A Political Solution and Conduits for
Racism
(By: Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha; Secretary-General Secretariat for
Coordinating the Peace Process)
The myth about bringing the two main parties together
Over the last year, I have been struck by the number
of times I have been told that a political solution to our problems is
not possible unless the two main parties get together. This argument is
based on the historical record, inasmuch as two serious attempts at
compromise, involving Regional Councils in the late fifties and then
District Councils in the late sixties, were stymied because of forceful
opposition by the main opposition party. Had the opposition in either
case agreed to the compromise, it is held, our problems would have been
solved.
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“More
concerted action on language, the recruitment of Tamils to the
public and security services, infrastructural and economic
development in the East, elections to local government bodies and
the Provincial Council in the East, the Task Force in the North,
are all excellent starts, but more, to institutionalize the
concept and impact of power sharing, is desirable.” |
There are two rejoinders to that. The first is that,
even if support from the opposition would have been a sufficient
condition, that does not make it a necessary condition. The second is,
was it opposition from an opposition party, or something else, that
destroyed the third attempt at compromise, the District Development
Councils Bill of 1981?
 My argument
is that a little learning, combined with platitudes, can be extremely
misleading. The point is that the District Development Councils Bill was
actually passed, because the government had a more than sufficient
majority. The main opposition, the SLFP, opposed it and boycotted the
election, but the JVP, by then the leading left force in the country,
accepted this attempt at devolution and contested the election and did
reasonably well for a party engaging in electoral politics for the first
time.
The destruction of the 1981 District Development Councils system
It was not the JVP in opposition in the District
Development Councils, nor opposition from the SLFP in parliament, that
destroyed the whole concept. It was first the mockery made of the
election in Jaffna by the UNP itself, in sending up Cyril Mathew in a
leadership role in the campaign. Under his watch the Jaffna MP was
nearly killed and the Jaffna Public Library was set on fire. The TULF,
which had contested the election in contravention of a call for boycott
by the Tigers, was immeasurably weakened, and thereafter did not find it
easy to defy the Tigers.
 As
significantly, the District Development Councils simply could not
function effectively. They were starved of resources by the central
government, and the District Minister, appointed from outside, a strange
provision that the TULF nevertheless agreed to live with, could do
nothing. The particular individual involved for Jaffna, the Dambadeniya
MP U. B. Wijekoon, is supposed to have done his best, but his first
loyalty was to the government, not the elected District Council on whose
behalf he was meant to act. Unable to demand resources, he took on a
passive role, and in the end the DDCs were seen as a joke.
In short, it was nothing to do with the opposition
that that particular initiative failed, it was entirely because of a
lack of will on the part of the government. And, employing Occam's
Razor, which is a little known entity in Sri Lanka, we find that that
precisely was the reason the previous efforts also failed. But in all
cases we should also consider the background to that lack of will, why
leaders who proposed measures could not take them through.
It was not, we should note, that all previous leaders
were hypocritical, as J. R. Jayewardene certainly was. He had the
majority needed to do his will, and he did it in every other particular,
ranging from packing the Supreme Court to postponing elections to
awarding contracts to his relations to destroying the foreign service by
appointing friends and relations to all levels of jobs. No one
protested, certainly not the chattering classes, who thought the Grand
Old Man could do no wrong.
1956 and the inbuilt racism of the Jayewardene wing
Why then did he not forge ahead with the political
measures necessary to resolve the ethnic problem, a problem he was in a
sense responsible for creating through his first initiatives as a State
Councillor in the forties? The answer quite simply is that he was the
leader of the chauvinist wing of the UNP, what might be termed the
Kelaniya Branch that had forced Sir John Kotelawala to retract his
promise of making both Sinhala and Tamil official languages. It is
totally forgotten now that, though it was Bandaranaike who introduced
the Sinhala Only Bill, the 1956 election was called early by the UNP
precisely to seek a mandate to introduce Sinhala Only, as per the
resolution taken at its Kelaniya session in January 1956.
So it was Jayewardene then who, in accordance with his
commitment to Sinhala Only, organized the march to Kandy to protest
against the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact. Bandaranaike overcame that
protest, with S D Bandaranaike laying himself across the road, so
invitingly as it was put, an invitation that Jayewardene and his goons
did not dare to accept.
Why then did Bandaranaike, having achieved that
victory over Jayewardene, also retreat? The answer lies in the
opposition within his party, led by Vimala Wijewardene, wife of
Jayewardene's uncle, close associate of the Kelaniya Buddhist tradition
of the time (though that at least has changed) which ended up plotting
Bandaranaike's assassination. This group proved powerful enough to
have Philip Gunawardena expelled, to prevent what they saw as socialist
excesses. This group, in short, were the champions of capitalist
nationalism, a mantle Ranil Wickremesinghe was to take on a quarter of a
century later when he claimed, in a ghastly glossing over of the horrors
of July 1983, that "the tragedy that had now struck the non-Sinhala
trader due to the machinations of an extreme political party as a result
of their factories and business places being burnt down, was nothing
compared to the tragedy imposed on the Sinhala entrepreneur by the
Bandaranaikes since 1956..... Every step of their nationalization
crippled the Sinhala entrepreneur. First came the nationalization of
transport, then insurance, lands, housing and finally book publication
and the newspapers, which were all areas virtually monopolised by
Sinhalese.
