GOSL:MR REGIME: UNREASON/ IMMODERATION/ IRRATIONAL/ EXCESSIVE!!!

An Appalling Fray.......Tisaranee Gunasekara

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country".

Theodore Roosevelt (Works – Vol 21)


Extremism is a mindset, an existential choice, a way of seeing the world and being in it. In its three year tenure the Rajapakse administration has displayed a decided partiality for unreason and immoderation. Still, a clash with the judiciary over the issue of fuel prices seems too irrational and excessive an enterprise even for the Rajapakses. To regard or depict the Supreme Court decision on fuel prices as a Tiger conspiracy to bankrupt the state is preposterous. Whether the government is cynically exploiting the war to stamp out dissent or whether it really believes in its outrageous rhetoric is uncertain. Perhaps it is a bit of both. In any case, this path will undermine democracy and endanger civil peace in the South; systemic instability will be its ultimate destination.

If the administration can imply that the Supreme Court is pro-Tiger because it intervened to fix fuel prices, then no individual or entity, word or deed would be safe from the charge of treachery. Whenever the government needs to defeat an opponent or discredit a non-supporter, the label of traitor will be used. This will cause a politically implosive polarisation in society preventing the very anti-Tiger unity the regime says it is desirous of creating. Eventually this polarisation will permeate even the armed forces; officers who do not identify with the government’s political agenda will be looked upon with askance and treated with injustice.

Since the government is reiterating its absolute and inalienable right to impose super-inflated taxes on the populace and the Supreme Court is advocating fairness in taxation, a majority of the public is bound to back the judiciary. The regime’s obduracy has backfired economically as well with consumers abandoning CPC stations for IOC stations which offer petrol at court mandated low prices. If the regime resisted the Supreme Court on some other issue (for example its controversial verdict on checkpoints), the charge of a Tiger conspiracy may not have seemed totally outrageous. But when it comes to prices, the dividing line is not between pro-Tiger and anti-Tiger but pro-people and anti-people. And by opting to deny the overburdened consumers some benefit from record low oil prices in the international market, the regime has placed itself unequivocally on the anti-people side. This is a battle which should not be waged and cannot be won, even if Mahinda Rajapakse tries a Pervez Musharraf.

If there is indeed a conspiracy to bankrupt the Lankan state, a good part of the Rajapakse government, from the President downwards, are aiding and abetting it to the hilt. The cabinet has approved the wet leasing of a plane for Mihin Lanka at the cost of Rs. 1,100 million. Minister Rohitha Bogollagama has busted Rs. 76 million in just one year on air travel alone. The country is burdened with a gargantuan cabinet. Ministers not only get direct tax waivers; they also avoid paying most of the indirect taxes by using public funds to pay house rent, electricity, fuel and water bills. These are the leaders who preach to the masses about the virtues of taxation!

If there is indeed a conspiracy to bankrupt the state, the rulers are the prime movers in it since they, with their inefficiency, waste and corruption, brought the country’s finances to its current precarious level. It is no secret that the regime’s reluctance to reduce fuel prices stem from the disastrous effects of the CPC’s unprincipled and unintelligent hedging deal. The public is being forced to pay for the errors of the government and that is unjust by any standard. And when oppressed by unjust taxes, a populace has two choices – it can either seek a systemic remedy or it can rebel. Any government that blocks the first, democratic, avenue would be paving the way for the second option.

The Plight of the Civilians


Total intolerance of any sort of criticism is a hallmark of the LTTE, a characteristic which made the Tiger Way. Vellupillai Pirapaharan regarded any criticism of his words and deeds as an impediment to the realisation of the goal of Eelam, even when such criticism emanated from those who were committed to the same goal and were fighting for it. In the end, the Tiger, through its excesses became an impediment not just to the wellbeing of Tamils but even to the realisation of the Eelam objective itself. Criticising one’s own side for its mistakes early in the day is the best way to make sure that those stray incidents do not grow into a pattern, a tendency, a habit. When you do not draw the line, you not only end up by debasing yourself but also by antagonising friends and giving the enemy ammunition to be used against you.

Two reports by the Human Rights Watch highlight the plight of civilian Tamils in the conflict zone, caught between a brutal LTTE and a ruthless administration. In the first report, the HRW has exposed (yet again) the barbaric practices of the Tigers, particularly the exacerbation in child conscription in the recent months. In the second report the HRW has detailed the human suffering caused by government policies such as the internment of civilians fleeing into cleared areas and the expulsion of humanitarian organisations. Logically the HRW’s unsparing (and continuous) criticism of the LTTE should suffice to save it from the charge of pro-Tigerism but logic, sadly, has no place in the regime’s mental universe. Therefore the government is likely to respond to the second report ‘Besieged, Displaced and Detained: The Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka’s Vanni Region’ not by rethinking its extremist policies but by getting its propagandists to accuse the HRW of being Tiger-friendly.

