“If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself.  Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”  — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character.”  — Dale E.Turner

“You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.” — Richard M. Nixon

Dear Mr. Wickremesinghe,

No one, except perhaps you yourself, is surprised that your party and alliance lost yet again, and what a stellar loss it was! You have, in characteristic loser style, made some excuses, complained about this and that, put some self-seeking spin on low voter turnout, done some grumbling and whining, a routine you must be quite used to after so much practice. Yet, this time round they sound tired and old arguments even for you, I’m afraid.

But you hear no corresponding attacks from the President’s men, do you? Ask yourself a simple question, please. Why is it that Sarath Fonseka was incarcerated just after his first attempt at challenging the Mahinda Pawul (H)awula, while you have led a charmed life during the past decade in opposition? Could it just possibly be that he is seen as a threat and you are not?

Sarcasm aside, you are, of course, his not-so-secret weapon, and I believe that they will move mountains to keep you on as leader of your party. Not that there’s much to choose from anyway. You have the party you deserve and they have you as an ever-present symbol of their bankruptcy and irrelevance. Yet a party officially without a leader is still better than a party with a leader who is official and nothing else!

The point is that in politics, and especially the dirty politics of this country that you have chosen to remain enmeshed in for decades, you need to win people over, convince them, earn their trust, understand and share their lives. Yet, the yawning gulf between you and the general population of this country increases with every (lost) election, and, in the current conjuncture, appears irremediable.  You may believe that your understanding of issues is better, more nuanced and comprehensive than others – both politicians and citizens – but understanding without real empathy is doomed to inconsequentiality.

You may claim that you are honest and non-racist. You may boast that you have more enlightened views on religious, cultural and linguistic hegemony, and I have even heard rumours that your failure is your steadfast refusal to descend to populist rabble-rousing and demagoguery, unlike your opponents.

I believe that this is neither true nor relevant. In the first instance, you have through the years countenanced corruption, violence and abuse of power in order to further your own political career, or because you are too weak to stand up against the perpetrators of these acts. In the second, your own populist use of religion and culture is a matter of public record. Your supporters (the precious few that remain) describe you as a gentleman politician.

Aside from the sexist and classist worldview embedded in such a description, the public need no reminding that there are no “gentlemen” in Sri Lanka’s political firmament today. Those who pretend to be aloof from the bloodthirsty horde of corrupt and corrupting vermin (as apt a definition of Sri Lankan politicians that I have ever seen) have as much blood on their hands as the others but only seek to wash it away with the effluent of hypocrisy.

I realise that this may sound exaggerated and over-generalised to an outsider, but it is not so. “Gentlemen” like you cling to the sinecure of power-without-responsibility, thereby holding the country to ransom and allowing others to plunder and pillage. All you are interested in is maintaining your creature comforts and status as Leader of the Opposition, to protect which you will wage war on decency, democracy and even your own self-respect. You have long been bankrupt as a politician because politics is about engagement with people on their own terms.

Just as much as President Rajapaksa sees himself as a monarch and ruler of all he surveys, so too do you position yourself as perennially waiting in the wings to accede to the throne. You speak of democracy and the right of all peoples of this country to elect their leaders without fear or favour, and yet your stranglehold on the UNP is disgustingly feudal and undemocratic. You demand fundamental human rights for others, to serve your political ends, but you refuse to hear the message repeated so many times by a public that rejects your elitism and lack of basic empathy.

Your time as Leader of the Opposition is up, as all but you can see. It should have been over a long time ago. It is you I blame for the mess we’re in right now because your political ineptitude (to mention nothing of the other acts of omission and commission that can be laid at your door) has allowed successive ruling dynasties to ride rough shod over democratic values and principles of good governance. Now that this dispensation has fine-tuned family-oligarchy to its highest zenith, your continued (non)leadership is essential to them. Alas, not only do you deserve each other, you reproduce each other in a shared agenda that has little room for altruism or public wellbeing.

One reading of the past election result is that people who did not support the Rajapaksa regime preferred not to vote rather than endorse you or your party, upon which you have imposed your stamp of petty irrelevance. You do not present a viable alternative to the UPFA so much as a bankrupt and lost-cause non-option against which staying at home on election day seems less futile.