The areas then by non-Sinhalese went unscathed. The
non-Sinhalese entrepreneur thrived not through any contriving on his
part but because of government policies at that time."
Opposition to Bandaranaike in 1958 and to Senanayake in 1968
 Bandaranaike
was, understandably if not excusably, nervous. He presided in any case
over a fractious coalition and in the end, faced by demonstrations so
ably organized by the Kelaniya wing, encompassing both its UNP and its
SLFP components, he panicked. Long forgotten now are the pressures
against him, which were fuelled also, as Dayan Jayatilleke has reminded
us, by the proponents of that wing within Lake House, then an
immeasurably powerful and politically committed media organization.
Given Tarzie Vittachi's liberal credentials, I had forgotten that the
more influential organs in that period were the Sinhala papers. I am not
sure that Dr Jayatilleka is right in claiming that the chauvinist
campaign was led by a Wijewardene, but given the predilections of, if
not Vimala then her husband, author of 'Revolt in the Temple', and the
close knit nature of the family, one can see that they would have been a
potent conduit for racist poison. Dayan Jayatilleka does exempt Esmond
Wickremesinghe from any guilt. I believe he was right, but as the man in
charge at the time, until his brother-in-law Ranjith was of an age to
take up his birthright, he cannot escape responsibility.
Ten years later the boot was on the other foot, in
that Dudley Senanayake, back at the helm of the UNP, had reached
agreement with the FP led by Mr. Chelvanayakam, with the Tamil Congress
led by G. G. Ponnambalam in acquiescence. Wisdom now has it that the
District Councils Bill had to be abandoned because of the opposition led
by the SLFP, supported then by the leading left parties at the time, a
shameful reversal that I am sure they continue to regret. Indeed Mrs.
Bandaranaike herself should have known better, given what her husband
had tried to do, and how he had been stopped.
However, it was not that opposition that finally
convinced Mr. Senanayake that he could not go ahead. It was the
opposition in his own party, led by Cyril Mathew, another Kelaniya
stalwart. And, though Mr. Senanayake dismissed Mr. Mathew from his party
post, he knew that behind him were other forces.
The Kelaniya Troika and its influence
These included not only J R Jayewardene, but also
Esmond Wickremesinghe. The two of them, together with Mr. Mathew, saw
themselves as the troika that had built up the party following its
stunning defeat at the polls in 1956. Their technique had been, not to
reverse the decisions of the Kelaniya sessions and try to win back the
Tamil vote that had abandoned them with such disastrous consequences at
the 1956 election (to the benefit of the left parties), but to continue
on racist lines, as exemplified by opposition to the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam
Pact.
And so in 1968 Dudley Senanayake was also nervous. He
was convinced anyway that there was a conspiracy to topple him, a
conviction fuelled by some loose talk that Mr. Wickremesinghe had
indulged in while abroad, which when reported prompted the Prime
Minister to have the CID follow both J R Jayewardene and Mr.
Wickremesinghe. This may have seemed paranoid at the time, but on
hindsight it is possible that Jayewardene's ambitions were even then
unrestrained, and that Mr. Mathew's antics may have seemed to him the
key to popular support. Certainly, before the July 1983 outbreak, Mr.
Wickremesinghe used to talk of Mr. Mathew as a possible successor to Mr.
Jayewardene, and believed that his chauvinist approach gave him a
popularity that put him ahead of the others in the rivalry with Prime
Minister Premadasa that was perhaps the dominant factor in Kelaniya wing
thinking at the time.
So in 1968, while carefully watching his back, Dudley
Senanayake abrogated his pact with Mr. Chelvanayakam. Once again, it was
held, the two parties had failed to come together, and that proved the
need for this if there were to be a durable solution. But as I have
pointed out, 1981 showed that a solution was possible without the major
opposition party being involved, with the then prevailing goodwill
between UNP and JVP bringing the latter too on board.
The Wickremesinghe response to President Kumaratunga's initiatives
 And the
nineties showed that even when the two parties came together, nothing
would emerge. On two occasions Mrs. Kumaratunga thought she had UNP
support for constitutional reform, and on two occasions she was let
down, on the second she thought in spite of a firm commitment. Of
course, on both occasions other reasons were adduced, relating to
adjustments she had made with regard to her own powers. But, while these
could and should have been resolved after discussion, the point is that
the UNP itself attacked the proposals on racist grounds. The argument
that this was not in accord with the thinking of its leader is
nonsensical, for anyone who knows the way the Party is run.
