Celebrating war

Published : Aug 10, 2007 00:00 IST

The Rajapaksa regime ignores political setbacks and basks in the military victory against the LTTE in the east.

B. MURALIDHAR REDDY in Colombo

THE contrast between two major political events in Sri Lankas national capital on July 19 could not have been more striking. At around the same time that the countrys President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was presiding over a glittering ceremony at the Independence Square to mark the liberation of the east from the clutches of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a new political alliance headed by two influential and charismatic leaders came to life.

The National Congress, an open-ended alliance of like-minded parties and individuals, was floated by the main Opposition party led by the former Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and the rebel Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) leader, Mangala Samaraweera, with the sole objective of relieving the people from the wrong policies and misgovernance of the Rajapaksa government. They see the policies and programmes of the present regime, including the military offensive against the Tigers, as a sure recipe for disaster and deem it their national duty to rescue the beleaguered island nation.

The new grouping could not have had a more tragic evolution. Samaraweera was the chief architect of Rajapaksas victory in the 2005 presidential election in which the latter was pitted against Wickremesinghe. But this February, Samaraweera and another rebel, Sripathi Sooryarachi, were ousted from the party on the grounds of anti-party activities. The duo charged Rajapaksa with having converted the SLFP into a family fiefdom; the President along with his three brothers presided over 70 per cent of the budget allocations, they alleged.

The mud-slinging did not stop there. They charged Rajapaksa with having bribed the LTTE before the 2005 elections; an affidavit bearing the alleged sordid details was made public by them. There is growing demand in Parliament now for a probe. Incidentally, Rajapaksa and his managers have countered the charges only verbally and have not deemed it necessary to drag the duo to court.

Wickremesinghe has to settle a score with Rajapaksa. In October last year, he signed with great fanfare a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Rajapaksas party. It was hailed as historic because the main parties in the south had joined hands for the first time to make a united effort at resolving all issues facing the country, including the ethnic question.

The MoU was abandoned when Rajapaksa inducted 19 rebel UNP Members of Parliament into the government. The President argued that the rebels provided the much-needed stability to his government but in the process he lost the support of the majority in the UNP. To make matters worse, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Rajapaksas electoral ally, grew suspicious of the Presidents intentions and joined the ranks of the Opposition. Of course, in the personality-dominated and faction-ridden politics of Sri Lanka, these developments did not surprise anyone.

However, they demonstrated the inability of Rajapaksa to rise above partisan politics. They also brought into sharp focus the deep fissures within the polity, to be precise, the Sinhala-dominated south.

There are few takers for Rajapaksas plans for the ouster of the Tigers from the east. By its go alone theory and obsessive focus on military means, the regime has antagonised a whole spectrum of domestic and international players. The gulf between the President and the rest of the players has widened, and he has refused to consider a broad spectrum of views in framing a strategy for the resolution of the ethnic conflict.

On the day of the function christened Neganahira Navodaya (New Dawn in the East), every available wall and pole in the national capital was plastered with colourful posters and banners hailing the glorious victory of the Sri Lankan soldiers in the east with Rajapaksa in the lead. However, the euphoria is not shared by the common people. Groaning under the impact of inflation, which at one point touched 21 per cent, and the prospect of a prolonged and uncertain war, they have nothing much to celebrate.

Of course, the majority of the people are happy about the military march into the east but their concerns are more immediate and mundane. The tourism industry, which accounts for nearly 30 per cent of foreign exchange revenues, is down in the dumps and thousands of people became jobless overnight. Besides, there is no knowing when, where and how the next Tiger suicide bomber would strike. The terror infrastructure of the LTTE remains intact despite its military setback in the east.

The Tigers are down but not out even in the liberated east. As if to prove the point, suspected Tiger cadre gunned down the Chief Secretary to the Eastern Province, Herath Abeyweera, on July 16, five days after the proclaimed military victory. The gunman fired at Abeyweera at 6 p.m. while the latter was at his office in the High Security Zone (HSZ) in Trincomalee. No doubt, it was a cowardly act but the LTTE has never believed in rules. It was also a grim reminder that the Tigers are lurking in the east and would not hesitate to fall back on their guerilla tactics.

Despite the state of national politics and the management or otherwise of the war by the Rajapaksa government, there is little doubt that the capture of the east has been a morale-booster for the soldiers. For the first time since 1993, the east is completely under the control of the Sri Lankan state, technically speaking. It is the outcome of a 13-month-long military campaign that saw the Tigers uprooted from several of their bases in the region.

The eastern province covers around 16 per cent of the total land area of Sri Lanka. It is the only province with three airports at Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara. The province has a 420-kilometre coastline. With the main naval base located at Trincomalee, the strategic importance of the east hardly needs any elaboration. The campaign liberation east began in June 2006 after the LTTE closed sluice gates of the Mavil Aru anicut and launched a massive offensive against the security forces in August 2006 with the intention of capturing areas south of Trincomalee district. In the months that followed, the military scored impressive gains; it ousted the Tigers from their bases such as Sampur, Vaharai and, lastly, Thoppigala (the toughest battle was fought here, in the rocky jungle terrain of over 800 sq. km).

The LTTEs reaction to its losses in the east was typical. Its political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan, in an interview to Reuters news agency, sought to explain it as a tactical withdrawal and said the Tigers would launch massive guerilla attacks on key economic and military targets of the state.

