REGAINING SRI LANKA BY THE BRITISH
It is very likely that the UNP and the SLFP would have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) by the time this column appears in print. This MoU signed between the two parties is a result of external non national applying pressure on the government of Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse and on the UNP. The internal non national forces are delighted by the signing of the MoU, though a few among the non national forces who cannot see beyond their noses and portfolios may not be in favour of the process that led to the MoU. It is the British, more than anybody else who would have forced the government and the UNP to come to this so called understanding. It is very likely that the recent visits by Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse and Mr. Ranil Wikremesinghe to London sealed the MoU in principle.
At the last Presidential elections there were two programmes before the public. One was the Mahinda Chinthana and the other was the programme on regaining Sri Lanka. The Mahinda Chinthana emphasised devolution within a unitary state while regaining Sri Lanka was for a federation or even a confederation. The public in general and the Sinhala people in particular, the latter with an overwhelming majority voting for Mahinda Chinthana, were for a unitary state. However, unfortunately though Mr. Rajapakse was the candidate of the Sandhanaya, the JVP did not join the government though it was a constituent party of Alliance. Mahinda Chinthana was a document prepared during the time of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, and it was with the greatest difficulty the word unitary had been included therein. It had been the nationalistic elements in the drafting committee that had insisted first on unitary, then the JHU, followed by the JVP. However, after the JVP agreed on the unitary state the party campaigned with more vigour than anybody else as it had the organisational power to do so. Why the JVP did not join the government is a question that has no answer, and up to now no satisfactory reply has been given by the JVP. Had the JVP joined the government at the very beginning things would have been different, and the UNP would not have signed a MoU with the SLFP eleven months later.
The external non national forces saw the vacuum created by the JVP, and most probably would have worked on an alliance between the UNP and the SLFP. That the country is divided along the national and non national lines and not along the class lines is clearly conveyed by the welcoming of the UNP - SLFP MoU by the Marxist parties, other than the JVP. Mr. Vasudeva Nanayakkara who would have been reluctant to join the SLFP sometime ago, has no reservations in greeting the signing of the MoU between the UNP and the SLFP and would have no problem in being a member of an alliance of the UNP, the SLFP and the "left" parties that have been left out after the elections. There is not a single elected MP from the old or the new left party in the Parliament today, and all the left party representatives, other than the JVP members, are in the Parliament today as members nominated from the national list of the Sandhanaya. The non JVP Marxists welcome the MoU between the UNP and the SLFP, giving lie to the Marxist theories based on class. Of course, there has been an attempt by Althusar to save Marxism by introducing the bankrupt concept of overdeterminacy. According to his "theory" nationalism is now overdetermined. Though Marxists claim to be western scientists, this type of theorizing would have been rejected with the contempt it deserves by the western Physicists. No Physicist would ever dream of claiming that electromagnetism is overdetermined vis-à-vis gravitation, under any circumstances. Althusar's overdeterminacy is nothing but an acceptance of the fact that with respect to social forces classes are not always the determining factor. The Marxists find it difficult even to accept that at least on certain occasions "class struggle" is not important, and hence formulate these bankrupt theories. In our context there is however, a way to save Marxist class struggle. We could say that Marists such as Mr. Vasudeva Nanayakkara welcome the MoU between the UNP and the SLFP, as these so called Marxists too belong to the capitalist class in spite of their rhetoric of down with capitalism. It is not amusing to see the local Marists other than the JVPers, UNPers, some SLFPers, Tamil racists who would deprive Sinhalathva its due place in the country, Norwegians, Americans, Japanese, Indians and finally the British on the same side of the fence. We have one term for all of them in our formulation of the social forces. They are all non national forces either external or internal.
The Sinhala people did not vote for the Mahinda Chinthana over regaining Sri Lanka, for an alliance between the two programmes. They cannot be united as they are the typical ya deka noratha ratha programmes. How can there be a compromise between unitary and federal states? If the two parties come together then it is at the expense of one of the programmes. Now the question arises as to which programme has been ditched out. It is obviously the Mahinda Chinthana and the MoU is to establish a federal state if not a confederation in which Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe has been interested from his asymmetrical devolution days. So it is regaining Sri Lanka that is on the order.
