Posted on July 20th, 2009
By Charles.S.Perera
It is a contradiction of the President Mahinda Rajapakse, who had on the one hand most rightly promoted the leadership of the Government Armed Forces in recognition of their heroic contribution to save Sri Lanka from the perils of terrorism, and on the other hand to have “sacked” the most distinguished , brilliant, forthright, and an outspoken diplomatic worrier who won another “war” for him in the diplomatic front in Geneva.
It was a great fortune that we had Dayan Jayatilleke in Geneva at a time when the International Community was all out to take revenge from the Government of Sri Lanka for nothing else but for defeating the attempt of the terrorists to set up a Tamil Home Land in the North of Sri Lanka.
Dayan Jayatilleke a diplomat of exceptional quality, defeated the aims of another sort of terrorists who made all efforts to give a life line to Prabhakaran and his terrorist cohorts, and having failed in that effort to accuse the Sri Lanka Government Forces for war crimes.
It was indeed the most remarkable event in the annuls of the history of Sri Lanka for the Government Forces to have eliminated terrorism that had caused so much of material damage and human loss to the country, and was on the verge of breaking away a part of its territory to create a Tamil Eelam State.
The Sri Lanka terrorists , who were not terrorists for the International Community, used, guns, live suicide bombs, claymore bombs , snipers, and grenade lobbers , whereas the terrorists Dayan Jayatilleke had to fight used other weapons such as , verbal guns, artillery of false information, cannons of official positions, backed by political time bombs, personal mines of IMF Loans, GSP+ , heavy weapons from UK , France, and USA in the form of Foreign Ministers, to stop the military operations against the terrorists and then to discredit the government, bring it on to its knees, and finally accuse it for war crimes.
Navy Pillay like Prabhakaran the terrorist would not accept defeat, and when the resolution against Sri Lanka was lost in the UNHuman Rights Council, she wanted to make a come back to the battle ground with more false figures gathered from the terrorist website to accuse once again the Government Forces for war crimes. But our bold worrier Dayan Jayatilleke was ready to take any one head on in the diplomatic foray.
Dayan Jayatilleke’s diplomatic clashes to avoid bringing discredit to our government, and shame to our armed forces which had sacrificed large numbers of men, and risked their lives to end the cancer of terrorism that had eaten into the flesh of our motherland was also fraught with danger. The gratitude the President showed to Dayan Jaytilleke who valiantly faced the onslaught of determined International Community to bring the government before a tribunal accused for war crimes, was simply to have sacked him.
If giving credit to this hero who had fought the invisible forces unleashed by the Western powers and the UN, is to throw him out like a used dirty chiffon, it would remain in the history of our nation as a shameful aftermath for a glorious battle fought with brilliance, intelligence , and vibrant verbal force for the glory of the motherland.
All the laurels won by the President Mahinda Rajapakse for his great contribution for saving the country from terrorism, is blown away in the dry wind of shameless ingratitude by this one act.
What could be the great wrong committed by Dayan Jaytilleke for him to deserve this inglorious end of a remarkable diplomatic carrier in the service of his country ?
When I wrote to a friend on the subject asking him whether it was a decision made by the President, and if so whether it is not an unpardonable error. He wrote to me giving details of the “erratic” political path traversed by Dayan Jayatilleke , and explained that he as a Diplomat representing Sri Lanka should have been more careful making statements which may have contradicted the President’s not yet decided views on the 13 Amendment, and that his statement on Israel was an embarrassment to the President.
I disagree on both counts. On the 13 Amendment Dayan Jayatilleke had made his personal views as any other citizen even if his official capacity demanded him to be more cautious. He has a right to express his view on a matter that affects the future of Sri Lanka which he officially represents in a foreign land.
With regard to his statement on Israel, what he said is not altogether wrong, but it may be taken as a statement made without reflection as Dayan Jayatilleke is not a hypocrite and calls a spade a spade. And yet that was not an irreparable damage.
As to his erratic political path , that was the past. We always learn from our past to relate ourselves to the future. Many are those who had followed erratic paths, but it should not stand on the way to judge them for what they are now.
