The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has completely rejected the 13th Amendment as a solution to the Tamil question and gone further to declare that it could not even prove an effective basis for the commencement of talks. In an interview with The Sunday Leader, TNA Parliamentary Group Leader, R. Sampanthan said that the inadequacy was best demonstrated by the many efforts to present acceptable proposals to form the basis for talks undertaken by successive heads of state. He said that the 13th Amendment concept did not emerge from the APRC but was imposed on the APRC by the President. The Trincomalee District MP claimed that the real issue was not Pirapaharan’s insincerity to peace but the failure of successive governments to present devolution proposals that could challenge him and put him to the litmus test. He added that it was an absolute shame that a party like the UPFA entered into an agreement with an organisation like the TMVP to create a false impression that the UPFA was acceptable to the Tamil people. Excerpts:
By Dilrukshi Handunnetti
Q: President Mahinda Rajapakse has declared that the government’s solution to the ethnic conflict will be ‘the 13th Amendment plus one.’ Is this a feasible solution?
A: The 13th Amendment was enacted around 1988. Since then, successive governments in this country during the periods of Presidents R. Premadasa, Chandrika Kumaratunga and even Mahinda Rajapakse, during his two years in office, were dedicated to the task of evolving a set of constitutional proposals to find a solution to the conflict.
That in itself is an admission that the said amendment was not a solution to the conflict taking into account the manner in which the conflict has developed.
We did not contest the provincial council elections after the 13th Amendment. When I say we, I refer to the authentic TULF that comprised Amirthalingam, Sivasithambaram, myself, Neelan Tiruchelvan and several others. Today it is represented by only one person.
We did not contest for a reason. We informed the Indian government that the constitutional amendment was woefully inadequate, not durable and in no way a solution. This was proved subsequently. The new body could not independently deal with agrarian services and regional transport. The Supreme Court held that the powers of the center were adequate for the center to do anything. Even simple things like the two areas I mentioned could not be decided upon by the PCs.
The 13th Amendment is certainly no solution to the Tamil question and cannot even be the basis for the commencement of anything that can move towards a resolution of the conflict. This is proven beyond doubt by the fact that since its introduction, successive presidents have attempted to propose solutions more durable.
Q: In that case, do you think the President is being very hopeful that the affected parties would settle for what he is willing to offer, which now appears to be a solution proposed 20 years ago?
A: The President must remember in the first instance that when appointing the APRC, he also appointed an experts panel comprising 17 persons – 12 Sinhalese, four Tamils and one Muslim to come up with proposals and help the APRC. He did this for the reason that even he recognised that a new set of proposals was required to attempt seeking a resolution to the conflict.
Eleven persons of this committee came up with proposals that went far beyond the 13th Amendment as the contours of a political solution. Everybody knows that the said report could have been a useful basis for the commencement of useful talks at the APRC. Unfortunately, that was consigned to the dustbin. Thereafter, Prof. Tissa Vitharana came up with a new report based on the reports of the majority and minority experts. Even his report went far beyond the 13th Amendment. The discussion at the APRC took place on that basis.
The 13th Amendment concept did not emerge from the APRC. In my view, the President imposed it on the APRC. That is the inevitable conclusion we had to come to.
While some parties at the APRC level strived to develop something of value, certain extreme parties like the JHU and the MEP were having direct contact with the President, independent of the APRC, conveying their apprehensions about the progressive thinking of the APRC.
It is my impression that the President stifled the exercise, frequently summoned the APRC in recent times to inhibit and curb its activities. Perhaps instructions were also issued as to what can and cannot be done, hence the dilution of the process. These directives were also in line with the thinking of the JHU and the MEP.
When the President came under increasing international pressure to come up with a set of acceptable devolution proposals, he looked for a way out and clung to the 13th Amendment as a lifeline.
Q: You mean, he fell back on the 13th Amendment, though never fully implemented, and 20 years old?
A: If he is speaking of this amendment, he should abide by it. What came out from the 13th Amendment was devolution in a merged Northeastern Province. He can’t think of it without accepting the concept of a merged northeast. If he wants to revert to this, then he must revert to the position enunciated by the Indo- Sri Lanka Agreement which was a merged northeast.
