MAHINDA GOES TO DELHI
Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse who just completed one year as the President of the country could be the most pressurised politician or statesman in the world. Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe on the other hand is under pressure only from his party members, and it appears that even after so many defeats at general and presidential elections he has overcome the challenge from the so called rebels. He appears to be safe in the saddle, and the rebels either now have to leave the party or betray the others and get behind the leadership. The challengers to the leadership have their own personal agenda with no two of them having a common programme. Perhaps it is correct to say that none of them has any programme except becoming the leader of the party. Each wants to become the leader except perhaps Mr. Karu Jayasuriya who has been pushed into the leadership in the struggle by the others who would have fought among themselves had their challenge to the leadership ended with a victory. The rebels do not have any major differences in policy with Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, and hence they have problems in convincing the members in the executive committee why the latter should elect them as the leaders. They had to go before the law to get an order to postpone the party conference without any success, as probably they knew that the party members would not have elected them as the leaders.
UNP is not a party whose leadership is open to anybody of the party. All the leaders of the party, except Mr. R. Premadasa had been from the same schools and same elite groupings, and it would take another Premadasa to become the leader of the party, from grass root level. Though one may not agree with the policies of Mr. Premadasa in general, one has to admit his skills in manuerings that finally made him the President of the country. He could defeat two giants in the party in the form of Mr. Athulathmudali and Mr. Gamini Dissanayake who had the right connections and the background to be the leaders of the UNP. Mr. S. B. Dissanayake, educated in a central school, is too impatient and is prepared to join even with Prabhakaran to become the President of the country, while Dr. G. L. Peiris has only revealed that in spite of attending the right schools he has no political acumen to be the leader of either the UNP or the SLFP. The rebels, in the eyes of the party members as well as the general public, will appear to be political opportunists, and when some of them appeal to Sinhala nationalism they become the laughing stock of the people. Mr. Premadasa had the determination and the patience to wait at all odds, a quality that could be found in Mr. J. R. Jayawardhane, but not in Mr. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike who left the party when he realised that he would not become the leader after Mr. D. S. Senanayake. The rebels do not have the resources or the skills to form a new party, which after all failed even in the case of Messrs. Athulathmudali and Dissanayake who were equipped better to do so.
As the UNP has signed an MoU with the SLFP, most of the challengers to the leadership of Mr. Wickremesinghe have only the option of joining the SLFP either as a group or as individual members, if they are to remain in politics. It is ironical that Dr. Peiris and a few others who had approached Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse with the intention of joining the government as ministers have been finally placed in a weaker position than they were few months ago. The MoU was signed by Mr. Malik Samarawickrema on behalf of the UNP, and not by Mr. Tissa Attanayake who is only the secretary of the party for issuing of statements and other such purposes. Mr. Attanayake, who is not a strong personality as Mr. S. B. Dissanayke, has been appointed as secretary only to give the party a populist outlook, the power remaining in the hands of the elite, the direct agents of the foreign non national forces. It is clear that finally the issue of the UNP is being settled the way the foreign non national forces led by Britain want it. Had the rebels of the UNP signed an MoU with the SLFP, that would have strengthened the hands of the President, but now it is Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe who has emerged as the strong man with respect to finding a "solution" to the Tamil problem. It is also clear that Britain and others rushed the MoU between the SLFP and the UNP, to undercut both the rebels and the President.
Mr. Rajapakse is going to Delhi in this background, with the "international community" including India and Japan thinking that his powers have been curtailed with Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe emerging a strong leader. To make things worse for the President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga also wants to enter the fray, thinking that she still has support in the SLFP. Undoubtedly the western powers would back her as they would be happier with the combination of Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe. However, there are certain factors that the "rational" west cannot understand in Sri Lankan politics, and the west is not in a position to say all is well and under their control. What the west and India want is a Federal Sri Lanka if not a confederation, and they apply pressure on Mr. Rajapakse to deviate from Mahinda Chinthana. Mr. Rajapakse said at Weerawila on Sunday that he has not changed even a coma in the Mahinda Chinthana. He may not have changed a coma but he is not mentioning some words such as unitary in his speeches these days. It is hoped that those words are still there though we do not hear or see them in the media.
India would apply pressure on the President to merge the northern and the eastern provinces as it is the demand of Tamil racism in order to achieve what are now known as Tamil aspirations. The Tamils may have been led by their so called leaders to believe in a Tamil homeland in the British demarcated northern and eastern provinces of 1889, and it may be the way that the ordinary Tamil perceives the world. However neither mere perceptions nor aspirations of a community could form the basis of a solution to a problem. In fact when the problem is the perception itself one has to be courageous enough to tell the Tamil people that their perceptions are all wrong, and it is their leaders from the nineteenth century onwards who have to be blamed for such perceptions. The majority of the Tamils including those in the Jaffna peninsula are descendants of those who were imported by either the Dutch or the British, and in any event in the eastern province Tamils (as well as Muslims) are confined to the coastal belt.
There is no way that the majority of the Sinhalas who are conscious of the historical fact, not a mere perception, that the present eastern province was part of the Ruhunu Rata and was part of the Sinhala kingdom until 1815, albeit the maritime provinces, which the Dutch continued to administer even after the abrogation of the Sinhala - Dutch pact between king Rajasinghe II and the "governor" Falk, was abrogated by the king when he realised that the Dutch did not adhere to the pact, would agree to a merger of the two provinces. If India or Britain thinks that they could ignore the Sinhala opinion, and history merely to satisfy the aspirations of the Tamils who have been led to acquire those aspirations by Tamil racist leaders who could not forgo the privileges that they enjoyed under the Dutch and specially under the British, then they are sadly mistaken. In any event what right India or Britain has to interfere with our problems? I wish Mr. Rajapakse would give all those "international leaders" a reply a la Sir John Kotelawala. When at Bandung summit Shri Nehru questioned as to why the Sri Lankan Prime Minister did not show the text of the latter's speech beforehand to him, Sir John has simply asked whether the Indian Prime Minister showed the text of his speech to the Sri Lankan Premier. Even if one does not agree with the text of the speech delivered by Sir John one has to admire him for the reply he gave to Shri Nehru, as the head of the government of a sovereign state. If Sri Lanka does not interfere with the demarcation of states in India what right India has to pressurise the Sri Lankan President to merge provinces. If India states that Tamils in India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, are conscious of the "plight" of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, then it means that the Tamils in Sri Lanka do not have their own identity with which I am afraid the Sri Lankan Tamils would not agree.
Mr. Rajapakse would be further pressurised arising out of what Prabhakaran has to say in his Mahathrasthvadiya's (maha not in the sense of great) speech, but he should keep his balance remembering that he is responsible to the people of Sri Lanka, especially to those who elected him and not to Manmohan Singhs and Blairs. At least by now he should be aware of what is happening with people such as Rock from the United Nations, which is maintained by the west for the west, trying to bring discredit and rock the government. It is unfortunate that the majority of the English educated Sinhala people in the country is yet to understand the games played by Britain and others in the west with the support of India.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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