VICTORY FOR UNITARY
The November 17th Presidential Elections will go into the history as the election that decided to retain the unitary character of the state, without bowing down to the non nationalist forces (vijathika balavegaya) that include not only the embassies of the western Christian countries but also the so called intellectuals of the "civil society", who are the prisoners of western Christian culture which constitutes knowledge that has been produced in the west during the last five hundred years or so. The people have elected a Jathika President instead of an Arthika President, if we were to confine ourselves to the logic of a Professor in a Department of Sociology in the USA, whose Sociology cannot explain the society in Sri Lanka. I wonder whether the Sociology that these Professors from Sri Lanka acquire in the Sri Lankan as well as other universities could explain any society for that matter.
Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse has become the President of the country having campaigned against all odds. To begin with he was chosen as the Presidential candidate of the SLFP reluctantly, and had Ms. Kumaratunga known at the time of selection that the Presidential elections would be held in 2005, it is very likely that somebody else would have been selected as the candidate. The UNP though campaigned for an election in 2005 wanted it to be held in 2006, and by that time the SLFP would have dropped Mr. Rajapakse on some grounds. However, the JHU decided to go to courts against elections in 2006, and the rest is history. It was obvious that the main foe of Mr. Rajapakse was in the SLFP itself, as Ms. Kumaratunga refrained from campaigning for him, except in a nominal way. The SLFP MPs and the organisers, except for a few did not throw their weight behind Mr. Rajapakse for number of reasons. Some were reluctant to go against the wish of Ms. Kumaratunga, while some others were strong supporters of a federal solution to the Tamil racist problem. Then there were others who were marking time as they were not sure that Mr. Rajapakse would emerge the winner.
Mr. Rajapakse had to face a very hostile media, to say the least. Most of the media, now known as the media mafia, were strong supporters of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, and at any given instant at least one radio or television channel carried an advertisement in favour of him. It was said that these advertisements had been paid for, and the Inland Revenue Department should be looking into the extra income that the relevant media earned during the period of the campaign. Then there were the elite film producers who directed commercials on how the Sri Lankan vendors sold milk powder in table spoons in sympathy of customers who could not afford the money to buy a packet of milk powder. Perhaps it is the postmodernist Sri Lanka that they had in their minds as well as in the scripts and these "intellectuals" are certain to win awards at so called international film festivals. To outdo all these propaganda in favour of Mr. Wickremesinghe we had the banking and insurance personality who could afford full page advertisements daily not in one newspaper but in several newspapers. He attempted to arouse the Christians and the Catholics with advertisements requesting them to awake. The Mahanayake Thera of the Asgiriya Chapter and the Archbishop appeared in his advertisements. Incidentally in the advertisement that carried the photograph of the Archbishop he wanted the Christians to awake, while in the advertisement with the photograph of the Mahanayake Thera the Buddhists were advised by the Mahanayake Thera to refrain from demolishing Churches, Mosques and Kovils. One wonders whether it was an appeal to the Buddhists or an instance of the advertiser attempting to give the impression to the world that the Sinhala Buddhists are barbarians who do not tolerate other religions while "awakening" the Christians, Hindus and Muslims against the Buddhists.
Fortunately the ordinary Sinhala Christians and the Catholics are much more intelligent than what their elite leaders believe, and they are not sheep that any shepherd could direct the way they want. The ordinary Sinhala Christians and the Catholics did not care for the propaganda of the elite, and voted for Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse the Sinhala Buddhist from the south. The ordinary Sinhala Catholics know that it was the Sinhala Buddhist kings who protected them from the Dutch, and also that Most Rev. Father Joseph Vas had the patronage of the Sinhala kings in Kandy. As has been mentioned in Prabhakaran Ohuge Seeyala, Baappala Ha Massinala (Translated into English as "An Analysis of Tamil Racism in Sri Lanka") the ordinary Sinhala Christian (hereinafter meaning the Catholic as well) had no misgivings about the Buddhists claiming their due place after four hundred and fifty years of colonialism, unlike the elite who had vested interests.
It is clear from the results of the Presidential election that the majority of the Sinhala Buddhists outside Colombo, Kandy and Dehiwala municipal limits have voted for Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse. The Sinhala Christians also have voted for him in large numbers ignoring the appeal of the elite Christians who had the funds to campaign for Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, as revealed by the results of Katana, Jaela, Vennappuwa, Naththandiya electorates. However, the same cannot be said about the Muslims. In spite of Mr. Rajapakse having supported the Palestinian cause for more than two decades and Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe approving the policy of Mr. Bush on Iraq, the majority of the Muslims whether in Colombo, Galle, Harispaththuva or Eastern Province have voted for the UNP candidate. The majority of the Tamils who decided to vote have cast their votes in favour of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe. In that sense Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse has been elected by the Sinhala people both Buddhists and Christians living outside municipality areas.
We still do not know the reason as to why Prabhakaran decided to boycott the elections. Many reasons have been speculated during the last few days. Some believe that Prabhakaran decided to boycott the elections to show to the outside world that Tamils did not take part in an election of a Sinhala President by the Sinhala people. Thus according to this view the LTTE has strengthened its claim for a separate state. However, unfortunately for Prabhakaran and the LTTE, the Tamils in the plantations have voted in large numbers for Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe who went to the extent of projecting the image of a national flag waving nationalistic leader to win the votes of the Sinhalas. A second reason given is that when Mr. Milinda Moragoda and Mr. Navin Dissanayake, probably with the concurrence of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe announced that Karuna was the result of the so called cease fire agreement, again to please the Sinhala voter, Prabhakaran thought that there was no point in supporting Mr. Wickremesinghe.
