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The atrocity exhibition:
Deconstructing Democracy, Sri Lanka style

Lakshman Gunasekera, 15 February 2004

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Let's begin with an atrocity. The seventh death anniversary of twenty-four Tamil civilians, including fourteen children, who were massacred and another thirty injured by a group of soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army in Kumarapuram, in the Muttur division of the Trincomalee district, on February 11, 1996, was commemorated in that remote hamlet last Wednesday.

Although some twenty soldiers were originally identified as suspects only nine were indicted. Their trial is yet pending in the Eastern High Court.

When Sinhala ultranationalists trot out their list of massacres of Sinhalas and urban bombings (the Sri Dalada Maligava, Central Bank) by Tamil militants, I am tempted to begin every one of my weekly columns with the marking of an anniversary of a massacre by the Sri Lankan armed forces and police (STF). I am certain that nearly every week there is an anniversary of a massacre.

There have been so many. And if one were to include the atrocities by security forces and related death squads in the anti-JVP counter insurgencies, there would probably anniversary commemorations nearly every day. Sri Lanka is certainly an atrocity exhibition (with due respect to a Western sci-fi author whose name I forget).

At least in the Kumarapuram massacre, the sheer accumulation of past massacres in the decade and more before that as well as the greater sensitivity of the Chandrika Kumaratunga Presidency to human rights issues prompted an inquiry and indictments. The incidence of massacres in the North-East was far greater during previous regimes, especially during the regime of J.R. Jayewardene and, in those dark days there were no inquiries. In fact the massacres were rarely publicly admitted or even reported in our mass media.

During those dark years I got the feeling that the Sinhalas did not want to know too much about what their armed forces were doing to suppress the irritant that was the burgeoning Tamil insurgency. There was implicit popular endorsement of such cruel repression.

After all, the JRJ and subsequent regimes that continued the suppression of the Tamil struggle for self-determination were elected by the people, especially the Sinhala people. Just as much as the people of the United States are partly responsible for the government they elected (despite the voting gimmickry in Florida) and, therefore, for its actions including its crudely imperialist strategy in Iraq and rest of West Asia, so are the Sinhalas responsible for their elected governments. And the people must, therefore, bear both the sorrows and joys that result from the rule of their elected leaderships, both Presidential and Governmental.

The Sinhalas are yet caught in the political bind that is partly of their own making. They happily elected 'Dharmishta' JRJ and look at the Constitution he left us trapped in. And ever since freedom from colonialism they have been electing Sinhala dominant regimes that have persistently enforced Sinhala supremacy over the Sri Lankan 'nation' and State.

Today, even if the Sinhala are beginning to understand the urgent need to recant the fantasy of a miniscule 'empire' and roll back the accumulated horrors resulting from that fantasy, they are also finding that the genie cannot be put back in the bottle so easily.

Not only are the Sinhalas realising that both major Sinhala political parties, the UNP and the SLFP, which built on that Sinhala imperial fantasy, have now to collaborate to resolve the crisis that has resulted, but they have actually elected both parties simultaneously into power seemingly for the purpose of such collaboration.

But things are not that simple. The two parties have not only refused to collaborate but are now, once more, resorting to elections as a means of continuing their political rivalry.

But it is even more complicated than that. There are other political parties, younger ones, that are keen to compete and flex their electoral muscles. I think that the JVP is the 'engine' that moved recent politics firmly towards another election and, in the hustings in April it is they who will gain more than anyone else. If not for the alliance with the JVP, the SLFP (I think Chandrika has been pushed into it by her party stalwarts; not that that diminishes her responsibility) would not have considered an election. In fact the SLFP went into this new alliance precisely in order to bolster its electoral prospects.

But the electoral objectives are ridiculously limited ones given the immensity of the larger national tasks that are pending and are being criminally postponed by all these political leaderships.

In the April general election the JVP cannot hope to sweep to power. It can only hope, firstly, that it will get a few more seats, and secondly, that the Tamil and Muslim allies of the SLFP will also get enough votes and parliamentary seats to cobble together a coalition government in which they will, at last, get cabinet portfolios. Given the electoral arithmetic, the latter is only faint hope, a gamble, and nothing more.

The only probability is that even if the new SLFP-JVP combine does not get governmental power, still the JVP will get a few more parliamentary seats.

More seats is certainly helpful for the country in a small way: the large sector of most marginalised, impoverished Sinhalas, especially the peasantry and lowest castes, who are today represented by the JVP, will at least get more representation in the legislature. This means their needs and concerns will input into the legislative and policy mainstream. It may also input into the larger process of peace-making and reform of the Sri Lankan polity.

But how much of an input remains to be seen.

If history is any guide, this was exactly what the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party also promised when, representing that very same social sector, they joined centre-left coalitions with the SLFP in 1964 and 1970. Nearly forty years of the LSSP/CP's association with the SLFP has done little for the poorest and lowest caste Sinhalas as it has done little for the ethnic minorities. Colvin de Silva's warning in 1956 on the language issue came true despite his party continuing to share in governmental power during the ensuing decades.