Give up now, Mr Wickremesinghe, while you can, so that, misquoting Shakespeare, history may say of you at least that “nothing in his political life became him like the leaving it.”
(gongalegodaya@hotmail.com)

Sarath Fonseka

How is this relevant? The best man won in the way we Sri Lankans know best. Ask the much-syndicated columnists of our courageously kept press and they’ll tell you all about it. Or ask our civil society luminaries and they’ll tell you all about choosing “the known devil.” The question to ask them, of course, is exactly how much they know. Some of them I know knew only too well, it seems, and used this knowledge devilishly well. Even that arch-conservative T.S. Eliot wrote “after such knowledge, what forgiveness?”

Why should Tamils be allowed to vote anyway? Aren’t they grateful that they’re allowed to live, even if it is by the skin of their teeth? They should realise that this decision (about living, that is) can go either way, depending on how they choose to vote at the parliamentary election? The point is that you can never trust the Tamils, or, for that matter, the Muslims: assisting them not to vote is clearly the best policy in the circumstances, but there’s no harm in letting them dream that they can get their revenge by casting their ballots against the enemy. It is true that every dog has its day, but Tamils are not dogs, are they? Come to think of it, in terms of ingratitude the General is behaving like a Tamil. Maybe he is one in disguise, and that’s why he started all those lies about white flags and surrendering.

We’ve been reliably informed that he’s in the pay of the horrible Western powers whose every waking moment is spent in working out nasty ways of destroying our beautiful country. In an interview with Ravi Vellor of The Straits Times published on February 11, the Defence Secretary referred to the General’s election campaign backers as follows: “We are 100 per cent convinced. Even the United States and countries like Norway spent lots of money for his campaign. I have proof of the Norwegian government paying journalists to write against the government.” The extent of Western perfidy is indeed shocking, even to those of us who have chosen to be citizens of these terrible countries.

Besides, judging from what our honourable gentlemen in the government have told the mass media during the last two days, I’m not even sure that the hospitality extended to the General can be termed an arrest at all. According to our Media Minister he is being treated “like a General” and has a full complement of security, which he couldn’t get when he was gallivanting around the country spreading sedition and disharmony, not to mention lies and ingratitude. I’m a little confused about the need for special protection when he’s under arrest and already in custody, but then it is only perhaps to protect him from the military personnel with whom he allegedly planned a coup. They too are under arrest and may even now be plotting to do him in for misleading them.

The point is that we should not worry our heads about these issues because everything is being taken care of on our behalf. How fortunate we are to have such a tireless and thoughtful leadership that disposes of our problems with such gravitas, and so visibly-invisibly! We know we’re being looked after, while the recalcitrant few amongst us are constantly being taught the folly of their ways, and often voluntarily choose oblivion to expiate their sins. A few, like the General, publicise their pettiness by trying to bring this great nation and its even greater leaders into disrepute, and yet they are treated with exemplary courtesy and magnanimity. We’re told the General is in “luxurious surroundings,” and yet he doesn’t have the courtesy to be thankful.

He resisted arrest, it seems, and wanted to know what he was being charged with. Didn’t his heart tell him that his perfidy had finally caught up with him? We have been reliably informed by his superior and our President’s own brother that he was “a serial liar who misused his office.”  The Defence Secretary has clarified that General Fonseka may also be tried for the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge. Apparently Lasantha’s murder fit a pattern for all those who criticised the General. How different this is from the leaders of our country. They encourage and nurture criticism of their regime. In fact, we see that so many of those appointed to high posts are not relatives or sycophants but genuine critics with independent points of view.

But to get back to the General, The Straits Times has the following comment about the General’s hand in the assassination of Lasantha, attributed to the Secretary of Defence: “We are very convinced …. In fact, I know for sure. Now I am going after the people who did the executions. The truth will be out very soon.” If it is known for sure that he committed this heinous crime, does it matter that this knowledge only surfaced after he contested the presidential election? Not at all. Better late than never, and now people like him will learn never to contest elections. Two birds and one inconvenient editor killed with one stone – who could ask for anything more?

I must admit to an error of judgment in a previous column. Referring to the regime in Myanmar I blithely said that their agenda was to keep the leader of the opposition out of politics through quasi-legal hocus pocus, and that our objective was the exact opposite. I naively wondered what they had to offer us, other than, of course, military advice from one of the oldest non-democratic administrations that the modern world has ever known. Mea culpa, dear readers, mea maxima culpa. Not only do we suddenly have a leader of the united opposition, a General to boot, whose dastardly crimes require that he be put away at least until the end of the general election, we also have incontrovertible evidence of a military coup that demands to be nipped in the bud.

