Game up for Sirisena, too, on war-crimes probe? 

N Sathiya Moorthy-September 24, 2018, 9:49 pm

As was only to be anticipated under the circumstances, President Maithiripala Sirisena has declared that he will be proposing amendments to the UNHRC resolution on war-crimes probe, which his government co-sponsored with the US and the rest, after predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa had resisted the efforts of the ‘international community’, until his electoral defeat in January 2015. It is, however, unclear if the West is going to be happy for what it may hear when Sirisena addresses the UN General Assembly on the opening day, 25 September, as it had cheered him at his maiden address as the nation’s President in the 2015 session.

As Sirisena told a recent meeting with the local newspaper editors in Colombo, he would come up with the proposals only at the UN. Whether he would spell out the details in his UNGA address or at his meetings with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and UNHRC chief, Michelle Bachelet, former Chilean President, is unclear as yet. So is the there no clarity if the Government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is wholly with the President on the proposals, or not.

Clarity and unanimity on the part of the Government and the Cabinet as a whole has acquired significance in the context of President Sirisena’s UNGA address in 2015. On the occasion, he committed the nation to a credible and independent war-crimes probe, as if without being asked by anyone out there. Once back home, he sang a different tune and opposed the Geneva process, where the nation’s commitments from the time have to be met by March 2019.

Clearly, neither the government, nor the President as the Head of Government and also as the Commander-in-Chief of the nation’s armed forces, is not going to seek a further extension of time, for meeting Sri Lanka’s 30/1 commitments at the UNHRC. If anything, it can be safely concluded that the UNHRC should revisit the resolution and possibly agree to an ‘internal mechanism’ for war-crimes probe within the Sri Lankan scheme and answerable only to the nation’s highest judiciary, and none else of the ‘Nuremberg trial’ kind.

Why the media...

For all this, however, President Sirisena may have chosen the wrong forum, for pulling up the nation’s police force in relation to pending court cases and investigations to what could tantamount to ‘war-crimes’ probe, even if not of the direct kind. The cold-blooded killing of Lasantha Wickremetunga in broad-day light on a busy road in a Colombo suburb, and the equally despicable disappearances of other journalists and commoners alike, deserves all condemnation and also identification of the culprits and their punishment.

While saying as much, Sirisena pulled up the police for not taking up any or many of these cases to their logical conclusion by filing charge-sheets and taking them up to the case of trial and conviction. In particular, he is reported to have referred to the recent controversy around the CID obtaining an arrest-warrant against Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne, for helping a suspect-colleague escape from the long arm of the law.

The suspect was wanted in connection with the abduction and killing of 11 persons in 2009. As President Sirisena alone pointed out to media editors whom he met, the CID had not even customarily questioned the CDS when seeking and obtaining an arrest-warrant against him.

It is not only about the procedure that the CID and other wings of the police force did not follow in the matter. It is even more about the President discussing the matter with media editors. As Head of Government and the Cabinet, the Head of State and the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, he was/is well within his rights and duties to take up the matter within the officialdom and the ministry.

According to media reports, the President discussed the matter with the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and other authorities before meeting with the editors. Yet, there is no knowing why he should rake up an avoidable and even more embarrassing controversy of the kind.

If one went by the precedents from the recent past, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his senior UNP ministerial colleagues may look the other way, when the President purportedly has his way. Or, was/ is it the other way round?

It is politics...

Going by President Sirisena’s methods in such matters involving Cabinet decisions and the like, he seems to be playing up to the political class and playing politics the same way. The controversy attending on his maiden UNGA address on the war-crimes probe was followed (up?) by his shifting posturing on the ‘Central Bank bonds scam’, the ‘Hambantota equity-swap’ with China and the ‘Avant-Garde floating armoury controversy, this one dating back to the predecessor Rajapaksa regime.

In a way, the nation was forced to witness a political game of oneupmanship between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe, and their aides. If not as the senior of the two politicians, but at least as the Head of State and of the Government, Sirisena has had the last laugh, in every matter on which he had held back his opinion, possibly from the Cabinet and the officialdom, until he went to town with his views.

The question thus arises is whose cause Sirisena is presenting and/or seeking to protect? As much as that of the nation and the people, he was seemingly sub-serving his own self. In more sophisticated ways than what the Rajapaksas might have employed and equally suave and style, he was seeking to outsmart the genially cunning Ranil at the latter’s game.