That existed for 18 years under Presidents J. R. Jayewardene, R. Premadasa, D. B. Wijetunga and Chandrika Kumaratunga. Mahinda Rajapakse as a minister and as a prime minister also accepted this position while serving Kumaratunga’s governments.
Q: One argument often put forward by southern political parties is that Velupillai Pirapaharan is insincere in negotiating peace. Do you agree? If not why?
A: The litmus test in regard to that would be to come up with a set of proposals that would challenge him. When Rajapakse assumed presidential office, in his ‘Martyr’s Day’ speech, Pirapaharan called Rajapakse a ‘pragmatic person’ and called upon him to come up with proposals that could meet the reasonable aspirations of the Tamil people.
The question is not Pirapaharan’s insincerity but whether President Rajapakse has managed to put on the table a progressive set of proposals thereby issuing a serious challenge to Pirapaharan.
Not just him, no southern government has. If there was, there could be no justification for the continuity of the armed struggle. The Tamil people are overwhelmingly prepared to support such proposals. Then the armed struggle will have to come to an end.
If the P-TOMS agreement was implemented or an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) was set up, things would have evolved. I am aware that the LTTE was very interested in the resettlement of the war and the tsunami displaced. They would never have been able to destroy what they were instrumental in rehabilitating. But that never happened.
I am not saying that everything is right with the LTTE. Nor do I imply that they have not made grave mistakes. They have. But the fact of the matter is that the Sri Lankan state has never come up with progressive proposals that constituted a challenge to Pirapaharan. He was therefore never put to the litmus test of having to either reject or accept proposals designed to meet Tamil aspirations and also acceptable to the country and the international community.
Q: Can the government succeed in its military efforts in your opinion? Is it likely that the government intends catering to Tamil aspirations only after achieving its military objectives?
A: As long as the struggle of the LTTE can be linked to the just demands of the Tamil people which have not been fulfilled, it is my view that the government will not be able to succeed in its efforts to achieve a military victory.
They may weaken the LTTE but there cannot be a military victory in the real sense. The government should not think that a military victory could be a substitute to a reasonable political solution. If the government thinks that a military victory is possible and thereafter they can ram down the throats of Tamils some political solution, they are sadly mistaken. The Tamils will not settle for such.
Q: President Rajapakse recently told newspaper editors that the north was not being cleared to capture territory whereas the military commanders have pledged to remove every trace of a mini state within the north. Do you think these military advances are as simplistic as portrayed by Rajapakse?
A: I have not the slightest doubt that what the President desires is a military victory. This is not because he thinks that a military victory is a solution to the conflict but because he is unable to come up with a political solution to the problem.
He thinks if Tamils are subjugated through military means then a political solution of his choice, acceptable to his extremist allies, could be rammed down the Tamils’ collective throats. It will prove a sad mistake for Tamils are resilient enough to withstand any such pressure.
Q: Is it your contention that the President is unable to pursue a political solution due to being held ‘prisoner’ by extremist allies?
A: There is no question about his status as a political prisoner. He is in bondage. Yet, I do not conclude that he is of the same wavelength as the JHU and the MEP.
But if he was not, the MoU signed with the UNP gave him a glorious opportunity to disengage himself from these political formations and think differently and arrive at consensus with the UNP which would have conferred the necessary two third majority in parliament and provided the required support in the country. He had his opportunity to try what the Conservatives and Labour did with regard to the Northern Ireland question.
He did not pursue the MoU and refused to utilise the golden opportunity to strengthen himself. These factors go against the President and portray him as one in line with his extremist allies.
Q: Amidst the conflict, the economy is badly hit. Is that not a high priority for parties like the TNA?
A: We are certainly concerned about the peoples’ constant suffering. The middle and lower middle classes have it tough. The majority of the masses are greatly suffering and are being impoverished daily.
It is the government that does not seem too concerned about it. They seem to think that if a military victory is possible, all these issues could be neatly swept under the carpet. That shows both the insensitivity and callousness of this administration.
Q: During the recent budget vote, TNA legislators were largely absent. There was the abduction of some MPs’ family members. But by such abstinence, haven’t you also given into terror tactics and therefore paved the way for repeats?
A: It is a very difficult position when close relations of parliamentarians are abducted. They were kidnapped by the TMVP with whom the government has now struck an unholy political alliance to contest in Batticaloa.
