Sri Lanka: Silver-lining at the end of Geneva session?
By N. Sathiya Moorthy 

Coupled with media reports that there may be a ‘consensus resolution’ on Sri Lanka at the UNHRC this time round, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s reiteration of a September deadline for Provincial Council polls in the Northern Province, may be a silver-lining on the otherwise cloudy and confused ethnic front. Together, they could mean that the clock could still be set back on the ‘political solution’ to the ethnic issue to the days prior to the stakeholders nearer home going on to the ‘UNHRC mode’ well ahead of last year’s vote that Sri Lanka lost.

Both the report on a ‘consensus resolution’ at the end of the Geneva debate and President Rajapaksa’s reiteration on Northern polls (the latter in the form of an interview) appeared in the Chennai-based Indian newspaper, ‘The Hindu’. They still remain on record and have not been contested, either. Unfortunately, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) does not seem to be in a mood to welcome either. The good news is that they have criticised none of them.

It is likely that the Alliance does not want to be seen as ploughing a lone furrow when the international community is continuing to argue a broader case on the Sri Lankan ethnic issue in Geneva. Alternatively, it is possible that the TNA does not want to jump the gun and declare its position on the polls until it is confident of what transpires at Geneva and what then happens on the poll front. There is a trust-deficit, still and it is only growing.

Yet, the Tamils do not still seem to be in a mood for self-introspection, as to where they too might have gone wrong, and where they might have unwittingly provoked the other stakeholders. Until they accept the need for self-introspection, and attempt it honestly, no vote in Geneva, or any resolution nearer home could serve any purpose.

Like the 13-A before it, future resolutions too would flounder at the altar of Sinhala nationalist political expediency on the one hand, and the unwillingness of the Tamils to acknowledge their circumstances. The Government of President Rajapaksa has not kept its word on 13-A, but before that for long years, the LTTE and the Tamil moderates would have none of it, after co-authoring it along with the Indian Government and the Sri Lankan dispensation.

The irony of the Sri Lankan situation has continued to remain thus: over-defensive nature of the State position on the ethnic issue combined with the ‘spilt-milk syndrome’ relating to the Tamils. Both sides are determined not to learn from their own mistakes, or of the other side. They end up committing new mistakes of their own making – and blame the other side, or the rest of the world for it.

Cringing, declining
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Catchy slogans’ do not make solution. Thus, successive Governments and the Sinhala political leadership have always cringed at giving the Tamils their political due, they having accepted the need for such an initiative for buying political peace. The Tamils may have had made a habit of declining what is on offer at a given point, and demand it long after the favourable circumstances of the past had dissipated.

Despite past reversals, the Tamil polity has remained steadfast in not wanting to come together. Here again, they seem to suffer from ‘majority complex’ just as the Sinhala polity suffers from ‘minority complex’. The ‘competitive majoritarian politics’ on the Sinhala side is matched only by the self-destructive divisions in the Tamil polity.

Even while deriding the ‘Sinhala mindset’ and ‘majoritarianism’, mainline Tamil polity through the decades, have lesser problems talking to them – than talking to fellow-Tamils. The LTTE too would fight and talk to the Government simultaneously, but when it came to fellow-Tamils, annihilation was their only approach. The trend has continued, post-war, minus the militancy. Explanations and excuses are aplenty.

Rule, not exception

What both sides seem not wanting to accept – that is, if they are not ignorant to begin with – is that broader the middle-path, marginalised would the ‘extremities’ in their own clan become. The simple rules of road-making apply to the process of political solution, as well. Neither can make for a smooth-sail highway if the extremes are allowed to occupy the middle, ad infinitum.

Learning to live with the narrow middle-path then becomes the rule than exception. The consequences of this would be highway accidents, where no highway exists – as the fast-tracked movements on the available road could not be controlled or stopped, either. Geneva is an example of what Sri Lanka has come to grapple with, when no such need existed in the first place. Colombo focussed on the UN and the Security Council, forgot that the UNHRC existed.

A whole nation’s bountiful energies, post-war, is getting wasted there. There is still no guarantee all of this muscle-flexing could translate into votes for the ruling combine. ‘War victory’ may have already given place to ‘war-weariness’. Demands of daily living may now be upper-most in the minds of the Sri Lankan voter, ethnicity and caste, no bar. If nothing else, the sentiments of denying the Tamils’ their due may have crossed the urban middle-class mentality to include their counterparts elsewhere, too. Who would be the loser, in real terms and in the numbers game?