The President should not have precipitated to take a very unfair and unjust decision to sack Dayan Jayatilleke for those statements made in his private capacity. Even many soldiers may have been allowed to die in vein by sheer miscalculation of military strategies by the Army Commanders. The bus load of Navy personnel massacred by the terrorists at Habarana was due to the negligence of the Security staff. And so was the terrorist suicide attack of the Anuradhapura Air Force Camp where the security guards were said to have been watching a television show.
If those incidents had been overlooked in view of the over-roll performance of the Army, why was Dayan Jayatilleke not given such consideration for the greater services he had contributed for Sri Lanka at a very critical time.
And Sri Lanka is still not out of the tunnel as far as the vicious intentions of the International Community and Navy Pillay are concerned. Therefore, we still want Dayan Jayatilleke to be in his Diplomatic post in Geneva. He was a diplomat respected by his counterparts in Geneva and his removal in this manner may antagonise the diplomats of those friendly countries that voted to defeat the resolution of the UNHRC.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Times mirrors the Tigers
Posted on July 14th, 2009
Rajiva Wijesinha Secretary General Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
The international community was horrified by news reports in the Times of London on July 9th 2009 that over 1400 people were dying each week in Welfare Centres in Sri Lanka. The Times continues to conceal its sources. This time the allegation is attributed to ‘Senior international aid figures’, though the figure was decried as ‘Ridiculous’ by the UN Resident Coordinator in Colombo.
An even more ‘senior international aid figure’ Sir John Holmes was even more contemptuous of sensationalistic journalism, when he pointed out that Sri Lanka had won a war which many foreign journalists had come out to cover, and therefore they had to produce something, to justify themselves.
Thus the Channel 4 stories of rape and sexual abuse and the Guardian Chamberlain assertion that 13 women had been found with short haircuts and slit throats. The Times however has gone further than all these, in conducting a sustained vitriolic campaign against the Sri Lankan government with no regard for either truth or logic. Their use of language too, though skilful, exemplifies their determination to distort, as when they tried to attribute to the UN their claim that there had been over 20,000 civilian deaths during the conflict against the Tigers. And they are obviously terrified of anyone who might contradict them, for they said falsely, in a wholly fraudulent article on May 21st, that ‘The Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, which set up the camps, did not return calls asking for comment yesterday’.
I then wrote to the Editor as follows – ‘In the first place, this Ministry is not responsible for setting up the camps, though we are responsible for protection issues in them. Secondly, May 20th was a public holiday, so perhaps you could ask your correspondent which number he called, at which he left a message asking for comment on his story. You should also ask him why he did not call me on my mobile, on which another correspondent of yours interviewed me at length in February, only to produce a report very different from that of the Indian correspondent who was in my room at the time and listened to the interview.
The substance of the article indicates why your correspondent feared to contact either me or my Minister, who tells me he was called up on the 21st, and answered queries on this subject, well after you had gone to print.
Of course I did not get a reply, and the Times absolutely refused to meet me when I was in England a couple of weeks later, though four other newspapers found time for me at short notice. Channel 4 and Sky News also dodged, though the BBC kindly slotted me in. But refusal to allow access is of course a well known dodge, which the Times attributes to its enemies whilst sedulously practicing this itself.
In short, the Times gets away with lies and refusal to engage or discuss when they come across someone who actually knows what is going on. But such cowardice is understandable in view of the scattershot way they produce arguments.
Initially they declared that they had got to a figure of 20,000 by adding – to the 7,000 they claimed the UN had reported from the beginning of the year until April – an average of 1000 a day for the first couple of weeks in May. This begged the question that the 7,000 had only been found in what were claimed to be leaks from the UN, and that nowhere else were there allegations of 1000 deaths a day in May. Indeed the Tamilnet accounts, which would generally present what might be termed the worst case scenario, alleged far fewer casualties.
Later the Times changed its story to claim that the figure of 20,000 was based on extrapolations from the number of bodies brought in to health centres, though they also noted that they multiplied the actual bodies brought in by five or so to reach their figure of 20,000.
Now, six weeks later, assuming their readers would have forgotten their earlier pitiful justifications, with Sir John Holmes also categorically rejecting the sleight of hand by which they had sought to associate the UN with their lies, they have yet another explanation for their nonsensical assertion. This time they declare that ‘Subsequent aerial photographs of beach graves, revealed in The Times, suggested that the figure was more than 20,000.’
