinghe has been tirelessly touring the country taking his own pulse of national feeling, and no doubt the people's expressions of frustration have not been lost on him. And so, with both allies and rivals (to say nothing of astrologers) rallying against her, Kumaratunga, like Julius Caesar before her, could have good reason to fear the ides of March.