CHANGING LEADERS
The Sri Lanka Rupavahini Cooperation in its news bulletin on Sunday the 4th announced of a planned six hour coup by the President and the PA to oust Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe and the cabinet and install Mr. Laxman Kadirgamar as the Prime Minister, with a new cabinet. In other words the alleged coup if succeeded would have changed the leaders in the parliament. However, as Ms. Kumaratunga would have been late by more than six hours the coup would have failed and Mr. Wickremesinghe would have continued as the Prime Minister. Whether we believe in this story or not what is clear is that there is total chaos in the country. The PA and the UNP though not differing much in their policies are reluctant to join hands and in this country there is no government of cohabitations. (This is not a plea for them to join hands as doing so would be more disastrous.) The President threatened to sack Mr. Ravi Karunanayake for alleged reference to a bomb in her much publicised hand bag. Dr. G. L. Peiris in his wisdom said that President has no power to do so but then it turned out that under the constitution the President has the power to appoint and hence to remove minsters without consulting the Prime Minister. Any first year student in the Faculty of Law could have explained the legal position on mandatory requirements to the former Dean of the Faculty. However the President did not sack Mr. Karunanayake. It is very unlikely that she would do so in the near future. It is not because that she does not have the legal power to sack the minster but it is due to the fact that she does not have the political power. Today it is a pathetic situation that only Prabhakaran has political power though in a small area confined to two or three districts. Though he has the political power emanating not so much from the gun but from the treachery of the so called leaders of the UNF and from the support given by the USA, UK, Norway and the other Christian (not so much from the Catholic) countries in the west, he does not have the legal or the constitutional power. None of them have the economic or the "cultural" power to tackle the situation.
The USA is behind this government and there is no doubt about it. It is said that the Prime Minister was given only a photo audience lasting fifteen minutes to take a few photographs. The photographs reminded me of the photos displayed by the local organisers of electorates during the elections, with the organiser sitting next to the leader of the party. In these photographs the local leader is either talking or listening to the national leader of the party. The photos are used to convey a sense of importance to the candidates at the elections. In this world dominated by the western Christian civilisation there are some Bhikkus who display photos taken with the Pope. I do not think that the Pope ever displays any photographs taken with the Mahanayakas or Sangharajas of the Theravada Buddhist countries, nor the leaders of the political parties the photographs taken with the "organisers" of the electorates nor the Presidents of the USA, the photographs taken with the leaders of the so-called third world countries. Irrespective of the nature and the duration of the audience that the Prime Minister was given by the President of the USA, it is clear that this government is preferred to a PA government by the sole super power of the world.
Mr. Anura Bandaranaike probably realises this fact and he is resisting interference by the USA in the affairs of the SLFP. Earlier it was reported that the campaign for an "honourable peace" by the SLFP in collaboration with the JVP was not to the liking of the super power, but Mr. Bandaranaike had not listened to the "advice" given by them. Now he has said that Mr. Bush has been elected as the President of the USA only by a few votes and even then the election results are questionable. Obviously the ambassador for the USA is not happy with the remarks by Mr. Bandaranaike and has responded to it. This battle indicates that the SLFP resents interference by the USA and is not afraid of indicating that in public. However, the question arises as to whether the SLFP or the PA has the political power to resist these interferences.
Ms.Chandrika Kumaratunga, though she wants to relieve the duties of Mr Ravi Karunanayake as a cabinet minister, cannot do so as she does not have the political power. The constitutional power or the legal power matters very little in these affairs. On the other hand the UNF does not have the political power to oust the President though Messrs. Karunanayake, Rajitha Senarathna and some others have been airing this view for some time. Both the President and the Prime Minister are on record to have said that they cannot get their orders carried out. This is a very disturbing situation as the country needs a very strong leadership to overcome the present crisis. While the LTTE exercises political power over the Tamils through the support of the western countries there is no party or leadership to exercise a political power over the Sinhala people. The LTTE is in this position due to the capitulation of the political rights by the Tamils. The LTTE does not have the support of the people but they are in a position to dictate terms to the Tamils in the northern and the eastern provinces. The Tamils in these provinces having capitulated their political rights have to obey the LTTE, commit suicide or run away to the other provinces or to other countries. Extortions and abductions are reported daily but the so-called monitors are "unable" to do anything about them. It was only the last week that one Mohan in Jaffna committed suicide as he could not pay Rupees one million as demanded by the LTTE. Recently the LTTE has formed committees among the Tamils in the Jaffna peninsula to find out about individuals who have a cordial relationship with the army. This is mainly to punish whom the LTTE calls the traitors and it is clear that the people Jaffna do not like the LTTE but they are helpless having capitulated their political rights to the LTTE. The capitulation by the government to the LTTE through the MOU has aggravated their problems.