So they now admit that their first mathematical calculations, based on a fraudulent UN figure for four months with a whimsical average for two weeks thereafter was nonsense. They also doubtless hope that no one will notice that the aerial photographs they rely on are of beach graves, whereas most of the fighting before May took place far away from that beach.
They also admit that their next exercise in mathematical fraud, multiplying bodies they themselves never saw to reach the number they first thought of, was also a lie. How the beach graves they revealed amount to the figure they now only suggest is not explained. Instead that figure will simply become a statistic to lurk behind their latest lie, 1,400 deaths a week in the camps, amounting to over 15,000 now if they started counting from the time of the great exodus, when the Sri Lankan forces managed to rescue over 100,000 of those held by the Tigers.
No wonder then that one senior Sri Lankan journalist said, ‘I have serious doubts over the latest statements. What we’re seeing is that the LTTE (the Tigers) and the Times are in some respects mirror images of each other.’ Senior incidentally is one of the words the Times uses when it wants to pretend that someone who said what it wanted said is in fact respectable. They trot out phrases like senior journalist and senior international aid worker to clothe their nakedness, hoping that then other papers will take up the claim and ignore that the only evidence for the bizarre lies the Times produces is the fertile imagination of Times journalists.
Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
Rajiva Wijesinha Secretary General Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
The international community was horrified by news reports in the Times of London on July 9th 2009 that over 1400 people were dying each week in Welfare Centres in Sri Lanka. The Times continues to conceal its sources. This time the allegation is attributed to ‘Senior international aid figures’, though the figure was decried as ‘Ridiculous’ by the UN Resident Coordinator in Colombo.
An even more ‘senior international aid figure’ Sir John Holmes was even more contemptuous of sensationalistic journalism, when he pointed out that Sri Lanka had won a war which many foreign journalists had come out to cover, and therefore they had to produce something, to justify themselves.
Thus the Channel 4 stories of rape and sexual abuse and the Guardian Chamberlain assertion that 13 women had been found with short haircuts and slit throats. The Times however has gone further than all these, in conducting a sustained vitriolic campaign against the Sri Lankan government with no regard for either truth or logic. Their use of language too, though skilful, exemplifies their determination to distort, as when they tried to attribute to the UN their claim that there had been over 20,000 civilian deaths during the conflict against the Tigers. And they are obviously terrified of anyone who might contradict them, for they said falsely, in a wholly fraudulent article on May 21st, that ‘The Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, which set up the camps, did not return calls asking for comment yesterday’.
I then wrote to the Editor as follows – ‘In the first place, this Ministry is not responsible for setting up the camps, though we are responsible for protection issues in them. Secondly, May 20th was a public holiday, so perhaps you could ask your correspondent which number he called, at which he left a message asking for comment on his story. You should also ask him why he did not call me on my mobile, on which another correspondent of yours interviewed me at length in February, only to produce a report very different from that of the Indian correspondent who was in my room at the time and listened to the interview.
The substance of the article indicates why your correspondent feared to contact either me or my Minister, who tells me he was called up on the 21st, and answered queries on this subject, well after you had gone to print.
Of course I did not get a reply, and the Times absolutely refused to meet me when I was in England a couple of weeks later, though four other newspapers found time for me at short notice. Channel 4 and Sky News also dodged, though the BBC kindly slotted me in. But refusal to allow access is of course a well known dodge, which the Times attributes to its enemies whilst sedulously practicing this itself.
In short, the Times gets away with lies and refusal to engage or discuss when they come across someone who actually knows what is going on. But such cowardice is understandable in view of the scattershot way they produce arguments.
Initially they declared that they had got to a figure of 20,000 by adding – to the 7,000 they claimed the UN had reported from the beginning of the year until April – an average of 1000 a day for the first couple of weeks in May. This begged the question that the 7,000 had only been found in what were claimed to be leaks from the UN, and that nowhere else were there allegations of 1000 deaths a day in May. Indeed the Tamilnet accounts, which would generally present what might be termed the worst case scenario, alleged far fewer casualties.
Later the Times changed its story to claim that the figure of 20,000 was based on extrapolations from the number of bodies brought in to health centres, though they also noted that they multiplied the actual bodies brought in by five or so to reach their figure of 20,000.