When they are threatened with death, a political party is unable to extend its whip to compel those MPs to vote. That was a serious question that affected individual members. We could not be so insensitive to their concerns and feelings.
But we appealed to the government as it was well within the powers of the government to ensure the release of the abducted. It is not that we kept quiet. We raised it in parliament and with the Speaker and the President. But nothing happened because the state was quite unwilling to intervene and enforce the law.
The law enforcement machinery has collapsed. It’s paralysed. It clearly shows that the state can behave in the most unprincipled way in order to ensure their political survival.
Q: You have raised the issue of MPs’ security regularly. Three Tamil legislators have been killed since November 2005, two from the TNA. Following Thyagarajah Maheswaran’s killing, there was a move to enhance parliamentarians’ security. Are TNA legislators now enjoying increased security?
A: Our security has not been enhanced. Our members are naturally concerned and apprehensive about their security vulnerabilities. We had Natarajah Raviraj and Joseph Pararajasingham brutally killed, former on a public highway within a high security zone and the latter inside a church. Maheswaran was killed in a temple. These incidents have a serious impact on other parliamentarians. But what can we do? It is up to the state to make MPs feel secure.
Forget MPs. Take journalists. What happened to the inquiry into Sivaram’s death? He was a brilliant journalist. I raised the matter in parliament and requested international involvement in the investigation. Here, inquiries are conducted in such a manner that even if arrests are made, they will be released subsequently. We have no faith in the law enforcement and inquiring agencies here.
Q: Nominations have been called for selected local bodies in the east. The UNP has already decided not to contest and you were quoted alleging the holding of a poll would prove ’suicidal’ at this point.
A: There is an organisation, the TMVP that is brazenly committed to a gun culture and more so in the east. A number of persons have been abducted; a series of extra judicial killings and extortions too have taken place. These incidents continue. Many have disposed of their vehicles fearing they would be simply taken away. There is so much of fear created that people will not dare oppose these brute forces.
Q: But then there could be a silent protest of not voting?
A: The law enforcement machinery has totally collapsed. If the LTTE had been present in the northeast at one point of time, at least in the government controlled territory, the law enforcement machinery was functional and in force. People relied on it.
So previously, candidates and voters could effectively depend upon the law enforcement agencies. But due to these paramilitary groups, things have drastically changed. There is the law of the jungle. The law enforcement agencies are now hand in glove with these militants, conniving together and condoning their actions.
This is the big difference. That’s why we have decided we would not risk it. Some of our candidates and elected members have been killed during previous local authority elections. We have no wish to expose our candidates and supporters to brute forces. This election is a farce and a joke. Nobody will take it seriously.
When local polls were held previously in Tamil dominant areas the ITAK swept the polls, as did the SLMC in Muslim dominant areas. The same thing will happen in Batticaloa if not for the TMVP.
Q: Won’t that cause your electoral base to erode?
A: No. The TMVP leader went abroad on a diplomatic passport and had a visa issued on the strength of a Foreign Ministry note. He was driven up to the aeroplane in a car along the tarmac. Today, he is cooling his heels in a British detention centre. He reportedly went to attend a conference on climate change sponsored by the JHU minister in this government. It is this man’s deputy who leads the TMVP in Batticaloa today.
The Tamil people have a long history with regard to their democratic processes dating back to 1956. Since then, they have consistently spoken and voted in support of a certain policy. That’s an indisputable fact. Those in the TMVP today were a party to the Oslo Communiqu‚ and to the ISGA proposals. That was the same political thinking that has existed for decades.
Today the TMVP finds a saviour in Mahinda Rajapakse and supports his policies. This is not what the people have voted for over 50 years at a series of elections. Tamil people are aware of this history and this fraudulent election will never erode our voter base or make them change their stance.
Q: But the government claims the east is cleared and simply wishes to complete the exercise by holding elections there?
A: President Rajapakse’ singular purpose is to achieve a military victory. He is under tremendous international pressure to come up with a political solution and finds himself quite out of depth there.
He has sought refuge in the 13th Amendment and knows that he should show that something is being done. He believes that the outside world can be convinced that he is doing his best. In doing what he is doing, he is primarily cheating himself.
Q: It was reported that the UPFA has signed an agreement with the TMVP to contest for the Batticaloa MC under one banner. Isn’t this official recognition of a link between them whilst conferring political legitimacy upon a renegade faction?