Nor can the Government’s tough posturing in Geneva secure Sri Lanka nearer home from internal dissensions. It has become an unquestionable fashion to believe that the LTTE was born elsewhere. The truth is that the LTTE was already here, and triggered the ‘anti-Tamil pogrom’ of 1983 by its unthinking, yet, trade-mark terrorism. The LTTE wanted it, and the Government promptly conceded it. Or, so it would seem.

The ‘JVP insurgency’ was not an ‘imported’ affair. To what started off as a product of internal socio-economic disparities for a Left-leaning militancy, the JVP uncharacteristically adapted ‘nationalist’ sentiments, based not on ‘class’ but on ‘faith’, as part of ‘identity politics’ in post-Independence Sri Lanka. It goes against the imported ideology of Marxism and Leninism, both tinged with an element of local flavour and a lot of violence, yet the JVP needed to adapt itself to the changing mores of a fast-tracked generation.

If the JVP has since become irrelevant, it does not mean that the new-generation has taken to mainline parties — just as they had moved away from the traditional Left in an earlier era. They just do not exist – at least in the same mould as they had done so.

Their methodology may have outlived its utility, but that does not mean that the premise of and justification for their socio-economic policies too have vanished from the face of the Sri Lankan earth. They have at best assumed an amorphous form now. It could take a new shape and adopt newer methodologies that the Sri Lankan State may not be able to decipher in time, and decisively act about it, either. Soldiers are trained to fight the known enemy, their numbers do not deter an ‘unseen adversary’.

‘Chasing the ghost’

In what has thus turned out to be a sadistic game of going round in unending circles, ‘chasing the ghost’ is the name of the game. The ‘Sinhala nationalists’ and the Tamil polity and community have their own. For decades and through successive Governments, the Sri Lankan State too has not lagged behind. What is in store is a veritable store of ‘conspiracy theories’ of every kind and shade. Not that the nation lacks in real-life conspiracies of the kind, for which both the Government and the LTTE were famous for, in political and military terms.

Today, it is the ‘ghosts’ of Tamil civilians killed in ‘Eelam War IV’ that is haunting the nation as a whole. It could have been put to rest with the war, possibly, but no one wanted it exorcised to begin with. Not certainly the Government, which had both the mandate and the method to do so, but lacked the courage and will to move forward. This often happens when (political) ghosts possess men and governments. Sri Lanka was/is no exception.

The Tamils too did not lag behind. After a false-start at negotiations with the Government, they too began talking about ghosts from a relatively distant past, from Vadukkottai and even beyond. ‘War crimes’ and ‘accountability’ were not issues of their making, but they adapted it heartily. They triggered suspicions in the minds of the Sri Lankan State – the party in power did not matter – that they would only pile up on their political demands, even if granted in full.

Today, the Tamils too are stuck on ‘accountability issues’. ‘Transitional justice’ is relative to circumstances. In this case, a political solution acceptable to the Tamil community would have done the trick at the very start. The Government dithered. The TNA remained divided, and it showed – despite claims to the contrary. Much time has been lost, but not all has been lost as yet on this count.

Ironically, JRJ, when in a position to go ahead with a negotiated settlement on his own steam – he still commands the highest parliamentary majority for any President in the country – did not do so, until after the Indian intervention. He was chastened rather by the indifferent approach of his western friends and allies to rush to his side when it happened. The rest is history.

In comparison, President Rajapaksa did not have as much parliamentary support as JRJ did. Not before ‘Eelam War-IV’, not during the war, not even after the war. At crucial stages during the war, he had his parliamentary strength eroding instead, after the JVP exited the ruling coalition, together with the Opposition UNP – an unholy coalition in ideological terms – the party challenged the Government’s strength in Parliament at every conceivable and non-conceivable turn.

The presidential vote-share for incumbent Rajapaksa did not reach anywhere near the record poll percentage for Candidate Chandrika, even after the historic war-victory, given up for lost by predecessors in office. The parliamentary support of his Government too did not improve to the levels of JRJ’s in the post-war polls, also in 2010. The ‘proportionate representation’ (PR) scheme may have taken the blame. Yet, the popularity for a President in Rajapaksa was unmatched, still.

Yet, what JRJ did not do with a majority, Rajapksa has not done with a victory. Geneva is where it takes. History beckons, still – all stake-holders, and both ways! It is for them to pick their choice. It is for the nation to face the consequences, good bad or ugly.