Talk about patterns: Anwar in Malaysia is facing renewed sodomy charges that will put him out of action too. Mahathir and Lee Kwan Yew still rule over their dynasties in retirement. Why do we object to the creation of new empires, fresh ugliness, as if old brutality is less horrendous? All that has changed are names and faces. We have chosen to make new alliances and compromises to do our own dirty little deals and stay comfortable. If anyone is despicable, it’s us, alas.

It’s good to know that the General is guilty. Many honest and honourable men in the government have assured us of this, and we are anxious to be convinced, lest we become guilty of wrong-doing ourselves. The General’s exact crime will have to be worked out later, but there are many to choose from. As reported by ColomboPage on February 11, “Minister of Mass Media, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena said today the Sri Lankan military has a right to investigate and arrest the former Army commander and Chief of Defense Staff General Sarath Fonseka as he released statements to the foreign media against the security forces.”

He adds that “several charges had been brought up against him and he is being investigated for engaging in political activities while serving in the force.” NFF leader  Wimal Weerawansa echoes the same sentiments in his February 10 press briefing, as reported by ColomboPage, where the added charge that the General is “ready to give evidences [sic] to the International Criminal Court on War Crimes” is adduced.
Grievous crimes indeed, and grievously must he pay for them. Funny, that the most serious charge of fomenting a military coup is not high on their list. Now that so many officers and others have been retired, removed and otherwise dispensed with, it may not even be necessary to bring this up. Why rake up unpleasantness that has served its purpose?

Back to my original question. This is the regime of our choice; these are the leaders we have carefully selected to manage our affairs. Now that they’re doing the job in the best and only manner that they can, why do some of us complain? A waste of time and a dangerous dalliance, that. Tisaranee Gunesekera writes logically and movingly about our predicament, but logic and good sense have long left us (at least in part due to our past acquiescence and complicity). What’s left is real-life absurd drama, egged on by elite self-interest and middle-class apathy. Supporters of undemocratic dispensations do so not because they are unaware of crimes committed, but because their own self-interest provides a more persuasive argument!

Let’s vote them in again. Saves them a lot of trouble trying to make it appear that we’ve done so. They are absolutely what we deserve anyway.

“It takes fifteen thousand casualties to train a major-general” — Ferdinand Foch
“After each war there is a little less democracy to save” — Brooks Atkinson

The empty shell of one of the hundreds of homes destroyed in the Jaffna peninsula during the war, upon which a soldier has proudly written, with telling irony,“This is the Buddha’s own country.”

I am not one of those who line up to cheer the troops on as they march to victory. I don’t invoke blessings on them in any religion at all — neither in Sri Lanka, nor in Iraq, nor anywhere else for that matter. I do not support wars mounted for just causes, or ones embarked upon reluctantly as the lesser evil: no cause is entirely just, and there is always a lesser evil than war. If this makes me a traitor then so be it. I too have some choice epithets for the war-mongers on all sides who spur others on to death and destruction from the comfort of their drawing rooms, political platforms, newspaper columns or religious enclaves.

I do not apologise for the fact that I find wars and the systematic violence they entail never ever commensurate with the gains that victory is said to ensure. Wars are the consequence of inequality, discrimination, prejudice. “Winning” a war without addressing its root causes and core consequences dooms us all to a repeat performance, often worse than the one we sought to destroy. In this sense, it has rightly been said that you can no more win a war than an earthquake.

There, I’ve got all that off my chest at last. But in Sri Lanka today, it is too late to focus on whether alternative processes to all out war were feasible. The collateral damage, to deliberately invoke a hideously insensitive and racist term, certainly cannot be justified, but the damage has been done and we need to move on. This does not mean that those responsible should be immune from prosecution for their crimes, if indeed an impartial and transparent inquiry finds them guilty, but that may be yet another pipe dream.

Let’s focus on the present, and let the past bury its dead for the moment. As usual we’ve got it all ass-backwards. For months nothing could be done for the IDPs because of security concerns, demining, the ever-present threat of LTTE resurgence and so on. As soon as elections were announced, all these impediments vanished into thin air, at least at the level of political rhetoric. The military forces fought the war which is now over, completed, finished. Yet, recruitment has continued, salary increments and special packages are being paid, no doubt from money that would otherwise have gone for repairing the damage caused by the war. Another given you may say, this enhanced military, but what role and function are they to perform now?

