Ranil’s road, Mahinda’s map

Does the UNP and Opposition leader Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe suffer from a compulsion towards electoral suicide or is it a condition of political sado-masochism? Only someone who is politically suicidal or sadistic towards his own party and its supporters could have gone to Jaffna last week, in the throes of a crucial election campaign at the end of which the UNP must deprive the ruling UPFA of a two thirds majority, and made the speech that he did. If the TamilNet report of his speech is untrue he must contradict it immediately and loudly.

Mr Wickremesinghe has a millstone of his own choosing decorating his neck, namely the abiding memory of his policy of appeasement towards the LTTE.  He chooses to add to this weight with a promise that military camps will be removed, and a commission of inquiry will be established, topping it off with an apology for the travails visited on the people of Jaffna (with no mention of the travails the people of Jaffna visited on themselves and the rest of the country by incubating and succouring a fascist movement, bolstering it over other, more humane armed options even within the Eelam struggle). The list of deaths he apologises for includes Mr. Amirthalingam, murdered by the Tigers after tea!

Extracts from the report follow:

“All military camps in Jaffna peninsula will be scrapped if UNP wins” – Ranil

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 March 2010, 16:25 GMT]

Ranil Wickremasinghe, leader of United National Party (UNP), who arrived in Jaffna accompanied by his wife said that all the military camps in Jaffna peninsula will be scrapped except Palaali Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp, in the UNP election campaign meeting held in Jaffna Veerasingham Hall Friday…More than five hundred people attended this meeting where UNP chief candidate for Jaffna electorate Ms. Vijayakala Mahendran, Mrs. Ranil Wickremasinghe, Tissa Athanayake, the General Secretary of UNP and its treasurer Swaminathan were present…

• A Commission of Inquiry will be established and it will immediately begin to find what had happened to the persons gone missing in Jaffna peninsula during the present government.

• No one except the government armed forces will be permitted to bear weapons and all paramilitary groups will be done away with.

“We all have to beg the forgiveness of the people for all the pain we had inflicted on them,” Ranil Wickremasinghe said.

“The burning of Jaffna Public Library, attacks of Dalada Maligawa and Maha Bothi, the loses of political leaders like Amirthalingam, Raviraj, Maheswaran, Joseph Pararajasingham and many others are all tragic indeed,” he added.

“All of us are responsible for all these tragic events for which we have to apologize to the people,” Ranil said.” (TamilNet March 19, 2010)

Mr Wickremesinghe’s discourse of ritualistic abasement is going to lose him Sinhala votes while it gains him no Tamils votes either, because the Jaffna people will vote for the TNA, Gajan Ponnambalam or Douglas Devananda.  By the way, in its election manifesto the TNA has neither a word of criticism of the LTTE (not even for assassinating Amir, Neelan and the Yogeswaran couple) nor an apology to anyone, Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim.

The UNP leader probably assumes that all he needs do is to deny the UPFA a two-thirds majority at the upcoming election and that at the conclusion of President Rajapakse’s second term, the ‘patriotic project’ would have run its course to the extent that an exhausted and frustrated electorate would naturally turn to him, as it did to his uncle JR Jayewardene in 1977.  There are at least three things wrong with this picture: as Opposition leader, JRJ and his second in command Premadasa, gave the UNP more, not less, populist mass appeal than the SLFP led coalition. Secondly, a weak or average performance by the UNP at this election opens the door for post election defections (ostensibly to ‘save the country from the TNA in the face of Ranil’s appeasement of federalism) which could make up the game changing two thirds. Thirdly, Mr Wickremesinghe’s ‘minoritarian’ profile opens space for a ‘patriotic-populist’ Second Opposition in the form of the Fonseka-JVP bloc, which will be so bitter towards him that it fields a candidate at the next Presidential election and draws enough votes to split the Opposition and elect (or re-elect) a ruling party candidate!

Which brings us to one of the most crucial questions in Lankan politics: what, apart from every incumbent SLFP administration’s obvious tilt towards him, keeps Mr Wickremesinghe as the leader of the UNP, when the cost to that party, the Opposition, the democratic system, the economy, the country and the people is so colossal, cumulative and continuous?

