transcurrents

Tamil Nationalism and the Sinhalese: The political logjam

December 22nd, 2007

by Rajan Philips

A few years ago, Hector Abhayavardhana delivered the Handy Perinpanayagam Memorial Lecture on the topic: “Tamil Nationalism and the Sinhalese”. Having earlier described the disenfranchisement of Tamil plantation workers as the original sin of Sri Lanka’s postcolonial disintegration, Hector, in the Perinpanayagam Lecture, regretted that the Sinhalese and Tamil leaders of that time did not try hard enough to resolve their political differences despite their social camaraderie as members of a common middle class. The times were also more congenial then, unlike now, and, worse, the Rajapakse brothers and the LTTE are not even talking to one another (which itself would require international translation!), except through gunfire.

It did not take long after the plantation workers were disenfranchised for S.J.V. Chelvanayakam to split with G.G. Ponnambalam, and for S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike to breakaway from the UNP. Both breaks were to have far reaching consequences for the national question. The split in Tamil politics meant that the two contenders would ratchet up Tamil demands in a bid to outdo each other in elections. Not infrequently, one of them would throw a wrench in the other’s initiatives with the government. The UNP and the SLFP, on the other hand, shed all pretensions to being ‘National Parties’ and became ‘communal parties’, competing with each other as to who will implement Sinhala Only faster and who will be less generous to the Tamils. The disenfranchisement also tilted the ethnic balance in parliament disproportionately in favour of the Sinhalese (from 69-31 in 1947 to 80-20 in 1960) and the UNP and the SLFP were able to alternate as governing parties without support from the minorities.

With the LTTE usurping political authority over the Tamil community, there is no room for electoral bidding contests in Tamil politics. In any event, there is nothing to outbid the ultimate demand of nationalism-a separate state for the nation. The demand for Eelam, though democratically legitimate, as pointed out by the departing British High Commissioner, has been illegitimized by the methods of the LTTE. While Eelam might have been a possibility in the Cold War period, it is now globally and regionally untenable.

On the Sinhalese, or the government, side, a broad constituency has emerged after 1994 supporting the resolution of the Tamil and Muslim questions through a constitutional change enabling territorial power sharing. The SLFP and the UNP under the leaderships of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremasinghe agreed to as much even though they could not agree on working together. Although President Rajapakse has rolled back much of the advances made by Kumaratunga and Wickremasinghe since 1994, he has not been able to totally ignore calls for a political solution. Even his (Defense Secretary) brother speaks of a political solution following a military defeat of the LTTE. What is more, the unitary constitutional status quo is no less unviable than Eelam, and persisting with either of them only means prolonging the current war.

The presidential-parliamentary logjam

The question is why we have not been able to make any progress towards a political solution despite the bi-partisan agreement on its parameters. Prior to 1994, the lack of consensus between the UNP and the SLFP was the biggest roadblock to resolving the Tamil question. If there was consensus over a political solution, legislating it in parliament and implementing it through cabinet-government would have been straightforward. Why not now?

A major factor in this logjam is the presidential-parliamentary system and proportional representation. The combination has made progress towards a political solution extremely difficult, if not impossible, in a number of ways. The old first-past-the-post system of elections created the parliamentary tyranny of 1978 that led to the adoption of the present rigid constitution. The 1994 and 2001 elections under the proportional representation system respectively denied Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremasinghe the constitutional majorities, that they would have garnered under the first-past-the-post system, and which they could have used to make changes to the Constitution going beyond the Thirteenth Amendment. Put another way, the proportional representation frustrated parliament’s opportunities in 1994 and 2001 to reverse the majoritarian excesses of the 1978 Constitution.

On the other hand, the presidency, which was supposed to give weight to minority voters in the election of the President, was put on a war-footing almost from its inception-when President Jayewardene, one year into his inaugural term, placed Jaffna under Emergency Rule in 1979. There has been no let up since, and the presidential preoccupation with the war front has continued even after 1994, whether as war-for-peace under Kumaratunga, or, war-at-all-cost under the current regime. The preoccupation with war is also reflected in the titular insistence that the President is the Commander in Chief. It was not a coincidence that the longest period of ceasefire was achieved in 2002, under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s office, with Ranil Wickremasinghe as Prime Minister, without Presidential blessings. Not a day went by when Wickremasinghe was Prime Minister without Ms. Kumaratunga reminding herself and everyone who was listening, that she was the Commander in Chief!

