BUSH MEETS RANIL
The President of the USA Mr. Bush has met with the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe. This is the first time in eighteen years that a President of the USA has met a Prime Minister or a President of Sri Lanka. It so happens that the two leaders from Sri Lanka who were given this "rare opportunity" of meeting the "ralahamy" of the "global village" belong to the same party. I would not go into the relationship of the two Sri Lankan leaders but in this small "global village" these matters should not be entirely forgotten. In any event it is clear that it was a case of Mr. Bush meeting Mr. Wickremesinghe and not the other way round. Mr. Bush had decided that it was time to meet the Sri Lankan Prime Minister and the meeting had been arranged, though it lasted only fifteen minutes including a photo session. However, Mr. Bush made it a point to say that he trusted the leadership and the judgement of the Sri Lankan Prime Minister and that he was behind Mr. Wickremesinghe. Mr. Bush has further said that he had not made a comment of that nature on any of the leaders he had met. I do not know what Ms. Kumaratunga feels about this meeting but the UNP has taken the trouble to show that she was not given this "rare opportunity" of meeting a President of the USA. In any event Ms. Kumaratunga should realise by now that in 1994 she was promoted as the Presidential candidate by the NGOs that are financed by the west to primarily to satisfy the aspirations of the Tamil racists and that she was not their favourite candidate. It was only a contract job as far as the west was concerned. As she failed to complete the contract that she was given she has been cornered to fight the battle of the handbag with the male ministers in her cabinet.
We do not know what transpired at the meeting of Mr. Bush with Mr. Wickremesinghe as we have to be satisfied with the monotonous official speeches and statements. However the speech made by the Sri Lankan Prime Minister at the Woodrow Wilson international Centre and the statement by the USA state department on the Tamil racist problem are more or less the same. It is said that the foreign policy of a government is an extension of the domestic policy or that the foreign policy is determined by the domestic policy. It is definitely true in the case of the USA which tends to think that the whole outside world is its backyard. However in the case of Sri Lanka, whether it is under the UNF or the PA the domestic policy is determined by the foreign policy of the other countries. This implies that as far as Sri Lanka is concerned its foreign policy is determined by the domestic policy of the other countries. Thus at the meetings with the leaders of other countries our leaders say what the other leaders want them to say. I was not surprised when Mr. Bush said that he trusted Mr. Wickremesinghe's judgement and that he was behind the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. As our domestic policies as well as foreign policies are determined by the others it follows that the western and Indian diplomats in Colombo are very powerful and that they very often dictate terms to our leaders. However, I was somewhat baffled by the statement of the outgoing Indian High Commissioner at a farewell given to him by our foreign minister. One does not take the speeches made on these occasions seriously as they are full of niceties or "rasa bola katha (rbk - there was no cbk then)" as the undergraduates used to say sometime ago. However I could not understand him where he had said that India and Sri Lanka are two nations with one soul. The Anglican foreign minister would not have understood or thought about this statement but the Buddhists who deny a soul would have been baffled by this reference to a soul by a Hindu in India, in reference to Sri Lanka. One would say that it was only an idiom but one could also ask the question as to whether it was a Freudian slip using again an idiom from the Judaic Christian west? Very often people think that the interests of the countries are merely economical. For example in the case of the USA it is thought that its foreign policy is determined by its domestic economic policies. Thus in respect of Sri Lanka the so-called analysts tend to refer to the importance of the ports, the oil tanks etc. What is forgotten is that there are cultural aspects that determine the foreign policy of the governments. Western political scientists and other social scientists have ignored the cultural component but that is not a reason for us to be blind to this aspect in "international relations". In any event with respect to the reference to the souls by the outgoing Indian High Commissioner, thank God or Brahman or Whoever it may be, that there are no Indian journalists similar to ours who write on Jack tree (kos gaha) and its national significance in their rag sheets.
Coming back to the speech by Mr. Wickremesinghe at the Woodrow Wilson international Centre all that I have to say is that the solution to the Tamil racist problem proposed by the west and the UNF (and of course the PA) is going to be a failure as the problem has not been understood properly. In any solution to any problem, understanding the problem amounts to more than fifty percent of solving the problem. It is unfortunate that our leaders have not understood the problem even today. Having not understood the problem they try to solve some other problem aggravating the problem in the process. Mr. Wickremesinghe referring to the Tamil racist problem has said : "Some of the affirmative actions taken by successive governments in Sri Lanka in favour of the majority Sinhalese who were discriminated under the colonial rule already affected the Tamil people - for example the use of their language, opportunities for education and employment. Leaders failed to deliver equal justice and equity in fair measure among the communities. A whole community was alienated by the injustices they felt and experienced."