A: It’s a shame that the PA which is the main party in government has signed an agreement with an organisation like the TMVP to create a false impression that the PA is acceptable to the Tamil people. It only demonstrates PA’s political bankruptcy and the poverty of its thinking with regard to the Tamil question. They think by such desperate actions, they can win the support of the Tamil people.
Q: The Indian Premier, Manmohan Singh and British Premier, Gordon Brown in a recent joint statement called for a ‘credible devolution package’ as a key contribution to finding a political solution acceptable to all communities within the framework of a united Sri Lanka. Do you think the government is ready to drop the word ‘unitary’ in favour of ‘united’?
A: Obviously not. In my view, three very significant phases in the APRC process should be considered as manifestations of the President’s reluctance.
One was the abandoning of the majority experts’ committee proposals. Second was the abrogation of the MoU between the PA and the UNP. The third, the SLFP’s devolution proposals that contemplated a unitary structure of government with the district as the unit of devolution. They all reflected presidential thinking.
I don’t think the President has accepted that there can be no devolution within a unitary framework. This is one of the fundamental flaws in the 13th Amendment. This is also why the provincial councils could not make progress with regard to even agrarian services and provincial transport. That’s why the Supreme Court ruled that the centre could take whatever action it desired.
Not just the Indian and British Premiers, several other countries, the Co-Chairs, the EU, and the US independently, and India repeatedly, have called upon the President to come up with acceptable proposals within a united framework. Some have used the word ‘federal’ explicitly. But there has been no response to these calls.
This is the crux of the matter. If these proposals were prepared to accommodate these views, that would have been the litmus test to Pirapaharan and the LTTE.
Q: Do you think that India is currently keen to play a decisive role in helping Sri Lanka to end the conflict despite an unhappy previous attempt?
A:India must play a role. India is a country very close to all of us-close to Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims alike. We all came from there.
Unfortunately, India was betrayed by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamils. There may have been mistakes all round. But India also has a responsibility to help resolve this country’s conflict in a reasonable and acceptable manner. India must play that role and all of us must welcome that role.
January 26th, 2008
by Rajan Philips
The candidates are off and running in the year long marathon that will determine the successor to George W. Bush and bring to an unremarkable end his beleaguered presidency of eight years. The 2008 presidential election is expected to be a decisive verdict against the incumbent Republican President, and the Democratic Party has to do something really stupid to lose this one. Even if a Republican victory were to materialize, although highly unlikely as things stand, it will not be because of President Bush but in spite of him. Such is his stock in the land that no Republican candidate is ready to risk the mention of President Bush in the campaign, let alone solicit his involvement.
Bush was a surprising and controversial winner in the 2000 election that was remarkable for the lackluster campaign of the then Vice President and Democratic candidate Al Gore, the Florida fiasco over voting chads, and the intervention of the Supreme Court to pick George Bush as the winner despite his losing the popular vote to Gore. Dismissed as a one term nondescript, President Bush found his moment nine months into his presidency, in the aftermath of 9/11, and transformed himself as a war President, first pummeling Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11 and then invading Iraq without justification. Because of the war he easily won reelection in 2004, without it he would not have lasted beyond the first term. Bush would have also found it uncomplicated and easy to lead America into war than to manage the routine tasks of the world’s most complex administration. It is the same old story whether in the big US or little Lanka-war is elemental and elementally popular, but civil administration and making peace require cerebral stuff.
America is reaping the harvest of what Bush sowed. Afghanistan has flared up again and the fire is spreading to Pakistan, while the war in Iraq has proved every official prediction, including the Presidential declaration of victory, wrong. If the American people were ready to rebuke him just for that, they now have an even more pressing reason to punish their President. “It’s the economy, stupid”. That was Bill Clinton’s rallying message, crafted by his wily strategist, James Carville, for the 1996 election, but there is a difference now. It was then a message of empathy to the swing voters who wanted their President to feel their pain. Now the whole country wants someone to fix its pain.
Election and the economy
And the pain has spread globally causing stock markets to tumble from London to Sydney. America is heading towards a recession if it is not already in one, the pundits say, some of whom have also let out the ‘S’ word-stagflation, the scourge of the 1970s and 1980s. It is the deadly cocktail of economic stagnation and sustained inflation. The Administration is categorically dismissing stagflation warning as scaremongering and insists that the numbers (unemployment rate plus inflation rate) are nowhere as bad as they were in the 1970s. The price of oil was a major factor in the 1970s, while it is being brought down by the current downturn. There are new factors now, both local and global.