What does his continued incumbency as leader say about the UNP and the social stratum that seems to have a hammerlock on that party? The equation between that social stratum and Mr Wickremesinghe was best exemplified by the photographs on the front pages of last Sunday’s newspapers, of Mr Wickremesinghe (supposedly) singing ‘Delilah’ in the Mustangs tent at the annual Royal-Thomian match. Those pictures would not have gone down well with today’s electorate. They revealed Ranil as the ‘organic leader’ of a decadent social class which lamentably, seems to have a death grip on the UNP.

Meanwhile, President Rajapakse’s interview given to the perspicacious Ravi Velloor of the prestigious Straits Times (Singapore) left me with mixed feelings.  The story was prominently displayed and filled an entire page.  President Rajapakse came off as confident, successful and strong. It was clear that no one – Brown, Miliband or the Global Tamil Forum — could kick Sri Lanka or its people around on Mahinda Rajapakse’s watch, and of that I was proud. That’s the good news.  Having read it however, I wondered what the legendary Lee Kwan Yew, who may well have read it himself, would have thought, since our President also came across as a little defensive and evasive, lacking a clear message and vision.  Overall, the impression was one of confidence and strength but the interview revealed some blind-spots:

1. The understanding of the issue of equity not in socioeconomic terms but solely in spatial or geographic terms: not rich and poor, or ‘haves and have-nots’ (as Premadasa had it), but ‘Colombo’ vs. the provinces. It ignores the disparities within the cities and provinces, including the Western province. An earlier SLFP administration which proceeded on this ideological basis spawned one of the most damaging policies in independent Sri Lanka, namely district-wise standardisation in university admission. There is also no realisation that Colombo, the hub of connectivity with the world, a focus of educated professionals and the corporate sector and the most multicultural area of the country, must not be neglected or treated as a hostile or occupied territory.
2. The inadequacy of the understanding of the ethnic problem and the inconsistency and underestimation of what is needed to resolve it. Vacillation instead of a clear vision as to how the problem should be solved. (‘Village level devolution for the North and East’ when delivering this year’s Independence Day speech, ‘13^th amendment minus police powers’ when talking to any foreigner.)
3. The lack of awareness that, while imitation is dangerous, one has to learn from the success stories of other countries and leaders.  Deng Hsiao Peng learned from his visit to the US in 1979 and Singapore in 1984. His dialogue with Lee Kwan Yew in that year is widely credited as a conceptual catalyst of China’s economic miracle.
4. Lack of awareness that the building of ports and harbours alone will not develop a country, and that modernizing reforms are needed, high standards of education and a first rate administrative apparatus have to be restored, corruption has to be drastically reduced and the best brains in all fields (especially scientific and professional) have to be incentivised to remain in Sri Lanka or return, thus reversing the brain drain.  The Asian economic miracle, be it in East Asia or China under Deng Hsiao Peng, did not occur on the basis of vilifying the cities and glorifying the rural and the provincial, but modernising them, opening them up and integrating them into the world economy.

When one observes the political behaviour of Ranil Wickremesinghe, I feel reconfirmed in my own mind that my policy of critical support for President Rajapakse, an adaptation of the Maoist policy of ‘unity and struggle’ is still the right one. This does not however pertain to the upcoming Parliamentary election because the choice is not between Mahinda and Ranil but between the ruling coalition which is on a drive for a two thirds majority, and the opposition which itself presents two options, the UNP and the Fonseka-JVP faction. Military uni-polarity is imperative in a state, particularly a small island, while political uni-polarity is not.

Post war Sri Lanka needs a Deng Hsiao Peng or Vladimir Putin, who made their countries strong through ideologies of rapid modernization and modernising, globalising reforms. It needs President Rajapakse to study and learn from them. Ranil’s UNP, with its social insensitivity to the sentiments of the majority of the people, of the masses, is incapable of spearheading a socially sustainable modernisation.  Mahinda, a far more organic representative of the masses, can be the vehicle of such modernisation provided he is capable of transcending the more backward mass sentiments. Perhaps what he needs is a parliament that will keep him on his toes and act as a check on the ideological apparatuses of the state. Such a balance of forces may once again bring out the best in him. If, however, post-parliamentary election, the configuration continues pretty much as it is, and the hegemonic ideology remains undisturbed, what will be Sri Lanka’s trajectory?