The LTTE will not give in, even if Killinochchi falls, and it is the civilian Tamils who are bearing the brunt of the burden of its extremist resistance. While the Tigers are intent on fighting to the last Tamil man, woman and child, literally, the government seems to accord no importance of the safety of its Tamil citizens. Even the weather has turned against these hapless people. For them life has become an unleavened misery, a relentless and unequal struggle to eke a tenuous and a meagre existence in a nightmarish terrain. Had the Rajapakse administration been a little less indifferent to the plight of these people, had it responded with a little more sympathy and generosity to their suffering, winning them over would have been an easy task indeed. Unfortunately the administration is trying to match the Tigers in ‘toughness’, baldly refusing to make any concession for the sake of the civilians in the conflict zone.

In any situation there are impossible concessions as well as possible ones. Refusing possible concessions is as damaging as granting impossible concessions. For instance, instead of an edict of general expulsion, the regime could have acted on the merits and demerits of the conduct of each NGO in the conflict zone. The rejection of such a nuanced approach in favour of an extremist one not only increased the jeopardy of the civilians but also prevented news about Tiger depredations leaking out. As the HRW points out, it was the information provided by some of the NGO workers in the conflict zone which made its damningly anti-Tiger report, ‘Trapped and Mistreated: LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni’ possible. With those workers expelled by Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s diktat, that important and credible source of information has dried up. Now the Tigers can engage in their abuses to their hearts’ content, without having to bother about exposure.

Another case in point is the boorish manner in which the regime responded to the Bishops’ plea for a ceasefire. A more conciliatory response (perhaps a 24 hour ceasefire limited to the Christmas Day) may have resulted in some military disadvantages but these would have been outweighed by the politico-propaganda pluses. Now the world will remember that it was the Lankan government and not the LTTE which rejected the Bishops’ very humane plea for a Christmas ceasefire and this would help attempts by Tiger sympathisers to depict the Lankan side as ‘aggressors’ (especially to the new Obama administration). When guns boom and bombs fall on Christmas Day, civilian Tamils living in fear of their lives would remember that their own government (and not the LTTE) refused to concede them even a 24 hour respite from the horror that is war.

The Indian Dimension


Will the horrendous carnage in Bombay cause a political realignment in the India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka triangle? Though Pakistan did make some moves against Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa Delhi, understandably, sees these as grossly inadequate. Consequently Indo-Pakistan tensions remain as does the possibility of Indian aerial attacks on ‘terrorist targets’ in Pakistan controlled Kashmir. If Delhi, in imitation of George W Bush, takes such an erroneous step, it will cause an anti-Indian, anti-Hindu backlash in Pakistan which in turn may enable the BJP to polarise India along Hindu-Muslim lines in time for the upcoming general election.

Such an outcome would be bad for Sri Lanka in more ways than one. The obvious fallout is the possibility of Delhi policy makers regarding Colombo as ‘the friend of the enemy’; this, in turn, can make them regard Colombo’s enemies in a more lenient light. There is another danger which can become a reality if the BJP forms the next government - an anti-Islamic, pro-Hindu understanding between the LTTE and Hindu fundamentalists in India. The BJP is on record expressing its determination to impose a ceasefire on Colombo if it wins the next election. Early this month TNA parliamentarian MK Shivajilingam met leaders of the Hindu extremist VHP and RSS. Both organisations expressed their support for the ‘Hindu Tamils’ in Sri Lanka, with VHP President Ashok Singhal declaring, ‘You can tell your people that we will be with them. We are here to help Hindus. Since most Sri Lankan Tamils are Hindus, we won’t let them down,’ (Sindh Today – 16.12.2008). Mr. Singhal has defended the anti-Muslim riots in Gujrat and talks regularly about Christian conspiracies (he is violently opposed to Dalits converting to Christianity). Predictably some JHU leaders used to quote his fundamentalist rhetoric not so long ago to justify their own anti-conversion campaign. Extremists do have something in common, a temperament, a way of looking at the world, a mental landscape in Black and White, which permits no intermediate colours or spaces.

Since the TNA would not make a single important move without Tiger blessings, Mr. Sivajilingam’s meetings with the RSS and the VHP and his depiction of the Lankan war in religious terms would have happened with Mr. Pirapaharan’s knowledge and approval. It is hard to believe that the LTTE leader would want to Hinduise his struggle thereby alienating Christian and Catholic Tamils. But he may not mind depicting the war as an attempt by the Buddhist South to subjugate the Hindu North thereby gaining the support of the Hindu rightwingers in India. After all, a Tiger suicide bomber tried to assassinate the Pakistan High Commissioner in Colombo in August 2006. The Hindu right may regard an organisation willing and able act in such a manner as a ‘proxy’ worth having. And if tensions between India and Pakistan escalate further, this point of view may find favour with secular-minded decision makers in Delhi who see Pakistan as India’s existential enemy.

2009 is certainly not the time for the Rajapakse administration to pick fights with the judiciary or antagonise Lankan and Tamilnadu Tamils still further.


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