The immediate cause of the current crisis is the business of sub-prime mortgage loans in the US, a crisis that illustrates well the market madness and its global reach. The madness of mortgage lending targeted the have-less of American society-a majority of them African Americans, with lending agents inducing vulnerable homeowners to take a second mortgage or a home renovation loan on low start-up interest rates without explaining to them that the interest rates and the monthly payments will increase rapidly after one or two years. In many instances, lenders worked in collusion with corrupt and sometimes phoney building inspectors. The inspectors would first warn vulnerable homeowners that their dwellings were sub-standard and required fixing to avoid penalties, and were followed by lenders with the paperwork to sign up loans. When the mortgagees with fixed and limited incomes invariably fell back on their monthly payments as the interest rates went up, the banks called for foreclosures and the upshot has been a wildfire of diminishing property values, home evacuations and bankruptcies.
Home ownership is central to the “American Dream” and its realization throughout the twentieth century has been the result of America’s vast natural endowments of land and materials, a highly productive home-building technology, and the facility of financial credit as mortgage that home buyers are able to pay off during their working life. Housing construction starts and sales became a strong indicator of the state of the economy. During the housing booms before the depression and after the War, however, many African Americans and poor new immigrants were shut out of this dream because of their low income and lack of creditworthiness. The areas where they lived were notoriously ‘redlined’ (on maps) and disqualified for loans by banks and lenders. In a perversely historical irony, lending institutions have now been targeting low-income African Americans in the sub-prime loans swindle.
[Watching the volatile Sensex, on Mon Jan 21, 2008-Pic Courtesy NYTimes.com]
The global spread of this crisis was caused by the primary lenders repackaging their loans and selling them up as secure investments through the global chain of financial institutions and investors. As the housing loans started going bad in American towns and cities, the ramifications spread up as well causing share prices to fall and credits to be reduced. The traditionally cautious Indians who were lured into playing the Mumbai stock market for quick earnings have become bitter for the experience. The Bush Administration and its free market advisors saw the financial storm brewing but chose to leave the market alone to regularize itself. The logic that the market got screwed in the first place by unscrupulous lenders and needed state intervention, and not just the “hidden hand”, to stop the mess did not obviously appeal to the Administration.
The story would have been different if the crisis had originated in China or India, as indeed was the case during the Sars and Avian Flu pandemics when every relevant international agency was ordered to step in and do some thing. Bush finally acted a week ago when the hemorrhage in America became too serious to be ignored in an election year. However, his stimulus package of $150 billion has been criticized as too little, too late, and his economic performance is causing greater concern than his failure in Iraq. The onset of recession has made the economy more than a partisan issue, and the presidential candidates from both parties are challenged, not just to criticize Bush, but to show how they would lead America out of its difficulties.
The long way to the White House
Bush inherited a prospering economy from President Clinton, although as the Clinton Administration objectively acknowledged, it was (computer) technology more than presidential policy that was the main source of high economic growth and low unemployment, not to mention the hi-tech boom, of the 1990s. Early in the election year of 2000, before the first election of George Bush, technology gurus were confident that the computer revolution had enough steam left in it not to require a great man as President, but only someone who wouldn’t do too much damage. Paul Krugman, the Economist, called it “reassuring thought” given the likely choices at that time.
[President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton at a Campaign stop in Davenport, IA]
Eight years later, it is clear that Bush has belied that reassurance by being damagingly ordinary. He has presided over war-driven increases in debt and deficit, and implemented regressive tax breaks favouring the top 20% of Americans. Bush’s privatization agenda has worsened the problems of social security of aging Americans retiring from the workforce, and aggravated the health care and education concerns of more than half the Americans. By Krugman’s measure, America needs a great President now, and the question then is whether there are any among the aspiring candidates with the potential to be great. The next President, whether great or not, will have a plateful-not only pulling the nation’s economy out of a recession but also pulling its troops out of Iraq, not to mention the long list of priorities at home and the continuing challenge of defining America’s relationship to the ‘globalized’ world.