At least the traditional Left began compromising on their basic revolutionary socialist project only after they came to power in coalition with the alternate bourgeois party and not before. The JVP began compromising on their supposedly revolutionary goals long before they even began negotiating with the SLFP and, in the process of forming the new 'Freedom Alliance' they have further backtracked not only on their 'socialism' and socialist democracy, but also on some (not all) of their recent Sinhala ultranationalist postures.

Fortunately the JVP lacks the kind of 'golden brains' (a one-time rhetorical reference to Dr. N.M. Perera) the LSSP/CP had. Imagine what a set of sophisticated semi-fascists-cum-ultranationalists would do! Unfortunately, it also means that even less is likely to be done for the uplifting of the poorest and lowest caste Sinhalas whom the JVP now represents.

If history indicates only further disillusionment for the Sinhala poor, the prognosis is similar for the non-Sinhala ethnic communities as well.

Just as much as the JVP replaced the LSSP/CP, the LTTE, now older in age, is slowly replacing the TULF, which, at one time in the 1970s was the more socially radical and militantly nationalist successor to the upper caste and upper class Federal Party.

And April 2 opens up the possibility that the Tamil Nationalist Alliance, which has the old TULF at its core, will sweep up the Tamil vote in the North-East. With the TNA now firmly under the political control of the LTTE both at national leadership level as well as at grassroots constituency level, the next Parliament is likely to see a strong LTTE presence. While the senior TNA politicians (except for poor, marginalised Mr. Anandasangari) are effectively representing LTTE interests, there is also the likelihood that several TNA seats will be occupied by LTTE activists coming in on the TNA ticket.

Thus, the next Parliament will be one of the most representative ever (except for women) in our post colonial history. Tragically, it may also be one of the most ineffective Parliaments, given the larger national needs it must fulfil and the sheer structural inability of the current Republican polity to deal with those challenges.

After all, the cohabitation in State power, the bitter rivalry over power between the Government and the Presidency, the resort to a general election, and all the repression, ethnic supremacism and authoritarianism that preceded those developments, are all a result of this deformed, class and caste ridden, ethnocentric polity that we unashamedly call the 'Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka'.

Thus the prospects for resolving the larger national crisis and for building a new polity (or polities) on this still resplendent island of ours are bleak. April 2 does not offer any clear way out despite all Chandrika Kumaratunga's or Vimal Veeravansa's rhetoric. I have yet to hear any serious political argument from Ranil Wickremesinghe. Not that I am likely to empathise. While I remain open minded about the new SLFP/JVP project, and I do see a few useful crumbs resulting from the elections, crumbs such as the more representative Parliament which I referred to above, I have virtually no optimism that this would, in any way, move the country closer toward peace and a new polity.

Fortunately, the signs are that more and more Sinhalas are becoming cynical of the current democratic system. Unlike in the immediate post colonial period when feudal loyalties of caste, kin and region as well as ethnicity played a major role in party vote banks, today there are several generations who have been born into a more modern society and their political preferences are increasingly guided more by party policies and performance.

There are now several generations like that and they are not going to be taken in by the promises of either the SLFP/JVP or the UNP.

Most Tamils and at least a bulk of the Muslims are likely to remain with the UNP: the Tamils in the rather na However, the Eastern Muslims who have suffered due to the LTTE domination of their region after the Cease-fire, are likely to be divided between the SLMC or Ferial Ashraff whose husband, M.H.M. Ashraff, was the first to give them a voice. It is on this calculation that some of the new Freedom Alliances hopes are pinned for additional Parliamentary seats and bonus seats.

While many of the Sinhalas are probably disgusted with the UNP's abject failure to deliver on the economic front and also nervous over the extent of the UNF Government's concessions to the LTTE, they are not going to see much difference in the SLFP/PA despite the new link up with the JVP. They have already experienced a PA regime and know that Chandrika too is strongly committed to an extensive ethnic power sharing and, at the same time, have experienced the IMF-dictated economic policies of the previous PA regime. While some Sinhalas may invest their hopes in the JVP there are many who fear the Peramuna's tendency to political violence and its authoritarian political culture.

Thus, while the political odds are even, a slump in voter turn out is possible on April 2. Even if it is not a hung Parliament, a hung peace process as well as a hung social development process is the likely outcome of April 2. These elections then, will hopefully, further the process of deconstructing neo-colonial democracy in Sri Lanka.

So the agony of the Sinhalas continues. They should not complain. After all, the agony of the other Sri Lankan communities they have subjugated all these decades is far worse. At least the Sinhalas still have some kind of State (a greatly diminished one) to fight over.

The Tamils and Muslims cannot enjoy such political community. Indeed, many Tamils and Muslims yet have to get back their homes (let alone polling stations) and far more Tamils and Muslims will never get back their loved ones who have died in Kumarapuram and elsewhere.

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