They need to man checkpoints, check up on each other, conduct parades, provide security to friends and deny it to others. Even in Colombo they have to go out on pickets, man the roadsides at strategic places where our leaders travel in convoys and at frighteningly great speed. They spend hours before key visits making sure that all is safe for the sound and fury of sirens and ambulances that follow. In short, the big brass has to ensure that there are duties to perform by the military to make life safer for us (them?). For the first six months we were carefully fed with reports of suicide kits, weapons and ammunition found in secret locations in the most unlikely and frankly bewildering places. LTTErs are still being arrested, threats are being unearthed, caches discovered, so much so that even in peace the war dominates our collective psyche.

How much longer can this go on? Certainly, until democracy is served once more, and the elections are won (and lost). But after that, what next? There was some talk of exporting military expertise to other countries in dire need of help, though in this respect our closest allies can teach even us a thing or two!  We can (and already do) deploy soldiers in work they are neither qualified nor competent to do. They can further militarise resettlement and rehabilitation in the north, or help the police in ridding the country of selected underworld figures. They can assist in reconstruction, and that would perhaps be just, though I am a little skeptical whether their proven skills in demolition will be any match for the new role of rebuilding required of them.

In the meantime, many of them are suffering from severe psycho-social trauma due to the war. We only have counts of the physically disabled, not those who are victims in other ways. Suicides and violent internal conflicts are alarmingly frequent, though they do not make the news. Atrocities against civilians too have not disappeared with the end of the war. Deserters are said to be the bedrock of the underworld, and the backbone of personal militias of politicians. Notables in the armed forces are moving into the political sphere, which is yet another dangerous sign of the inexorable militarisation of public space. Contrary to every philosophical tenet and every article of faith, religious and military leaders have been in each others’ pockets during the past year even more than before.

The dignity of labour is fundamental (though I’m sure to be faulted here for equating military positions with mere labour, since current rhetoric gives rana viru a positively spiritual ring), but financial commensurability must surely be predicated on experience, qualifications and skills. What is the future prognosis for a country where 21-year-olds with sub-O/L education get paid twice as much as school teachers with 10 years’ experience? Graduates in the Humanities and Social Sciences typically spend two years unemployed and then, at 25, earn less than a freshly-recruited private in the army who is all of 19. Add to this the utter absence of any form of accountability, and the targeting of anyone who has the mildest reproof to make against the military, and you have an ominous portent of times to come.
gongalegodaya@hotmail.com

Selective removal of posters

“The United States Department of State says that it is aware of an ongoing United Nations investigation on allegations of human rights violations by the Government of Sri Lanka and it fully supports the investigation.” — Dec 16, 2009 Colombo Page

“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”  — Oscar Wilde

“The urban elite and its middle class appendages are entirely to blame for the fact that no politician, no political platform, no political alliance or party has any moral standing, any integrity left in this country.” — Gongalegodaya

Sri Lanka is to establish “a space agency” soon according to the Director-General of the Telecommunications Commission. This is certainly timely and important. The lack of space for any serious democratic discussion as well as the absence of independent agents who will lead these discussions is sorely missed, especially at election time. In fact, this will simultaneously solve a number of burning, as they say, political issues and ease the problems faced by many of our spaced out politicians.

For instance, space is certainly a new and unexplored option for our Foreign Minister, whose dedication to find new salubrious climes to explore en route to the Guinness Book of Records and to provide vacations with a difference for family and friends is mind-boggling. If he found the time and money to visit Iceland in his efforts to be inclusive and non-discriminatory, outer space cannot be much further or less consequential. Certainly, he will face far less questions and hence fail to adequately address less than is his abysmal norm.

Next, our ministers and MPs with special interest in the Beatles’ song Lucy In The Sky Wth Diamonds will, no doubt, revel in the new frontier where they can peddle their wares to a new and unsuspecting public. Finally, the space cadet functionaries in our ministries would have a field day in the inter-galactic union moots, especially in the Ministry for Disaster(ous) Debating, Human Rights Branch.