My argument then is that a strong willed government
does not need to ensure the opposition is on board to promote political
reforms to solve the ethnic problem. All it needs is parliamentary
support, and the will to use existing powers to the maximum to activate
and institutionalize the necessary reforms. All this will be impossible
if there is an opposition that will agitate against such action
forcefully - which means forcefully enough to rattle forces within the
government that may panic and therefore reduce the effectiveness and
perhaps even the life of the government.
Contrariwise, I would also argue that attempting to
get the opposition on board, when it is the UNP in thrall to its
Kelaniya wing, is a waste of time. As noted there is an inbuilt
chauvinism in that party, a chauvinism that, combined with nationalistic
capitalism - with no sensitivity to social problems and the need for
equity - would be fatal in today's world. Sadly, that chauvinism is
combined with a chicanery that is willing, through both propaganda and
financial inducements, to work together with any force that will help it
to undermine an elected government. Thus we saw how bribery together
with some principles brought down Mrs. Bandaranaike in 1964, and how
bribery, together with astonishing inefficiency which provoked many
capable people into revolt, brought down Mrs. Kumaratunga's government
in 2001. In dealing with such forces, the government does have to be
careful, which is why it would have made no sense to push forward with
reforms for which it might not find a parliamentary majority, let alone
the two thirds that might be needed for some measures. And the extent to
which the UNP under its current leadership would go, exemplified in the
attempt at association with the JVP in the recent strike, suggests that
any and everything would be used to undermine the elected government.
Current reasons for optimism
All this may sound very pessimistic. But the point is
that the situation has changed now, and it is clear that the Kelaniya
forces, together with their potential allies, are no longer in a
position to agitate against positive government initiatives. Fortunately
for progressive forces, and in particular those forces in the UNP who
 represent a
more enlightened tradition, the current leadership has been both
arbitrary and extreme in its authoritarianism, to an extent that it can
no longer be effective. Of course a mistake by the government might give
Ranil Wickremesinghe a new life, as was done for instance when in all
good faith the government signed an MoU in 2006. Fortunately Mr.
Wickremesinghe over-reached himself as usual and, in trying to get rid
of his Deputy Leader to consolidate his own hold, he precipitated a
revolt that strengthened the government. This allowed it to move
forcefully to regain the East without being characterized as chauvinist
or being driven into dependence on chauvinist forces.
It is perhaps in recognition of current weakness that
Mr. Wickremesinghe has now sought new allies, the wonderfully
incompatible pairing of Gen. Janaka Perera and the JVP. The failure of
the strike last Thursday makes it clear that the second option is not
going to be even as fruitful as the UNP cultivation of K. M. P.
Rajaratne (leader of another JVP, but an overtly racist party) in 1964.
And unless there is an unexpected setback, it is not likely that Gen.
Perera will provide the miracle that Mr. Wickremesinghe needs. Indeed,
it is clear he has already begun thinking on more familiar lines, in
putting forward an actor with very different attractions to lead his
team in Sabaragamuwa.
In short, if a cooperating opposition is a sufficient
condition for reform, another is an opposition that is dysfunctional.
The SLFP no longer has a chauvinist wing that will revolt against its
leadership as Vimala Wijewardene might have done in 1958. And, though
the opposition mutters darkly about the JHU and the MEP, the government
has shown that measures to promote rights and empowerment for minorities
within the context of a united country will not entail opposition. There
is no problem whatsoever about those parties being pro-Sinhala (for much
needs to be done for deprived Sinhala majority regions too) provided
they are not anti-Tamil or anti-Muslim - and, though elements supporting
them may not understand the distinction, since the leadership does there
should be no difficulty about the government taking firm action to stop
any intimidation. That is essential, and quite possible without fear of
being weakened, in a context in which there is no danger at all of the
current opposition, whether led by the UNP or the JVP, mounting any
threatening chauvinistic campaign, whatever their earlier predilections
might have been.
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“The SLFP no
longer has a chauvinist wing that will revolt against its leadership
as Vimala Wijewardene might have done in 1958.” |
It is clear then that now is a good time for the
government to proceed. It is not only good, it is essential, since one
of the necessary conditions for dealing with terrorism is showing that
it is possible to eliminate through democratic pluralism the root causes
of support for terrorist action on the part of basically decent people.
More concerted action on language, the recruitment of Tamils to the
public and security services, infrastructural and economic development
in the East, elections to local government bodies and the Provincial
Council in the East, the Task Force in the North, are all excellent
starts, but more, to institutionalize the concept and impact of power
sharing, is desirable. There is no better time to move than when the
country at large has confidence in a government that has achieved so
much in terms of security as well as equity in the face of considerable
odds.
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