Now, six weeks later, assuming their readers would have forgotten their earlier pitiful justifications, with Sir John Holmes also categorically rejecting the sleight of hand by which they had sought to associate the UN with their lies, they have yet another explanation for their nonsensical assertion. This time they declare that ‘Subsequent aerial photographs of beach graves, revealed in The Times, suggested that the figure was more than 20,000.’
So they now admit that their first mathematical calculations, based on a fraudulent UN figure for four months with a whimsical average for two weeks thereafter was nonsense. They also doubtless hope that no one will notice that the aerial photographs they rely on are of beach graves, whereas most of the fighting before May took place far away from that beach.
They also admit that their next exercise in mathematical fraud, multiplying bodies they themselves never saw to reach the number they first thought of, was also a lie. How the beach graves they revealed amount to the figure they now only suggest is not explained. Instead that figure will simply become a statistic to lurk behind their latest lie, 1,400 deaths a week in the camps, amounting to over 15,000 now if they started counting from the time of the great exodus, when the Sri Lankan forces managed to rescue over 100,000 of those held by the Tigers.
No wonder then that one senior Sri Lankan journalist said, ‘I have serious doubts over the latest statements. What we’re seeing is that the LTTE (the Tigers) and the Times are in some respects mirror images of each other.’ Senior incidentally is one of the words the Times uses when it wants to pretend that someone who said what it wanted said is in fact respectable. They trot out phrases like senior journalist and senior international aid worker to clothe their nakedness, hoping that then other papers will take up the claim and ignore that the only evidence for the bizarre lies the Times produces is the fertile imagination of Times journalists.
Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sri Lankan man gives up life for squirrel
www.chinaview.cn 2009-07-13 13:04:19
COLOMBO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A 40-year-old Sri Lankan man who saved a squirrel from drowning lost his life on Saturday, an English newspaper reported on Monday. According to the Daily Mirror, Tilak Rajakaruna was climbing out after cleaning his 60-foot-deep (about 18.29 meters) garden well in a northern Colombo suburb called Kandana, when a squirrel fell into the well from an overhanging branch. Rajakaruna climbed back down to rescue it. He caught the squirrel and put it in the pockets of his shorts and started to climb up again. However, the squirrel came out and bit his hand, making him lose his grip and fall to the bottom of the well striking his head.
Rajakaruna's wife who was holding the rope rushed him to RagamaBase Hospital with the help of some neighbors but he succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. Doctors from the hospital reported that the death was due to head injuries caused by the fall
COLOMBO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A 40-year-old Sri Lankan man who saved a squirrel from drowning lost his life on Saturday, an English newspaper reported on Monday. According to the Daily Mirror, Tilak Rajakaruna was climbing out after cleaning his 60-foot-deep (about 18.29 meters) garden well in a northern Colombo suburb called Kandana, when a squirrel fell into the well from an overhanging branch. Rajakaruna climbed back down to rescue it. He caught the squirrel and put it in the pockets of his shorts and started to climb up again. However, the squirrel came out and bit his hand, making him lose his grip and fall to the bottom of the well striking his head.
Rajakaruna's wife who was holding the rope rushed him to RagamaBase Hospital with the help of some neighbors but he succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. Doctors from the hospital reported that the death was due to head injuries caused by the fall
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The 13th Amendment is a bad idea
Thursday, July 9, 2009 Leave a Comment
A response to Dayan Jayatilleka
By Malinda Seneviratne
(July 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There can be a military victory over a military challenge but there cannot be a purely military victory over a political challenge. An enemy army can and must be defeated, an armed opponent can be killed, but a political challenge requires a political response and an idea can be defeated only by another idea. – Dayan Jayatilleka
This is old. I would say it is basic to political science. However, like all things that stand the test of time, it is profound. Dayan is absolutely right. He is erroneous however in the application of this principle (see his piece in The Island of July 9, 2009 titled ‘The 13th Amendment and the international system’).
What is his reference?
Let me quote:
"One of the basic errors of Malinda and his co-thinkers is the conclusion that Tamil ethnic politics died on the banks of the Nandikadal. The idea of Tamil Eelam can be defeated only by the counter-idea of reformed and restructured Sri Lankan state which may remain unitary but contains an irreducible autonomous political space for the Tamil people of the North and East. It cannot be defeated by the idea of Sri Lanka shorn of even the 13th amendment. Armed Tamil secessionism can and has been defeated, but the politics of collective Tamil identity cannot be militarily defeated or suppressed; it can only be politically addressed."
