Are we doomed to repeat the past, in fearful force?

Sunday, December 01, 2019

The wildly popular urban myth of lemmings rushing to the sea in waves of mass suicide has a parallel in Sri Lanka in waves of ‘meru’ insects desperately attracted to the very light that eventually kills them. Quaintly known as ‘Christmas flies’ probably because they are most evident towards that time, hundreds cluster around any point of light, leading to mass ‘insect-icide’ as it were. A few years ago, guests at a reception had to glumly leave the festivities due to a ‘meru’ invasion of lights strung up for celebration, with dying flies dropping into the food and hair of disgruntled guests.

What matters is the perception

In contemporary Sri Lankan politics, the United National Party (UNP) best qualifies for that title of rushing towards its political suicide. If actions of party seniors in the run-up to the presidential polls are scrutinized, one is constrained to ask if deliberate machinations or stupidity of the highest degree (or a combination of both) were at play to ensure that their own candidate gets defeated? Quite apart from the party leadership inexcusably delaying the nomination of the party candidate until scarcely a month before the polls, organisers have alleged that blocks were put on their canvassing. Accusations and counter-accusations continue to fly as the poisonous underbelly of party politics is exposed.

Just weeks before the elections, the UNP dominated Cabinet approval of the  Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant by the United States lent fresh fuel to the ‘Pohottuwa’ propaganda campaign that Sri Lanka was being sold to Western powers. It was not a question as to whether this allegation was true or not. What mattered rather, was political perception and the skilful selling of that perception to the Sinhalese people. Similarly devastating was United National party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe’s firm assertion that he would remain as Prime Minister under a potential Premadasa Presidency.

These were points exuberantly used by ‘Pohuttuwa’ campaigners to good effect despite a Premadasa pledge that he would bring about ‘change.’ For those of the general public still undecided as to for whom they would vote but sick and tired of ‘yahapalanaya’ confusion and chaos during the past four years, these warning red signals proved to be impossible to ignore. Thus, when Mr Wickremesinghe reflects that his party has lost the confidence of the country’s Sinhala Buddhist majority, he is (again) wide off the mark. As much as the polls results reflect a division on ethnic lines, that ‘loss of confidence’ is not limited to a religious majority.

Simplistic rendering of the UNP defeat

As the November polls results show, the loss is of far wider import, including Catholic and Christian communities devastated by the Easter Sunday attacks despite some polling divisions holding firm against all odds. Moreover, the Tamil and Muslim vote was given for Premadasa not because the minority communities approved of the UNP. For the Tamil people in the North and East, ‘ the ‘yahapalanaya’ regime effected the cruellest betrayal of all by raising expectations regarding a transitional justice process that was callously conceived to fail from its very conception. In the minimum, even horrendously emblematic cases of gross human rights violations including the killings of children and aid workers were not prosecuted with full state will.  These too were perhaps designed to fail as it were. On their part, Tamil political parties from the ‘extreme’ to the ‘not-so-extreme’ abandoned principled positions on helping victims of their own communities. Instead, they played politics.

The so-called 13 point demands put collectively by the Tamil parties in late October were distinctly inflammatory in its stress on Tamils constituting ‘a nation with distinct sovereignty entitled to the Right of Self-Determination under International Law.’ These demands lent a turbo boost to the ‘Pohottuwa’ campaign in the South. It was in vain that Premadasa protested that he had not agreed to any conditions. Here too, it is difficult to ignore the analogy of lemmings rushing into the sea or insects dying  by the light. Tamil politicians must say ‘mea culpa’ as their people recoil in very real fear of the ‘Rajapaksa-return’

Essentially therefore, Sri Lanka’s Tamil and Muslim minorities voted for the UNP-led coalition in massive numbers for the reason that they ‘feared’ a Gotabhaya Presidency, not that they ‘loved’ the UNP more. So if the UNP is not to go into oblivion like the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), simplistic reasons for its defeat must be discarded. Party reorientation on the floor of the House under a credible and competent Leader of the Opposition is crucial. Failure in this regard is not just the failure of a political party and its potential oblivion. For there is far more at stake here. With Sri Lanka’s two major political parties in meltdown, will we continue with a multi-party system (however flawed), having checks and balances between the executive and the legislature, not to mention the independence of the judiciary? Or will a different and infinitely more monstrous creature evolve?

Are we doomed to repeat the past?

And the nation’s brand new President, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa must ask himself in all seriousness is as to why Sri Lanka’s minorities voted against him with so much more force than when his brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa contested for the Presidency, even at a point when agony of the Wanni conflict was still fresh in people’s minds? If he is not to preside over a fractured nation with inevitable internationalization of domestic politics, he must rise above platitudes. Development does not cure all ills, even the broken heart of a grieving mother who still lays a place at the family table for her son and daughter who ‘disappeared’ following their arrest by state forces. This was a lesson that the Rajapaksas surely should have learnt most forcefully during the decade that they were in power.

So as the well regarded criminal investigator Shani Abeysekera who was handling controversial cases is disgracefully demoted and his deputy flees overseas, ‘Pohottuwa’ chuckles must subside. When an employee of a foreign mission is allegedly ‘abducted’, thrown into a vehicle at gunpoint and forced to disclose ‘embassy related information,’ this is no laughing matter whatsoever. Are we doomed to repeat the past? Indeed, that question is relevant in more ways than one.

Will the same disgraceful quid pro quo in 2015 when the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe-led coalition Government delayed prosecuting politicians of the Rajapaksa era  be evidenced again, albeit in reverse? Will those who unforgivably muddied ‘yahapalanaya’ waters get off with a ‘jail free’ card? Will the robbers compact between the very corrupt at the very top to safeguard each other as they rob the public purse, be repeated, over and over again? These are acid tests for those singing ecstatic hosannahs as they welcome the second coming of Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksas. If the electoral results of 2015 and its reversal in 2019 show anything, it is that unpredictability is the hallmark of the Sri Lankan voter.

That caution needs to be kept well in mind.