At the July 19 function, the President observed: I do not wish to describe the defeat inflicted on the LTTE as a purely military victory. There is in this victory something more, which is of larger national and international significance.

He chose the occasion to reiterate his governments determination to hold elections to the local bodies in the east, to begin with, and also usher in an era of economic and social development in the province. The President stressed that it was not a personal victory of the Defence Secretary, Gothabaya Rajapaksa (who happens to be his brother), or the Service Commanders, and said that those who thought so were engaged in insane prattle.

This is a peoples victory. I invite the Leader of the Opposition, not to be an outsider but to be a stakeholder in this victory. It does not matter if I am insulted or members of my family are insulted. We will bear it with patience. But do not insult our security forces. Do not belittle or underestimate them, he said.

While on the one hand he invited the Leader of the Opposition to join in the fight against the LTTE and in his governments developmental plans for the east, on the other he denounced him in harsh terms for letting the Tigers gain military muscle. Hitting out at the Wickremesinghe government for initialling the Norwegian-brokered 2002 Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), Rajapaksa argued that there is no country other than Sri Lanka where the criminal act of conceding a legal area of control to terrorists has been implemented through an agreement.

It is the debunking of the myth of such an area of control and the shattering into smithereens of the crowning terrorist fantasy of Eelam that our brave soldiers who captured Thoppigala have announced loud and clear to the entire world, Rajapaksa asserted.

However, it is not clear if Rajapaksas observation implied that his government had decided to abrogate the CFA and relieve Norway of its responsibilities as the official facilitator of the peace talks. Rajapaksas election manifesto is committed to annulling the CFA as well as issuing marching orders to Norway.

Referring to the criticism from various quarters on his regimes strategy for the east, Rajapaksa said: It is said this was the majority race trampling on the minority race. Majority minority? I do not like this interpretation. We are the Sri Lankan nation. It is the Tamil and Muslim people and the clergy in the east who paved the way for the national flag to be hoisted at Thoppigala.

The President also made it a point to ask the international community and his political critics not to obstruct this New Dawn of the East by raising false slogans, and not engage in globe-trotting to betray the Sri Lankan state.

Rajapaksa maintained that if there were shortcomings in his approach, he was ready to sit together with others and sort out the differences. It is alright slighting Mahinda Rajapaksa. But do not betray the country. Is Thoppigala a forest? Or is it a sanctuary? How many tanks did it have? How many houses? How many trees were there to an acre? Such questions are only important to cartographers. Please do not look at this victory with envy or jealousy. This is neither a victory of the state nor my personal victory, he said.

But not many were impressed by Rajapaksas approach. For instance, the preamble to the MoU titled For The Benefit Of All the Citizens of Sri Lanka, initialled by Wickremesinghe and Samaraweera, says: Sri Lanka has never before in its history experienced such a grave catastrophe that compels steps to be taken with utmost urgency to safeguard democracy and human rights, to eradicate fraud and corruption, to establish good governance, to seek redress to public grievances including the high cost of living, to find an early solution to the ethnic conflict and to develop Sri Lanka without delay.

There were also a few people from within the government who disapproved of the celebration. Rauff Hakeem, Posts and Telecommunications Minister and a Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader, lamented in Parliament hours after the ceremony that he had participated in it with much reluctance as it was a political exercise built on military gains that made the Tamils feel like a conquered people. Hakeem said civilised humans should celebrate the end of wars and not wars. He maintained that leaders should not seek political mileage and score brownie points off military victories. War rhetoric at such ceremonies will not promote harmony. In fact, they only add insult to injury.

Quoting Ernest Hemingway, Hakeem said: The first panacea for a mismanaged country is inflation of currency. The second is war. Both bring temporary prosperity. Both bring temporary ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists. He added: The sacrifices by the armed forces are indeed laudable. But we must take note of what lurks behind. Several armed groups are patrolling areas where elections are to be held. Are we able to hold free and fair elections in such a situation? Can we disarm these groups? Can we afford to sully further our already tarnished international image by holding an election that could be rigged and would put the lives of the candidates in jeopardy?

Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is at loggerheads with Rajapaksa, said the policies of Rajapaksa were inimical to the interests of the country. She endorsed the National Congress as the need of the hour. In a letter to Samaraweera, Kumaratunga said: The stated objectives of the Alliance seem to reflect the essential need of the hour. I have believed for a long time that the countrys problems can be solved effectively, only through a Grand Alliance of all honest, patriotic forces.

In her first elaborate public statement on the Rajapaksa regime, Kumaratunga complained in the letter that the SLFP had changed several important policies followed since 1993, which had led the country to great, new heights. This is a style wholly alien to the SLFP, she wrote.

Kumaratunga maintained that the strange new policies that are being implemented with regard to the economy, the Tamil question and corruption would not resolve the problems in any of these spheres and may even worsen the situation.

Permit me to salute all those who have come forward, despite the many personal dangers they face, to safeguard and take forward the hallowed policies of our great and noble party. Im certain that the SLFP will remain united and resolute in the struggle to protect its integrity, traditions and its noble spirit, the letter said.

With the war now spreading to the north and with little hope of peace, there is no room for cheer for ordinary people. The promised elections and developmental programmes in the east, if not handled tactfully, could bring more misery than relief. There are already reports of street fights between cadre of the Karuna faction and the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party led by Minister Douglas Devananda in the run-up to the local body polls. The Karuna faction seems to assert that with the ouster of the LTTE, it should be considered the sole representative of the people of the east.

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