But all this is trivial you may say: cheap jokes and pot shots at our politicians and their acolytes are child’s play today, while opposition party offices are burning, and the abuse of power in the rank misuse of state resources is rampant. Yet, apologists may ask, how sure are we that all this is perpetrated by the Rajapaksa regime and its satellite workforce? Take the poster campaign against the so-called joint opposition candidate.

Hundreds of these printed demands that he apologise to the country at large and the military in particular adorn the walls in front of the Cinnamon Gardens Police Station, for instance. Similar locations seem to attract these anti-opposition notices, like moths are attracted to light.

These have got to be the work of outstation peasants and plantation workers who’ve travelled to Colombo by bus at midnight, crept surreptitiously up to these highly secured spots and pasted their posters only to crawl away unseen by the Police or Army or Navy or Air Force who’ve been manning the place 24/7. So too the spontaneous public campaigns against Fonseka’s “betrayal” of the military.

It’s got to be ordinary people without an ulterior bone in their bodies who are willing to give up the meager daily wages that they make, who have pooled their life savings to hire buses to come to Lipton’s Circus or Hyde Park, just so that they have the spiritual and moral satisfaction of calling a spade a spade. Or was that what Fonseka did and then withdrew his claim? All these posters are confusing me, especially when I think of what personal cost and sacrifice the ordinary citizens are undergoing just so that they can set the record straight.

Enough sarcasm for one week. Such rubbish can only be said with a straight face in Sri Lanka, and that too because we want to be fooled into believing that the rottenness of our systems of governance and the corruption within our political leadership are redeemable. We know, of course, that Sri Lanka is in the direst of dire straits, and we profit from its corrupt and hierarchical structures in innumerable ways on a daily basis, but we continue to pretend that all is not lost.

The urban elite and its middle class appendages are entirely to blame for the fact that no politician, no political platform, no political alliance or party has any moral standing, any integrity left in this country. In this sense, we’ve got everything we want already, everything we’ll ever get, and all that’s left to demand is that space agency. There’ll be no end to the crap we’ll be dished out from all sides, so extra space, especially during election time, is a necessity.

A regime in panic is a sorry sight, and much that it then seeks to do becomes counter-productive. The public sense blood and that too can produce unexpected results on polling day. Fear of loss is almost as bad as over-confidence, about which the UNP knows more than any other party on earth. Before every election they claim to be winning by a landslide, which is true if you consider that the land has slid beneath their feet which are never on the ground. As I have said ad nauseam we the awful middle class certainly deserve the riff-raff that rule us to death. But what about those who suffer in camps and plantations, who languish in unemployment, whom we “educate” to be almost unemployable, who never had a decent chance at a slice of the pie, whose daily wages get them less and less to eat, who require special attention that our nation refuses resolutely to provide? Are they too continued to be doomed to penury and seeking foreign employment due to our perennial folly?

So-called civil society groups and watchdog (space?) agencies should get off their Colombo-based asses at least now and demand that the election discourse is not confined to personal mud-slinging and phony public protests made to order. The Sunday Leader had an editorial a few weeks ago which outlined a set of core issues that required resolution. On the basis of their responses to these 10 concerns the candidates can be evaluated. More importantly they can be pushed to take positions that are sensitive to public needs and aspirations, and then forced to be accountable for the positions they have taken. In that way, our collective folly may be reduced in that though we will still have corrupt and self-seeking leaders, they may not have such free reign to do as they please.

We’re in such bad shape that every little bit counts.
gongalegodaya@hotmail.com

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

“Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.”
George Orwell

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
George Orwell

“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
George Orwell

Let us not squander our last chance at change

Election time is here again, and the fanfare, tinsel and baubles will put Christmas and New Year festivities to shame. Giant cut-outs and pandals already cannibalise the highways and byways. Illegal,  all of this, of course, but in an era where power creates, conceals and coordinates both laws and their prosecution, legality itself is a narrative of how close to the top you can access.

Impunity is another name for presidential whims and fancies, just as punishment is the other side of this coin (or note to be precise). If you are currently in favour, you will be rewarded magnanimously, whether it be in cash, kind or protection, whereas once you fall out with the powers-that-be you are left to the wolves.

At elections we are used to making simplistic assessments which even a lifetime’s regret cannot quite undo. How many times have we mistaken our enemy’s enemy for our friend, only to be disabused when he ascends the pinnacles of power. Even the “lesser evil” syndrome has proved so wrong so many times, and yet we remain willing to be gulled into voting for someone we dislike less than another though neither meets with our minimum standard of acceptability.