Dayan’s defense of the 13th Amendment and his plea for its implementation is predicated on the validity of the Tamil (chauvinist) demands, or, to put it another way, the erroneous and mischievous assertion of the equation that equates ‘grievance’ + ‘aspiration’ to ‘legitimate demand’. More on this later.
He defends the hurried and coercively introduced 13th Amendment as a (necessary?) ‘Caesarean surgical intervention to bring forth a power sharing solution thwarted from 1957’ and pats himself on the back for having predicted the same. He attributes that ’ to extra-parliamentary lobbying: ‘none of the proposals for moderate power-sharing were voted down democratically’. Lobbying, Dayan knows, is part of democratic process. India dropping parippu and a lot more besides is not.
Dayan enumerates the advantages of going with the 13th, painting a happily-ever-after picture of internal stability, international backing and communal harmony with an equally ‘happy’ division of the Tamil Diaspora (that’s a racist wish, I believe), a bridging of the North-South gap and a downing of the anti-Sri Lanka global campaign. These are ‘strategic benefits’ which Dayan believes will accrue automatically if we implemented the 13th. He implies that pandering to Eelamist mythology and burning defensible historical transcript is a small price to pay for all these goodies.
First of all, I don’t think that the goodies are there for the taking. There are no ‘friends’ or ‘enemies’ in the international, just entities playing cards as per self-interest. There is a give and take and there’s a lot of arm-twisting too. Dayan knows this and Dayan knows that India is not the do-gooder that India likes us to believe she is. Yes, there is a ‘World System’, I acknowledge. That is however not an entity that was god-made and meant to be immobile from Day One to Day Last. Things change. To accept current realities as overarching forces best met with acquiescence is a legitimate option, but honour, dignity and intellectual honesty demand that error in perception be resisted. That however, is not an important entry in the diary of a politician. I believe it was one of the First Nations in the Americas that predicated policy decision on a consideration of impact on the seventh generation down the line. Resolving for aspirations that infringe on the rights of other communities and for grievances that can be addressed in other ways may appease ‘international pals’ in the here-and-now but will amount to little more than shoving a bunch of garbage under the carpet.
Dayan, so adept at meeting, countering and triumphing over Western mischief-making with respect to Sri Lanka, is surprisingly meek when it comes to Eelamist posturing regarding history.
Perhaps this is because he is fascinated with the notion of ‘autonomous political space’ for the Tamil people in the North and East. I will go with ‘political space’ but there is nothing to support ‘autonomy’ as per defined territory. The provincial boundaries were arbitrarily drawn, to begin with. The Eastern Province is demographically divided roughly into three equal parts, and in terms of territory, ‘Sinhala’ areas far outweigh Tamil and Muslim areas put together. As for legitimacy of claim following historical evidence, it is at best paltry. The archaeological record does not support the thesis. We could of course set the take-off point closer to the present, but then again, we do know that Chelvanayagam was not a Ceylonese, that Ponnambalam Ramanathan’s grandfather did not have an address in this country and we have to make note of the fact that the results of the first census were surreptitiously ‘disappeared’. Oh yes, Tamil chauvinism has a long history and one that pre-dates the horrendous disenfranchisement of Tamils in the estates and Bandaranaike’s swabasha adventure.
Dayan points out that our so-called ‘friends’ in the international community want the 13th implemented, citing statements made. Even if we were generous and grant that all these statements were/are made in good faith, the fact remains that they are based on their perceptions of our problem, something that is largely influenced by three factors: a) strong and sustained propaganda by the Eelam lobby, b) an ‘intellectual’ community (mostly of Marxist-Leninist leanings) that was and still is quite quiescent, and c) governments and political leaders who were operating throughout in the here-and-now mode.
Bandaranaike cowed down to ‘extra-parliamentary pressure’, yes. But it was not a matter of going through with the Chelva-Banda pact or dumping it unceremoniously. There was a compelling argument for a instituting a reason-privileging exercise in considering ‘Tamil grievances’. He could have instituted a historical audit into claims and thereafter addressed that which was legitimate and ignore that which was not. His successors could have too. That they did not is a pity, and does not in any way make a case for Caesarian section or the sanitization of belligerent bullying on the part of India. Or anyone else.