While the Tamils have capitulated their political rights the Sinhala people are unable to decide on a strong political leadership. The present struggle between the President and the Parliament or the "dual power" between the executive and the legislature is due to this fact. Though the term dual power is used it is correct to refer to this situation as one of absence of power. It is not a case of two parties both exercising power simultaneously, but a situation where neither party has power. The Sinhala people do not believe in either party and at the same time they are not prepared to try an alternative leadership at this juncture. As the Sinhala people do not trust either the PA or the UNF they are not prepared to give the political power to either party and thus no party has the power to "oust" the leaders of the other party. There are talks of a general election dissolving the Parliament with the initiative taken by either party, changing the preferential (manapa) system of elections, with parties such as the MEP and individuals such as Dr. Dolawatte who has written a book on this matter, giving their proposals. All these measures are proposed in order to elect a "representative" government, but I doubt unless one of the parties could come out with strong national (jathika) policies that could change the course of the country, the Sinhala people would give any one of the parties the political power it needs. It is the foreign powers that capitalise this state of affairs as could be seen by the naked interferences by the ambassadors and high commissioners in the politics of the country.
It is unfortunate that since 1848 the Sinhalas have had no leadership of their own, except for a short period during the hey days of Anagarika Dharmapala who was defeated by the British and their appointed leaders. After the independence struggle of 1817-18 the British massacred brutally the Sinhala leadership and installed their own agents as the leaders of the Sinhalas. Ordinary people like Puran Appu and Gongalegoda Banda who were not leaders in the eyes of the Sinhalas were forced to take up the leadership at the second independence struggle of 1848. Since then the anglicised, culturally as well as religion wise, set of people who were endowed with land, position and other privileges have been appointed as leaders of the Sinhalas by the British. In the case of the Tamils it was a creation of a leadership by the Dutch and the British for the people who were brought from South India originally for tobacco cultivation. There is no continuation between the pre Portuguese Arya Chakravarthins and the people who lived in the Jaffna peninsula and the present day Tamils in the northern and the eastern provinces and of course the Tamils in the central province, who are mainly descendants of the people brought from South India for various functions by the Dutch and the British. The Vellalas were "appointed" to the leadership by the colonial powers. The anglicised leadership of the Sinhalas appointed by the British were at the beginning subservient to the Coomaraswamy - Ponnambalam Vellala leadership and the present Tamil racist problem has roots in the "leaders" appointed by the British in 1835 to the legislative assembly to represent the Sinhalas and the Tamils. These leaders differ from the Sinhala kings and pre Dutch period Sankili who fought against the first European colonial power Portuguese. The LTTE leadership, though defeated the Vellala leadership, is also maintained by the western powers and if not for this backing it would have been defeated long time ago. In spite of September 11, the USA government has not taken any steps to help to defeat the LTTE, that is ironically banned in that country. Though Israel and the Jewish lobby in the USA have asked for a change in the Arafat leadership, associating the latter with terrorism there is no such move with respect to the terrorist organisation LTTE and its fascist leader. Whatever, the foreign office pundits and its retired officials who are essentially trained in the tradition of the whitehall policy makers, and the English educated "intelligentsia" of the country think of September 11, it has no affect on the LTTE and Sri Lanka. As far as the west is concerned Prabhakaran is no Arafat or bin Laden. He is more of a Din Diem or a Marcos and the west will make use of him as much as possible.Indians who nurtured the LTTE leadership in the beginning have now turned against them but are unable to do much to change the leadership. As Nirupama Subramaniam had observed in a recent article in "Hindu", republished in "The Island", the Indians tried to change the LTTE leadership by appointing the EPRLF as the leaders of the Tamils. However, that too was a leadership installed from outside and Mr. Vardaraja Perumal had to find "political asylum" in India, in the face of a strong LTTE leadership backed by the west.
It is very unlikely the Tamils would be able to change the leadership of the LTTE on their own. However, that does not mean that the Sri Lankan government, India or somebody else should install an alternative to the western backed LTTE leadership. Though nobody else could appoint leaders of the Tamils I believe that it is the Sinhalas who could help them to select and elect an indigenous leadership on their own. However, the problem is that the Sinhalas themselves have no indigenous leadership. Their leaders are anglicised and have been appointed by the British. Mr. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike born to anglicised parents culturally as well as religion wise became a Buddhist. However, he could not become a cultural Sinhala Buddhist. He was destined to become a "western intellectual Buddhist". Mr. J. R. Jayawardane was not much different. Their sons and daughters and nephews who are the present day "leaders" of the Sinhalas are not capable of leading the Sinhalas. The Sinhalas on the other hand are unfortunately not prepared to change the leadership. Thus the ambassadors and the high commissioners continue to have a field day in Colombo, a "city" created by the colonial powers.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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