The ugly fact, however, is that we always get the leaders that we deserve. Both  the successful candidates and ‘also-rans’ mirror our own rotten opportunistic values and world views. Their corruption is ours; their violence we have endorsed in a hundred different ways. They own us, just as much as we bring them into power, and apologise for or defend their excesses. In short, we create, nurture and empower these monsters, whether through our votes or our apathy.

Let’s find the time and the energy, therefore,  amidst all the propaganda and hype to set out the basic requirements we demand in a leader today, and let’s not, this once, compromise or settle for the garbage that we have all around us. Even if we are too embroiled in our own personal tragedies and struggles for survival to care any more about the state of this country, even if we are too cynical to hope for anything better for ourselves, surely we owe at least this for our children and the generations to follow?
Unless we demand even minimal standards, and unless we are in a position to put our money where our mouth is, we will continue to attract this motley crew who will misgovern us as they please.

The point is that unless we take a stand today we will be confronted with even less options, even greater Hobson’s choices tomorrow, and it will be still worse the day after. My challenge to you is simply this: do you approve of the  levels of corruption, opportunism, impunity, dishonesty, nepotism, ignorance, unconcern, violence, waste and general perfidy practiced by members of parliament on all sides of the House today? Do you endorse the wheeling and dealing, the double-speak, the intimidation and thuggery, the rank selfishness and naked profiteering of our elected representatives? Do you, as citizens, support the professional trajectories of some of them and their key sponsors who stand publicly accused of violence, extortion, rape, corruption, drug-dealing and so on?

The answer  I am sure is a resounding “No.” And yet what are we willing to do about this grotesque state of affairs? In high dudgeon we go to the polls to elect another side or group or individual in to power, who will very soon (if not already) begin to do precisely what we have rejected in the previous incumbents. Sometimes, we elect the same persons again, hoping for a change of heart, or due to some personal agenda of profit that we hope to reap. The national outcome is the same sad dead-end, and we continue to demonstrate that our lethargy and lack of vision has made matters worse.

Change  hurts; real change must overcome complacency, vested interest and cynicism. Elections are the only occasions during which we the people wield anything remotely resembling power and influence. Or at least in theory we do, though in practice even this opportunity we relinquish by default. Let us not squander our one last chance to ensure that our issues, our concerns, our values are placed at the centre of the national agenda. Intervening between the devil and the deep blue sea may appear a daunting task, but together we can put in place a set of issues and basic positions that hold them accountable, that demand their adherence.

The imminent elections – both presidential and parliamentary – are not so much a test of the candidates who continue to plumb the human depths of incompetence and perfidy, but the signal opportunity for ordinary citizens to set the national agenda and determine the minimum standards that we demand of our leaders. Tragically, the writing on the wall is that we in Sri Lanka will inevitably let this last opportunity too slip through our fingers, guaranteeing yet another decade of pain and anguish as the country continues to sink to the bottom.
gongalegodaya@hotmail.com

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

— Hermann Goering at the Nuremburg Trials in 1946

Over-emphasis on security considerations post war have drowned out the real issues

There seem to be four overarching and interconnected arguments that have achieved a stranglehold over public discourse in this country today. They are, of course, most stridently espoused by the dominant breed of Sinhala opinion-dealers and shakers spawned by this regime, but there is no opposition raised even in relatively progressive non-populist circles which have relapsed into a debilitating self-censorship in the face of aggressive majoritarian rhetoric. The arguments have taken their direction from President Rajapaksa whose trademark brand of disingenuous homespun wisdom is widely believed to tap into the public pulse.

(1)    Sri Lanka should not and cannot be held accountable by any outside entity, be it a country, a multilateral agency, an international watchdog, thematic monitoring groups or indeed individuals. All such attempts, so the argument goes, are mala fide, factually inaccurate, hypocritical or self-seeking and interfere with Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. Thus, locals, whether they are organisations or individuals, who provide information to foreign whistleblowers or make such criticisms directly, are doubly guilty of colonialist villainy, and selling their souls for a mess of pottage.