I agree with Dayan that the Sri Lanka state needs structural reform. There can be structural reform without compromising its centralized form. Devolution of power is not only antithetical to current global trends (for those who are fascinated by the ‘Global’ with a capital G) it is not a necessary precondition for reconciliation of Sinhala and Tamil communities. That is like saying that the United States should devolve power to the African Americans, Hispanics and Asians in clearly demarcated pieces of land in order to obtain reconciliation.
There is nothing wrong in any community wanting legitimate political space, in wanting equal rights as citizens, but autonomous political space is another matter altogether. That can be an aspiration, sure, but not delivering that aspiration is not a crime against humanity and not necessarily undemocratic.
All communities should have ‘political space’ to air grievances, assert identity and obtain relief where infringement occurs. This requires an overall democratization of our institutions. This is where my argument for the 17th Amendment is not the apple against the 13th Amendment orange as per Dayan’s characterization makes sense. The 1978 constitution is anti-citizen, first and foremost and this is the structural anomaly that needs to be addressed most urgently. It diminishes the citizen. The 17th, flawed though it is and inadequate to boot, as Dayan correctly observes, is the only step taken in the direction of addressing this problem.
Dayan says, ‘The 17th amendment only tangentially impacts upon the crucial problem of power-sharing between centre and periphery and is therefore no substitute for the implementation of the 13th amendment.’ True. The 17th does not really impact power-sharing between centre and periphery. However, ‘power sharing between centre and periphery’ is not the ‘problem’ Dayan believes it is. There has to be more decentralization of administrative functions, a greater degree of say for citizen in decision-making etc., but the answer is not devolution as per the 13th, which, we know is essentially a mechanism for pampering local thugs and a huge burden on the public. A District Council would be far more effective, democratic and yielding ‘self-determination’ to the ordinary citizen. What the 17th, or rather a 17th Plus formulation, would do is to insulate all people from the excesses of politicians.
Reconciliation is not about pandering to ahistorical claim. Aspiration clothed as right may excite those who like masquerades and cross-dressing of course, but a nation can do better than to go overboard with such things. This is why we need to get to the basics, i.e. a historical audit of Tamil claims. If not we will condemn our children to deal with chauvinism and the violence it tends to spawn. We cannot afford, especially not after suffering immense costs in eliminating the military avatar of Eelamist posturing, to concede constitutionally the rudimentary structures that can later be the basis for a renewed journey towards Prabhakaran’s objective. Reconciliation, rather, is about coming to terms with realities, of privileging respect, affirming equal rights for all citizens and providing the necessary space for celebrating identity.
It is beholden on us then to set the record state with respect to all misconceptions about Sri Lanka and her history. I will concede that mine is ‘version’. Dayan too will have to concede that his is ‘version’ too. I am ready to support a historical audit so that the root of the demand (for ‘autonomous political space for Tamils’) can be obtained. We can’t gloss over this. We have, for too long, and have had to pay a massive price for our collective sloth as a people. We need a new embrace in this country, a citizens’ embrace. This is not the time to embrace a wasteful, ineffective and grotesque historical misadventure just so that we win some accolades from ‘friends’ abroad for a few feel-good moments.
I firmly believe that the Sinhala and Tamil people are more than ready for a reconciliation that is not bastardised by formulations promoted and established by third-rate politicians and I believe that such reconciliation (which necessitates a re-hauling of the constitution; most certainly a worthy cause to espouse) alone would win us long-term and sustainable friendships internationally.
The 13th Amendment is, in short, a ‘bad idea’ and worse, ‘an erroneous idea’. It has to be defeated.
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com.
A response to Dayan Jayatilleka
By Malinda Seneviratne
(July 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There can be a military victory over a military challenge but there cannot be a purely military victory over a political challenge. An enemy army can and must be defeated, an armed opponent can be killed, but a political challenge requires a political response and an idea can be defeated only by another idea. – Dayan Jayatilleka
This is old. I would say it is basic to political science. However, like all things that stand the test of time, it is profound. Dayan is absolutely right. He is erroneous however in the application of this principle (see his piece in The Island of July 9, 2009 titled ‘The 13th Amendment and the international system’).