[Sen. John McCain was held captive in Vietnam-Pics: John McCain.com]
None of the candidates running to succeed George Bush has shown any outstanding potential for greatness, although most of them have greater qualifications than President Bush had when he won the presidency. On the Republican side, the field is still open as to who will be the eventual nominee for the Party, although the signs are that John McCain will win the Republican ticket. A longstanding Senator from the State of Arizona, son and grandson of two Navy Admirals, and a respected Vietnam war veteran, McCain is a socially progressive fiscal conservative and one of his more popular policy planks is his commitment to reform the opaque and corrupt system of financing political campaigns in the US. On the Iraq front, he was initially skeptical about the US going into war without a UN mandate, but he is now opposed to the US pulling out without finishing the job. His main hope and strength in the presidential campaign leading to the election in November will be his capacity to attract independent swing voters and form a winning coalition with the traditional Republican core voters.
The candidates to beat are of course on the Democratic side, with Senators Hillary Clinton (New York) and Barack Hussein Obama (Illinois) being the two clear contenders for the Democratic ticket. Senator Clinton, former First Lady and wife of President Bill Clinton, is eminently qualified to enter the White House in her own right, but having been the front runner for over an year, her campaign suffers from appearing to be a little too choreographed and managed. Senator Obama, on the other hand, is a fresh face on the political stage and capable of oratorical flights that are a fusion of Robert Kennedy’s inspiring idealism and Martin Luther King’s verbal cadences. Obama’s weakness is that his spontaneity comes with the sense of being a little too green and a little too much in a hurry for the big office.
[Barack Obama's Candidacy Announcement, Springfield, IL, Feb 10, 2007]
The zeal and zest to their respective campaigns stem from Hillary Clinton’s gender-as the first woman to have a good shot at the presidency, and Obama’s race-the son of a Kenyan father and white middle-class American mother, and the first man of colour to have an equally good shot. Although both insist that the election is not about race or gender, it has overtones of both and in complex ways. Hillary Clinton was the first choice among African Americans, Hispanics and low-income Americans until Obama entered the fray. Her advantage of having the conjugal support of President Clinton whom many African Americans fondly consider to be the first Black President in American history, is being steadily diluted by the Obama campaign and the fillip it received from the endorsement by the popular African American talk-show hostess, Oprah Winfrey. Hillary has the endorsements of many other African American leaders, especially the Church ministers, although the congregations are leaning towards Obama. Among the Whites, Obama is attracting the support of more educated, young and high-income groups, while Hillary has the backing of the opposing cohorts. Hillary also has the bigger support among the Hispanics, the second largest minority groups after African Americans, and it is the split between these two groups that is the source of new racial tensions.
It is still early days in the long journey to the White House, and the candidates are vigorously campaigning in the primaries to win the nomination of their respective parties. The system of primaries is over hundred years old and was introduced to directly involve the voters in the selection of candidates rather than have them anointed by party bosses. Primaries or variations of them are held in each state to select the delegates who will ultimately vote for the candidate in the Party conventions held in July/August of the election year, three or four months before the main presidential election in November. However, candidates who win the early primaries gain momentum and seal their nomination long before the convention. The Clinton-Obama contest for the nomination is still evenly poised, and may go all the way to the wire at the Democratic Convention in late August, in Denver, Colorado. The last time the contest went to the convention floor was in 1976 when President Ford, the then incumbent, defeated his challenger Ronald Reagan. Ford eventually lost the election to Jimmy Carter, who was in turn defeated by Reagan in 1980. Reagan famously created the so called “Republican Democrats” and their votes ensured his two victories in 1980 and 1984. Barack Obama wants to repeat for the Democratic Party what Reagan did for the Republicans. But the Democratic Party establishment is not amused by his gate crashing what was meant to be Hillary Clinton’s nomination party.
January 26th, 2008
by Izeth Hussain
There have been several obituary tributes paid in the newspapers to the late US Ambassador Jim Spain. This is understandable because Spain chose to spend many years of his retirement in Sri Lanka, showing thereby that he had a real affection for this country and its people, and that certainly has been comforting to many of us who have felt dismayed by Sri Lanka`s rather poor international image. Evidently he was loved by his many friends for his exceptional human qualities. What interests me is that he was also seen as exemplifying the best of America.