Though we are a so called independent country, Britain, and later India and some European countries, not to mention United States of America have been influencing the decision making process at the highest level from the very .beginning The high commissioners, ambassadors and other diplomats, special envoys have been powerful personalities in this country, though we have had some limited independence in determining our own affairs. The Indo Lanka agreement, CFA, and the MoU between the UNP and the SLFP are examples for the continued interest Britain and others are having in our country. Recently this trend has accelerated, though the UNP which is for all purposes a party run by the British and other vested interests, though it may have its own executive committees and other paraphernalia, creates an impression that the party takes decisions on its own. The UNP is the party of the non national forces, and we are heading towards the direction of losing our sovereignty. Of course there are internal non national pundits who would point out that sovereignty is a dead letter in this era of globalisation. These pundits are not expressing their own ideas but only echoing the voices of their masters and mistresses in the west. The pundits who are a creation of the British and later the American education have never had any independence in their thinking, and they are prepared to accept any knowledge that emanates from the west.
The catch phrase of the UNP ha been "regaining Sri Lanka" for sometime now. It is clear that the British who never left the country absolutely even after we became a republic in 1972, want to regain Sri Lanka completely, and that the UNP is only the agent of Whitehall in this regard. The UNP should have added the words "by the British" after "regaining Sri Lanka" so as to convey to everybody the contents of the contract that they have been given. The so called ethnic problem in this country is a creation of the British, the Dutch having initiated it by bringing people from South Indian coast for their tobacco cultivations, and from the nineteenth century the former have been using their creation of a so called minority to divide and rule, and also to destabilise the country since 1948, when they gave the impression that they left the shores of our country.
It appears that Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse has been promised by Britain and other western countries that the LTTE would be defeated if he agrees to a federal solution to the problem that the British created. The west, perhaps with the exception of Norway and some other Scandinavian countries, is not interested in keeping the LTTE any more. It is not because of any love that they have for Sri Lanka but due to the fact that it has now been established that the Tamil terrorists have connections with Al Qaeda and perhaps other Arabic terrorist organisations. The west and India supported the LTTE at the inception of the terrorist organisation, and did not allow the Sri Lankan government to defeat the terrorist organisation through parippu and other diplomacies. The LTTE has now outgrown the expectations of Britain, USA and India that play the three major roles in the "ethnic problem", Norway being only a paid servant of the big three, and the recent bans of the LTTE in the western world, with the exception of Norway, was a result of the evidence that was coming up in respect of the connections of the LTTE with the Arabic terrorist organisations. As it is apparently now well established that the LTTE has these connections, the west is now in a haste to defeat the LTTE. The recent arrests of few LTTE members in the USA become meaningful in this background.
However, Britain and India would not like to defeat the LTTE unconditionally, after all Britain still keeps Anton Balasingham in spite of his connections with terrorism, and they are desperate to extract a federal solution before the LTTE is defeated. The MoU between the UNP and the SLFP is for the purpose of "legalising" the solution that is to be worked out with the "assistance" of India, if it has not been already formulated. When Mr. Bandula Gunawardane innocently asked the leader of the UNP as to how they could support the forthcoming budget without even seeing it, probably he did not know that budgets are political matters as well, and are not merely confined to the field of economics. The old adage it is Economics stupid is replaced by it is Politics stupid or even better by it is federalism stupid in this connection. Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse may be a person from down south or as they say "gangen eha" (on the other side of the river) but he has to cope with politics emanating from "muhuden eha", and unless he discovers where his strength is even at this eleventh hour, the British are poised to regain Sri Lanka, imposing a federal solution and handing over the northern and the eastern provinces to Mr. Anandasangaree or some other leader whom they can trust, and the other provinces to Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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