(2)    By winning the war against the LTTE the Sri Lankan state has rendered considerations of ethnic identity, especially claims of discrimination against minorities, obsolete. All honest people believe this, so anyone who still talks about such anti-patriotic subjects as the IDPs can only be doing so for the dirtiest of ulterior motives. No further evidence is required to establish the perfidy of those who continue to raise issues about the structural and attitudinal discrimination against Tamils (and Muslims) and they need to be exposed by all right-thinking (read patriotic Sinhala) people.

(3)    Prevention, by any means possible, of the resurgence of the LTTE (or another similar terrorist organisation) remains the most important priority of the government and its military forces, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. No course of action that seeks to address this priority can be questioned by anyone who is not in cahoots with the terrorists or their international lackeys. The inconvenience that IDPs and others may experience is a small price to pay for the certainty that terrorism will never rear its ugly head again. The government will do what it takes to ensure this, including but not confined to new military recruitment, screening Tamils continuously, preventing the re-establishment of Tamil-dominated “homeland” territories, and, of course, the indefinite continuation of the Emergency.

(4)    The war is over and LTTE terror is annihilated, but LTTE terrorists remain at large (in Sri Lanka and abroad) and continue to pose serious threats to the country and its political leadership, necessitating the greatest vigilance and the imposition of restrictions upon the general (mainly Tamil) population. Thus, no right-minded person should complain about (increased?) security checks in the city, the extension of Emergency Regulations and other minor inconveniences. The spiraling cost of living, high unemployment, financial scandals, corruption and impunity are all of secondary importance, and as patriotic citizens we need to support the government through the long process of making this country safe.

Let us examine each of these arguments on its own merits. The first claims that priority for national sovereignty and the proven purity of the accuser are more important considerations than the substance of the allegations made. The implication is that the (legitimacy of the) accuser is more significant than the (verification of the accuracy of the) accusations. This is an obfuscatory and specious argument. It should not matter who demands accountability, since the State is obliged to be transparent in its dealings and to adhere to internationally agreed laws and conventions. To kill the messenger who brings bad news was just as wrong a thousand years ago as it is now, and it is no more than a pathetic attempt to deflect the government’s responsibility to address and refute serious allegations against basic human rights violations, from whatever source they derive.

Misleading

The second conflates and confuses causes with effects, and is again, deliberately misleading. The LTTE was an unfortunate outcome of the extended discrimination and harassment of Tamils by successive Sinhala-dominated regimes in this country. Removal of the LTTE merely expunges the ruthless movement that flourished as a consequence of the systematic denial of the Tamil people’s right to live as equal citizens in Sri Lanka. Unless the root causes are addressed, structural and attitudinal issues remedied, this demise of the LTTE will not prevent the emergence within the next decade of another, perhaps even more ruthless, force, much like what happened with the JVP. To dispense with ethnic identity by edict and to devalue the power of ethno-nationalism in the face of systemic injustice and the violation of rights is to tempt history to repeat itself. Ordinary people take the law into their own hands only when over an extended period they lose any hope for redress within that law.

The third bedrock premise reinforces the main motivation for the re-emergence of secessionist violence. All Tamils continue to be under a permanent cloud of suspicion and harassment. The exclusion of the so-called minority communities from meaningful power-sharing and decision-making together with the dominant majority is writ large in this kind of rationalization that refuses to relinquish the perks of conflict even after there is none. The current leaders wish to enjoy the utter lack of accountability and unquestionable impunity that comes with waging war against terrorism, while experiencing none of its dangers, so this kind of justification can go on indefinitely if the public can be cajoled to remain in a gullible frame of mind.

The fourth premise is, of course, the lynch pin of the entire discourse structure, and needs to be meticulously nurtured by repressive regimes. We continue to be informed of the discovery of hidden armed caches, of vigilance paid off through the arrest of fugitive terrorist leaders, and of the unearthing of dastardly plots to assassinate our brave leaders. Add to this the villainy of the international community and the perfidy of the opposition whom, we’re regularly informed, are ever willing to strike unpatriotic deals with the terrorists, and you have a perennial formula for non-accountable and non-democratic governance.

Shame on us for accepting this state of affairs! Dear Readers, let’s risk the wrath of the powers-that-be and publicly reject these dangerously debilitating and misleading sophisms, demanding instead the immediate redress of our country’s long list of major issues – ranging from ensuring IDP rights and economic justice, to providing drought relief, the restoration of democratic freedoms and the dismantling of state terror technologies.

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