Now this is a much better way of talking of the so-called grievances of the Tamils without saying that Sinhala Chauvinists discriminated against the Tamils without any reason. Mr. Wickremesinghe says that the so-called grievances arose as a result of affirmative actions taken by governments in favour of the Sinhalas who were discriminated under the European powers. However, did the Tamil "grievances" and the Tamil protests begin after the "affirmative" actions. Does the solution offered has anything to do with the grievances. Did the Tamil racists formulate Thimpu conditions based on grievances? The answer is no. The solutions, Thimpu conditions are based on aspirations of the Tamil racists and not of any grievances. What was wrong in making Sinhala the only official language? In the USA recently an act was passed making English the only official language, as they fear that in time to come with immigration from Mexico and the South American countries Spanish could become a threat to English in the future. Nobody talks of the language rights of the so-called Indians in the USA. Even in India, Hindi is the only non European official language and Tamil is not an official language. In Sri Lanka provisions had been made for the Tamils to communicate with the government in Tamil and unlike in the USA where the so-called Indians educate their children in English, in this country Tamil is a medium of instruction from grade one to the university level, a facility not available even in Tamil Nadu. Who told Mr. Wickremesinghe that the Tamils do not have equal opportunities for education and employment? There is nothing wrong in standardising marks at the GCE (A/L) examination of candidates that sit in different media. Since last year there is a subject wise standardisation and what operated in the seventies for just a few years, in practise amounted to a media wise standardisation. If Jaffna Tamils do not get jobs now it is due to the politicalisation of "giving jobs". In our system it is not a case of appointing a person to a post but "giving him or her a job". It is not only the Jaffna Tamils that do not get jobs now. Even the SLFP supporters are not "given jobs". Earlier it was the UNP supporters who were not given jobs. Under Messrs. Ashraaf and Hakeem Muslims, most probably SLMC supporters, are given jobs especially in the ports. If Jaffna Tamils elected by the people are not represented in the cabinet it is due to the LTTE pressure and not because of any discriminating policies of the UNP or the PA. Mr. Wickremesinghe blames himself and his uncle and of course Ms. Kumaratunga for something that they have not done. If the Jaffna Tamils do not get jobs then it is the Tamil racist policies of the LTTE and the others that have to be blamed. If Muslims get more jobs now there is no reason why the Tamils should be discriminated against. As it is, it is the Sinhalas who are most discriminated due to party politics. At any time roughly fifty percent of the Sinhalas are not considered for jobs as they happen to be supporters of the opposition.
Tamil racism is not a post independence phenomenon as Mr. Wickremesinghe and the USA state department try to project. The Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi was formed to fight for a separate state in 1947 long before the Sinhala became the official language and the "standardisation" introduced in the seventies. Mr. G. G. Ponnambalam's fifty fifty and the demand for equal representation in the legislative assembly were made during the colonial period when no "affirmative" action had been dreamt of. Mr. Ponnambalam Arunachalam formed his racist organisation called Thamil Maha Sabai in the twenties of the last century. No "affirmative" action has been taken by any government, pre independent or post independent, in favour of the Sinhalas. It is said that when in Rome one acts like a Roman. However, it is not necessary to use American terms such as "affirmative" in explaining the position in Sri Lanka as it would give a wrong picture to the few people in the USA who would have read Mr. Wickremesinghe's speech in the newspapers. Why always attempt to explain our problems using western concepts and theories? In Sri Lanka it is a question of depriving Sinhalathva its rightful place first by the Europeans then by the Sri Lankan governments under pressure from the western governments and Tamil racism. I do not want to repeat some of the facts that I have presented in these columns but I must say that in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century it was the Jaffna Vellala Tamils (who were the only people to be referred to as the Tamils sometime ago, according to some others who contribute the "Midweek Review") especially the Coomaraswamy - Ponnambalam family that was most influential not only in the politics of the Tamils but in the politics of the country as a whole. They thought themselves as the leaders of Sri Lanka and were made to believe so with the connivance of the British. The Sinhala leaders were made to play only a secondary role and the Tamils expected to continue this dominating role with the Sinhala leaders playing a subservient role. Sometime ago when the rag sheets in the Sinhala press tried to compare Sri Lanka with South Africa equating the Sinhalas with the white rulers, I had to point out that if Sri Lanka is to be compared with South Africa then it is the Tamil leaders who have to be equated with the white rulers. What we had in Sri Lanka until about 1930 was a South African situation though it operated within a colony of the British empire. The British maintained that situation by promoting the Tamil leaders. The problems started not because of any "affirmative" action but when the Tamil leaders realised that with universal franchise they would lose their leading positions in the government. They were opposed to giving the rightful place for the Sinhalathva from the nineteenth century and any action taken to rectify the situation as far as Sinhalathva, was interpreted as discrimination against the Tamils. The USA government, if they do not know already, has to be told what the problem is and not to interfere in solving our problems though they were created mainly by their partner Britain.
It now appears that the role of the Norwegians is coming to an end. The USA has begun to play a direct role in the affairs of our country, as signified by the meeting of Mr. Bush with Mr. Wickremesinghe. The same thing happened in the case of Palestine problem with the USA following Norway in the so-called mediatory role. Soon after the meeting of the two leaders in Washington, Mr. Moragoda, as representative of the Sri Lankan government was in London talking to Anton Balasingham not for fifteen minutes but for two hours. Though Mr. Wickremesinghe referred to LTTE funds been frozen in the USA and the other western countries the LTTE was quick to point out that it was not the case. September 11 has nothing to do with Sri Lanka and the USA not only for political and economic reasons but due to cultural motives as well would not treat Prabhakaran as another bin Laden. In the meantime August 2nd is approaching and by that date or round about (Thamilselvan has been very considerate in not imposing a strict deadline!) the army would be withdrawn from the camps in the periphery. Now the TNA and the LTTE want the high security zones to be opened for the general public, meaning the LTTE cadres, and with Mr. Wickremesinghe stating that the army is prepared to leave the camps and come to Colombo the stage is set for the LTTE to take over the northern and the eastern provinces. When does Mr. Bush expect to meet Prabhakaran? Would he (Mr. Bush) be attending the Nobel peace prize awarding ceremony later this year?
Professor Nalin de Silva
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