In this article I will focus on my official relations with Spain, which suggest that he played a far more important role in the developments leading to the Peace Accords of 1987 than is realized. But first I will make some remarks on him as an emblematic personage, someone who stood for what is decent and wholesome in America, the opposite of the greedy and brutal America that has provoked a visceral anti-Americanism on a global scale.
The latter America can be clearly seen in the American performance over Iraq. It has left over 600,000 Iraqi deaths, possibly over a million, and around 4 million internally and externally displaced persons. Furthermore there is the distinct prospect of Iraq breaking up into three separate countries. All that horror has been visited on the heads of a people who were simply going about their business, without posing a threat to any foreign country, under a dictator who did not have possession of a single weapon of mass destruction. All that represents arguably the greatest crime against humanity ever perpetrated in the entirety of history. The horror of Iraq should be seen in the perspective of all the other horrors perpetrated by the Americans, beginning with the genocide against the Red Indians.
But there is also another America, a civilized one, that made New York the world capital of the visual arts after the Second World War, and created a great literature which included the greatest English-language poet of the second half of the last century, Robert Lowell. The political expression of that America is to be found in the fact that a cardinal place has been given in US foreign relations to democracy and human rights. Certainly there have been hypocrisy and double standards in the pushing of democracy and human rights. But those very precious positives have to be seen as there at the core of America, right from the time of the declaration of independence from Britain, and the Americans seem to really want those positives to provide the moral and civilizational validation to their super-power status. That is why they intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo to save people from their impending genocidal fates. In neither place were US interests-economic, political, strategic-involved to any significant extent.
I come now to Jim Spain in relation to our ethnic problem. As second-in-command in the Foreign Ministry from the beginning of 1986 to late 1988 I interacted often with Spain, his very able second-in-command Ed Marks, and other members of his staff. I also headed talks with several American delegations which came to Colombo during that period. American interest in our ethnic problem at that time was focused almost exclusively on the human rights aspect of the problem-or so it seemed to me. What struck me most was that there was nothing censorious in the American approach to the problem. Instead, there seemed to be an understanding that armed forces without a tradition of dealing with conflict situations could find it difficult to avoid excesses. The impression was given of American goodwill and an underlying willingness to help us. All that could have been influenced by the role played as Ambassador by Jim Spain.
But I was mistaken in my initial impression that the American interest was focused almost entirely on the human rights aspect of the ethnic problem, with everything else tangential to that aspect. I began to suspect after some time that the centre of American interest was really elsewhere because of Spain’s constant reiteration to me that his Government did not want Trinco, meaning that it was not interested in having a base in Trincomalee. Other members of his staff also used to exclaim, “We don’t want Trinco.” I needed no persuasion on that point because it always seemed to me a ridiculous expectation that we could give the US a base in Trinco and then ask the Indians to go to hell. I always believed that India would be prepared to occupy Sri Lanka militarily and fight a war to prevent any other country establishing a base in Trinco. But evidently illusions about the potential usefulness of Trinco as a counter against India persisted at the top decision-making levels of the SL Government, and the Americans were deeply concerned about it. I also came to form the impression that the Americans had at one time fostered that illusion and came to feel remorseful about having wrecked Sri Lanka’s relations with India as a consequence.
My argument will make sense if it is seen in the perspective of developments in Afghanistan since the late `seventies. After having installed a communist regime in Kabul, the Soviet Union thought it necessary in 1979 to send in its troops to bolster its puppet regime. Archival material released since the collapse of the Soviet Union shows that its enterprise in Afghanistan was really of a defensive order, since it was motivated by anxieties that the US and the West would shortly use Islamic fundamentalism to destabilize the Central Asian Republics. But no one believed it at that time, apart from the Soviet satellites and India. The rest of the world saw the Soviet Union as engaging in aggressive expansionism. The US and Pakistan were on one side, the Soviet Union and India on the other, and South Asia had become an area of great power rivalry as never before. It was at that moment that the then SL Government chose to get closer and closer to the US, inevitably rousing dangerous anxieties in India. The virtual support of India for the LTTE over many years has to be seen in that context.