Another aggrandizing aspect of the presidency is that as a political Prize, it is an all consuming, winner-take-all institution, unlike the Parliament of old where the Prime Minister was no more than the ‘first among equals (ministers)’ and was always counter–posed by his or her alternative-the Leader of the Opposition. In the current set up, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are ’some bodies’ turned into ‘nobodies’, while the President is everything and all of it at the expense of Parliament. This was the main reason why Kumaratunga and Wickremasinghe subordinated every other consideration to the purpose of being or becoming President, and would not cooperate with each other despite their independent agreement on the fundamentals of a political solution. President Kumaratunga even tried to go beyond her second term and wasted her time and government’s resources in a fruitless exercise.

With President Rajapakse, the overriding purpose is ensuring a second term victory and, until then, keeping his slender majority in parliament intact. He is proving himself to be adept at both, and is proving at every turn that Wickremasinghe is a serial loser. While Kumraratunga, in her better days, tried to run a parallel peace front, the Rajapakse regime does not even pretend to have one. The All Party Representative Committee (APRC) working on proposals for constitutional change is Colombo’s best known political orphan, and the Committee’s work only interests the President when he has foreign visitors. A powerful and expensive Presidential entourage independent of Parliament and the Cabinet of Ministers has emerged, and so long as those in the entourage are bent on waging war, with a lot of them materially benefiting from it, there is little time or chance for peace. They will also advise President Rajapakse, if he is in need of such advice, that keeping the war going is the best way to win the second term. But it is not even the second best option for Sri Lanka, if one were to look at the example of the second Bush term in the US.

Breaking the logjam

The political logjam and the resumption of hostilities have left Sri Lankan moderates desperately looking for international help to facilitate a ceasefire and the resumption of talks. The focus is now on the February visit of the Indian Prime Minister to celebrate Sri Lanka’s sixty years of independence. According to reports, New Delhi is insisting that Colombo should have a political package ready prior to the arrival of Manmohan Singh. If this is true, the APRC will now be driven to work overtime and come up with something in the next five weeks. Tissa Vitarana and his team may not need five weeks to produce a report, but the question is what recommendations will satisfy President Rajapakse and whether or not India will insist on seeing specific recommendations included in the report.

On the other hand, both Colombo and New Delhi may independently want to go through the appearance of promoting a political package without actually meaning to make any real progress in finalizing and implementing one. Significantly, India does not seem to have asked for, or suggested a ceasefire prior to the Indian PM’s visit. But that need not prevent the government from declaring a limited ceasefire to mark the occasion and send the message that the celebration of independence includes all Sri Lankans and not just those living outside the North and East. Not that the people in the North and East have anything to celebrate but even a limited stoppage of bombardment will be a huge relief to them.

No less significant would be the LTTE’s ‘reception’ to the visiting Indian PM. It could gain some mileage by unilaterally declaring a limited ceasefire and indicating a recommitment to the now forgotten but still significant Oslo Declaration that committed both the GOSL and the LTTE to exploring a federal solution within a united Sri Lanka. But the LTTE would be mindful of the fact that any show of conciliation on its part will be seen by Colombo as a sign of weakness and will be used by the ‘war professionals’ to keep pressing the war accelerator.

As I pointed out in my last article, no international effort will be credible or effective without a serious local partner or partners. For maximum leverage of such effort both the government and the LTTE should be willing to be mediated to explore a political solution, but this is unlikely in the immediate term. The task for the moderates is to keep the nucleus of a political solution, which is the APRC, alive and active. Dr. Tissa Vitarana, who has shown monumental patience and endurance on this task, should try to build a strong base of inter-party support in Parliament that will withstand the horse-trading crossovers that are now an unsavoury fact of parliamentary life, and even a future election.

For an inspirational model, he might want to look at the Italian Parliament of the 1970s and 1980s, which was in a similar presidential-parliamentary situation like ours today. Amidst the circus of elections and crossovers, a core group of thinking Italian politicians managed to keep the key portfolios in their hands thereby providing continuity and stability to the economy. Our current parliament is full of “queer animals” (puthuma sathu), as N.M. Perera famously described the government benches after the 1952 elections. But there are also serious minded parliamentarians belonging to all political parties, and they should form an inter-party core group to ensure the survival and continuity of the APRC proposals. Their immediate task is not to break the presidential-parliamentary logjam, but to protect the APRC efforts for a later time.

Related:

- Thamilchelvan and Tamil Politics-I

- Tamil Politics II-The roots of LTTE’s Militarism and Political Culture

- Tamil Politics III: Kinship, caste and the Diaspora in Tamil nationalism

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