This was not expected of the President, who owes his election and position, not to a party that he believes he is now heading, but to the UNP and other allies in the incumbent government and outside. Obviously, Team Sirisena, too, knows that the he can go thus far and no more, in terms of facing elections and winning them on his own steam.

If not the Sirisena camp, most definitely the UNP and the Rajapaksas’ SLPP-JO know as much. However abominable, it is one thing for a President or party leader with a proven mass-base to take decisions that at least would stand the test of political tides, if not public morals, constitutional scheme and judicial pronouncements. It is another for a constitutional-head-by-accident, invoking positions that he cannot hold politically and electorally, for long.

Last laugh...

This only takes the nation to the next phase of ‘Game Sirisena’, or so it seems. By siding with the UNP adversaries of the Rajapaksas, to deny each one of the serious presidential contenders from the family, the possibility of doing so, he has ensured that the JO needs him even more than his own SLFP and the UNP.

If anything, Sirisena knows more than anyone else that the UNP would want to have a President, Prime Minister and Parliament of their own, after the long gap, when they have lost out either or all of them, in turn, for two-plus decades now. His current game-plan possibly is to have the UNP push the Rajapaksas to the wall as much as possible, and try to capture the latter’s ‘traditional constituency’, which may now include the ‘war veteran families’ and their valuable votes, as also the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists’.

It is anybody’s guess if the Rajapaksas’ SLPP-JO would fall for ‘Game Sirisena’ and end up adopting/adapting him as their presidential candidate, whenever the polls are held within the mandatory deadline of early January 2020. With Sirisena seeking to cut into their vote-bank, they may at least be wary of deciding to ditch him just as he had done to the Rajapaksas in Elections-2015.

But then Diaspora Tamils’ TGTE is not the one not to look through ‘Game Sirisena’. If nothing else, they have come to suddenly remember that Sirisena, after all, was the ‘Acting Defence Minister’ during the last phase of the war, leading up to the death of LTTE boss, Velupillai Prabhakaran and others in the lagoons of Mullivaikkal. To whatever ‘war-crime’ charges that they had thus far levelled (only) against the Rajapaksas, the TGTE has since tagged on Sirisena’s name, too.

It is all because Sirisena has now told the nation that he was going to go the UN with amendments to the UNHRC resolution on ‘war-crimes probe’ and allied matter. If nothing else, both Sirisena and his UNP Prime Minister would be constrained to start off with the institution of a ‘credible and independent’ probe, even if ‘internal’, agreeable to the ‘international community’, translating to the US-led West.

Naturally, the incumbent government may want at least some of those identified with the Rajapaksas, if not any or all of the Rajapaksas, to be hauled up before such a probe, embarrassing the family, if not providing additional justification for denying them the presidential ticket. Likewise, the TGTE’s political foot soldiers from within the community, or the off-again-on-again ‘competitive Tamil nationalists’ of the poll-eve TNA kind, may want to haul up Sirisena too for his being the ‘Acting Defence Minister’ during the end-game of the war.

Who would have then had the last laugh? The TNGTE or the TNA, or what? It might not be Sirisena, after all, unless of course, he may have more of the 2015 Aces up his sleeve, without even the knowledge of Ranil W and the very same ‘international community’ that had backed Sirisena at the time, though on the crucial ‘China factor’ from the previous poll, the latter may have greater credibility on ‘la affaire Hambantota’ than even the former.

It is another matter that with the TNA divided on ‘war crimes probe’ more than devolution and the like, especially at the level of the Northern Provincial Council, the party leadership would find it difficult to tell the Tamil voters to what they should do the next time round, a ‘southern Sinhala’ seek their votes on the presidential poll. As is becoming evident on the ‘CDS issue’, where Wijegunaratne travelled to Mexico and back, pending the execution of court-ordered arrest, the TNA, more than ever, is under greater pressure in four-plus years of this government, to do, and not just talk – and talk only to the government leaders, and not their own constituency.

The loser in this case may well be UNP and PM Ranil, who may not resist internal ‘demands’ for him to contest the presidency, this time again, after losing the elections in 2005. To the extent, the Rajapaksas and the Sirisenas can relax, but not eternally, if either or both of them have their eyes still on the presidency!

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)