It should be understandable-given the fact of great power rivalry as never before in South Asia-that the US could have wanted to foster the illusion that Trinco could be made a trump-card against India with the help of the US. But in the course of the `eighties it became more and more apparent that it was only a matter of time before the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. By 1985 there were clear signs of a US-Indian rapprochement taking place. There was no longer any prospect of using Trinco as a trump-card against India. But evidently foolish illusions on that point persisted among the top decision makers in Colombo. It was a situation in which the US could help-more perhaps than any other power-in bringing about an Indo-Sri Lanka rapprochement.
On the day of the air-drop in 1987 a clear sign was given that the US role over the ethnic problem was much more than that of a benign onlooker with not much more than a perfunctory interest in trying to ensure that human rights were respected. I am now going into oral history as it does not seem that the information I have has ever appeared in print up to now. On that morning Jim Spain sought a meeting with the Foreign Minister as he had to convey a very urgent message from his Government. My recollection is that the message consisted of three points. Firstly, the US Government believed that in turning back the Indian flotilla bearing food the Sri Lankan Government had missed an excellent opportunity of defusing an extremely dangerous situation. The second point was that on that day India was going to do something that would be extremely upsetting to Sri Lanka. The third point was that it was crucially important for the Sri Lankan side not to over-react in any way.
On the face of it, all that was happening was that the CIA had got hold of information about the forthcoming air-drop and the US Government was alerting us about it. But there was much more than that in the message. In saying that the Sri Lankan Government had missed an excellent opportunity of defusing a very dangerous situation, the US was conveying to us that international sympathies were not with Sri Lanka. In asking us not to over-react the US Government was playing an active role and trying to influence the course of events. It seems reasonable to think that the US was privy to a game-plan that was unfolding, which had its approval, and that it’s Ambassador was serving as the virtual emissary of the Indian Government.
Suddenly the diplomatic corps in Colombo was abuzz with rumors that an Indo-Sri Lanka agreement on the ethnic problem was about to be signed. The abrupt transition from warlike hostility to the friendliness implied by an agreement on a contentious problem was certainly very surprising. I told the then Foreign Secretary, W. T. Jayasinghe, that almost certainly a third party was involved acting as a catalyst to bring the two warring sides together. He was present at the signing ceremony and told me next morning that my guess was correct. Just after the signing of the documents was over, and the formal speeches were made, Jim Spain handed over an envelope to Rajiv Gandhi. Obviously it was a congratulatory and goodwill message from President Reagan. Clearly the contents of the agreement were already known to the US Government.
Dixit in his book Assignment Colombo says that just after the signing and the speeches Spain requested to be taken to Rajiv Gandhi so as to hand over the message from Reagan. He adds that it was obvious that despite the confidential nature of the Agreement President Jayewardene had conveyed its contents to the US Government through Spain. However, it is also obvious that the US Government saw no reason for clandestinity over its interest in the Agreement. Dixit brings out the curious detail that Spain had been instructed to hand over the message if possible even before the signing of the Agreement. I believe that the US was signaling to the international community that the Agreement, so far from representing a set-back for US diplomacy, was a triumph and that the Agreement had its full and enthusiastic support.
There are some lessons to be learnt from that phase of our ethnic problem. The Indian side in the diplomatic encounters had a high degree of Foreign Service expertise, the Sri Lankan side none whatever, except for a very brief period when Foreign Minister Hameed was brought into the picture prior to the air-drop. As long as prominence is given in our diplomacy to absurd figures like the then President’s son and even worse, his Private Secretary, Sri Lanka can expect to be worsted at practically every adversarial diplomatic encounter in the future. The second lesson is that the US had decided in the aftermath of the Soviet failure in Afghanistan that India was to be the South Asian regional great power in a new world order replacing the one initiated at San Francisco in 1945.
But what interests me most in this article which focuses on the US role in 1987 is the major reason behind the failure of the Peace Accords and the IPKF intervention. It can be seen as a specifically American type of failure. That superlative pragmatist and wise old statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, wrote in the second volume of his memoirs, “Many American leaders believed that racial, religious, and linguistic hatreds, rivalries, hostilities, and feuds down the millennia could be solved if sufficient resources were expended on them.” President Jayewardene, our Indian and American friends, all, all of them meant well, but they did not take sufficiently into account the horrible complexity of the ethnic factor. One who did so was a Tamil, Venkateswaran, the former Foreign Secretary who was removed from his post by Rajiv Gandhi. After the signing of the Agreement he remarked, “It will blow up in our faces.”
January 26th, 2008