What is his reference?
Let me quote:
"One of the basic errors of Malinda and his co-thinkers is the conclusion that Tamil ethnic politics died on the banks of the Nandikadal. The idea of Tamil Eelam can be defeated only by the counter-idea of reformed and restructured Sri Lankan state which may remain unitary but contains an irreducible autonomous political space for the Tamil people of the North and East. It cannot be defeated by the idea of Sri Lanka shorn of even the 13th amendment. Armed Tamil secessionism can and has been defeated, but the politics of collective Tamil identity cannot be militarily defeated or suppressed; it can only be politically addressed."
Dayan’s defense of the 13th Amendment and his plea for its implementation is predicated on the validity of the Tamil (chauvinist) demands, or, to put it another way, the erroneous and mischievous assertion of the equation that equates ‘grievance’ + ‘aspiration’ to ‘legitimate demand’. More on this later.
He defends the hurried and coercively introduced 13th Amendment as a (necessary?) ‘Caesarean surgical intervention to bring forth a power sharing solution thwarted from 1957’ and pats himself on the back for having predicted the same. He attributes that ’ to extra-parliamentary lobbying: ‘none of the proposals for moderate power-sharing were voted down democratically’. Lobbying, Dayan knows, is part of democratic process. India dropping parippu and a lot more besides is not.
Dayan enumerates the advantages of going with the 13th, painting a happily-ever-after picture of internal stability, international backing and communal harmony with an equally ‘happy’ division of the Tamil Diaspora (that’s a racist wish, I believe), a bridging of the North-South gap and a downing of the anti-Sri Lanka global campaign. These are ‘strategic benefits’ which Dayan believes will accrue automatically if we implemented the 13th. He implies that pandering to Eelamist mythology and burning defensible historical transcript is a small price to pay for all these goodies.
First of all, I don’t think that the goodies are there for the taking. There are no ‘friends’ or ‘enemies’ in the international, just entities playing cards as per self-interest. There is a give and take and there’s a lot of arm-twisting too. Dayan knows this and Dayan knows that India is not the do-gooder that India likes us to believe she is. Yes, there is a ‘World System’, I acknowledge. That is however not an entity that was god-made and meant to be immobile from Day One to Day Last. Things change. To accept current realities as overarching forces best met with acquiescence is a legitimate option, but honour, dignity and intellectual honesty demand that error in perception be resisted. That however, is not an important entry in the diary of a politician. I believe it was one of the First Nations in the Americas that predicated policy decision on a consideration of impact on the seventh generation down the line. Resolving for aspirations that infringe on the rights of other communities and for grievances that can be addressed in other ways may appease ‘international pals’ in the here-and-now but will amount to little more than shoving a bunch of garbage under the carpet.
Dayan, so adept at meeting, countering and triumphing over Western mischief-making with respect to Sri Lanka, is surprisingly meek when it comes to Eelamist posturing regarding history.
Perhaps this is because he is fascinated with the notion of ‘autonomous political space’ for the Tamil people in the North and East. I will go with ‘political space’ but there is nothing to support ‘autonomy’ as per defined territory. The provincial boundaries were arbitrarily drawn, to begin with. The Eastern Province is demographically divided roughly into three equal parts, and in terms of territory, ‘Sinhala’ areas far outweigh Tamil and Muslim areas put together. As for legitimacy of claim following historical evidence, it is at best paltry. The archaeological record does not support the thesis. We could of course set the take-off point closer to the present, but then again, we do know that Chelvanayagam was not a Ceylonese, that Ponnambalam Ramanathan’s grandfather did not have an address in this country and we have to make note of the fact that the results of the first census were surreptitiously ‘disappeared’. Oh yes, Tamil chauvinism has a long history and one that pre-dates the horrendous disenfranchisement of Tamils in the estates and Bandaranaike’s swabasha adventure.
Dayan points out that our so-called ‘friends’ in the international community want the 13th implemented, citing statements made. Even if we were generous and grant that all these statements were/are made in good faith, the fact remains that they are based on their perceptions of our problem, something that is largely influenced by three factors: a) strong and sustained propaganda by the Eelam lobby, b) an ‘intellectual’ community (mostly of Marxist-Leninist leanings) that was and still is quite quiescent, and c) governments and political leaders who were operating throughout in the here-and-now mode.