However, the second reason is valid only if the majority of the Tamils would have voted in favour of Mr. Wickremesinghe. Now, this is a debatable point as even in 1999 Presidential elections the majority of the Tamils in Jaffna and other districts had voted for Ms. Kumaratunga when, unlike in 1994, she was campaigning as a pseudo nationalist. At this election Ms. Kumaratunga had entered into a pact with the CWC, and it may be that in spite of a pseudo nationalist image, the ordinary Tamil felt that Ms. Kumaratunga was a better candidate than Mrs. Dissanayake. In 2004 general elections the majority of the Tamils in the northern province voted against the Sandhanaya but we do not know whether it was the general wish of the ordinary Tamils, as at this election it was mainly the stooges and the child brigade of the LTTE that voted in the name of the Tamils. When it was decided to have cluster polling booths the LTTE probably knew that the true opinion of the Tamils would emerge, and that would have been a blow to the terrorist outfit. Thus the third reason suggested is that the LTTE decided to boycott the elections in 2005 as they knew that the Tamil vote could go against Prabhakaran - Wickremesinghe axis. Hence, the LTTE deprived the legitimate Tamil voters their right to vote at a Presidential Election.
It is likely that the LTTE had originally decided to boycott the Presidential elections with cluster polling booths as they did not want to reveal their true vote base, which is much less than the six hundred thousand claimed, and since they were not sure of how the ordinary Tamils would vote. This decision was reinforced subsequently when the UNP claimed that Karuna was the creation of the so called ceasefire agreement. Whatever the reason for the decision of the LTTE to boycott the election, the results have shown that even with the majority of the Tamils voting against Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse, there was the possibility of him becoming the President, if the SLFP leadership, the MPs and the organisers had campaigned for him. This implies that with the present demography the Sinhala voters by themselves could elect a President, and a Parliamentary majority that they want. In fact we have demonstrated that the present Sandhanaya government was elected by the Sinhala voter in 2004, without the support of the CWC and the SLMC of Mr. Hakeem. This is due to the fact that the Sinhalas constitute nearly eighty percent of the population at present, and a party that could win the support of about sixty percent of the Sinhalas is in a position to come to power.
The majority of the Sinhala voters have voted for a unitary state. The Sinhalas who live outside the municipality areas, and who are still not tainted with concepts and theories created in the west, in spite of the education through the schools, universities and media, have demonstrated that they have not lost their nationalistic feelings. Even among those who vote for the UNP are descendants of those who voted for the Senanayakes who had some nationalistic leanings unlike the Jayawardhanes and Wickremesinghes. The Yankee Punk culture may be for some of the Sinhalas in the municipality areas but the others living outside these areas still have a feeling for the Jathika more than for the Arthika if one wants to think as a westerner in binary oppositions. The children of fifty six (panashaye daruwo) led by Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse (it has to be emphasised that it is not only the JVP members that fall into the category of children of fifty six. The Bandaranaike memorial lecture delivered in 1989, which defined the concept of children of fifty six has now been printed with an added postscript in a booklet entitled panashaye daruwo.) have voted for a unitary state whether the "intellectuals" in the civil society may like it or not. The westerners and others who come to Sri Lanka for field work in their research as well as the media personalities meet only these "intellectuals" who seem to think that they have a monopoly of representing the public opinion to the outside world. The Presidential election results have shown that these people are bogus intellectuals who may have obtained a degree but who cannot think independently. Their calculations, predictions have been proved wrong and the independence struggle of the Sinhalas continues. The Jathika balavegaya has won over the vijathika balavegaya again as it was the case in 1956. However, unlike those who helped their masters to attack the Jathika balavegaya in fifty six, and then crowed over the fall of the elitist clique (bamunu kulaya), we have no misgivings that the bamunu kulaya is no more. They are only licking their wounds and have to be defeated resoundingly. There were some people who talked of the apekama and the culture in order to show that they also belonged to the Jathika balavegaya. However, we have to be careful of some of them as they are still supporters of a federal solution. The acid test of jathikathva at present is whether one wants to protect the unitary status and hence the sovereignty of the country or not. Jathikathva also means independence from western theories and concepts that cannot be absorbed into our culture and unless one analyses the Tamil problem in terms of nationalistic concepts and theories (including those western theories that could be absorbed) one cannot be identified with the jathikathvaya.
These columns would go into an analysis of the Tamil problem as space and time permit to do so, independent of the concepts and theories developed in the west. In the meantime it has to be noted that if the ordinary Tamils could follow the ordinary Sinhala Christians and understand that there is no Sinhala Buddhist hegemony in the country, but a continuous independence struggle by the Sinhala Buddhists(and Christians) against western colonialism to win back the due place for the Sinhala culture and the Sinhala people, ignoring the elite who have vested interests on behalf of the colonialists, then most of our problems would be solved. (The response to Neo Liberalism, Jathika Chinthanaya and Citizenship would be continued next week.)
Professor Nalin de Silva
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