Bandaranaike cowed down to ‘extra-parliamentary pressure’, yes. But it was not a matter of going through with the Chelva-Banda pact or dumping it unceremoniously. There was a compelling argument for a instituting a reason-privileging exercise in considering ‘Tamil grievances’. He could have instituted a historical audit into claims and thereafter addressed that which was legitimate and ignore that which was not. His successors could have too. That they did not is a pity, and does not in any way make a case for Caesarian section or the sanitization of belligerent bullying on the part of India. Or anyone else.
I agree with Dayan that the Sri Lanka state needs structural reform. There can be structural reform without compromising its centralized form. Devolution of power is not only antithetical to current global trends (for those who are fascinated by the ‘Global’ with a capital G) it is not a necessary precondition for reconciliation of Sinhala and Tamil communities. That is like saying that the United States should devolve power to the African Americans, Hispanics and Asians in clearly demarcated pieces of land in order to obtain reconciliation.
There is nothing wrong in any community wanting legitimate political space, in wanting equal rights as citizens, but autonomous political space is another matter altogether. That can be an aspiration, sure, but not delivering that aspiration is not a crime against humanity and not necessarily undemocratic.
All communities should have ‘political space’ to air grievances, assert identity and obtain relief where infringement occurs. This requires an overall democratization of our institutions. This is where my argument for the 17th Amendment is not the apple against the 13th Amendment orange as per Dayan’s characterization makes sense. The 1978 constitution is anti-citizen, first and foremost and this is the structural anomaly that needs to be addressed most urgently. It diminishes the citizen. The 17th, flawed though it is and inadequate to boot, as Dayan correctly observes, is the only step taken in the direction of addressing this problem.
Dayan says, ‘The 17th amendment only tangentially impacts upon the crucial problem of power-sharing between centre and periphery and is therefore no substitute for the implementation of the 13th amendment.’ True. The 17th does not really impact power-sharing between centre and periphery. However, ‘power sharing between centre and periphery’ is not the ‘problem’ Dayan believes it is. There has to be more decentralization of administrative functions, a greater degree of say for citizen in decision-making etc., but the answer is not devolution as per the 13th, which, we know is essentially a mechanism for pampering local thugs and a huge burden on the public. A District Council would be far more effective, democratic and yielding ‘self-determination’ to the ordinary citizen. What the 17th, or rather a 17th Plus formulation, would do is to insulate all people from the excesses of politicians.
Reconciliation is not about pandering to ahistorical claim. Aspiration clothed as right may excite those who like masquerades and cross-dressing of course, but a nation can do better than to go overboard with such things. This is why we need to get to the basics, i.e. a historical audit of Tamil claims. If not we will condemn our children to deal with chauvinism and the violence it tends to spawn. We cannot afford, especially not after suffering immense costs in eliminating the military avatar of Eelamist posturing, to concede constitutionally the rudimentary structures that can later be the basis for a renewed journey towards Prabhakaran’s objective. Reconciliation, rather, is about coming to terms with realities, of privileging respect, affirming equal rights for all citizens and providing the necessary space for celebrating identity.
It is beholden on us then to set the record state with respect to all misconceptions about Sri Lanka and her history. I will concede that mine is ‘version’. Dayan too will have to concede that his is ‘version’ too. I am ready to support a historical audit so that the root of the demand (for ‘autonomous political space for Tamils’) can be obtained. We can’t gloss over this. We have, for too long, and have had to pay a massive price for our collective sloth as a people. We need a new embrace in this country, a citizens’ embrace. This is not the time to embrace a wasteful, ineffective and grotesque historical misadventure just so that we win some accolades from ‘friends’ abroad for a few feel-good moments.
I firmly believe that the Sinhala and Tamil people are more than ready for a reconciliation that is not bastardised by formulations promoted and established by third-rate politicians and I believe that such reconciliation (which necessitates a re-hauling of the constitution; most certainly a worthy cause to espouse) alone would win us long-term and sustainable friendships internationally.
The 13th Amendment is, in short, a ‘bad idea’ and worse, ‘an erroneous idea’. It has to be defeated.
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
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