Dayan Jayatilleka
There is a contradiction at the heart of the UNF administration’s game-plan. That contradiction may prove to be its undoing, or a powerful contributory factor to that undoing. The problem is that in coming undone, the UNF’s bright boys will take us all down with them, as they almost did in the 1980s. The basic contradiction embedded in the UNF’s approach is that on the one hand, it solicits, expects or hopes for bi-partisan (PA) support in taking the peace process forward: at the least it hopes for unhindered passage from the Presidency and the PA. On the other hand it is worsening its relationship with the self-same Presidency, PA and the Opposition as a whole, by setting a confrontation course.

According to the Sunday Leader, which knows these things, the UNP’s policy-making body decided on July 4th, to impeach the President. The point is patently clear. While there may not be a sufficient number of signatories for the impeachment to be carried (there will almost certainly not be), the very act of placing the impeachment motion on the order paper, which is do-able with a simple majority, will temporarily pre-empt CBK’s option of dissolving the House and going for a general election after December 5th. A second prong of this strategy is the UNF’s possible move to have the House dissolve itself at a moment deemed propitious. All of this is perfectly understandable and might even be smart, if this were a time for — and of — business as usual.

However, with a complex high-risk process on between Colombo and the North-East, it’s quite silly. There is only one person in the galaxy who knows what is going to happen after August 2nd, when the MoU runs out. Only one person who knows, for instance, whether or not the LTTE will go to Thailand, and if it does, how long it’ll stay there. And that person ain’t Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe. It’s Mr. Velupillai Prabhakaran. (I do hope he doesn’t mind me spelling his name the old way, but I’ve been on the case for so long — his paper ‘Viduthalai Pulighal’, that’s ‘Liberation Tiger’, published me in 1981 on the subject of guerrilla warfare — that I can’t kick the habit of the old spelling).

Secession

Much as he deserves a break from the onerous business of secession, Mr. Prabhakaran has not, I fear, remained idle. He set the dominoes falling in the Eastern province, knowing full well that it would generate calls for an entrenchment and reinforcement of the Sri Lankan Army and STF presence in the East — which gives him, in turn, the opportunity to get agitated about the non-fulfilment of the MoU. This can be a casus belli, if he so decides. He has diligently followed this up with demonstrations in Vavuniya (doubtless for starters), calling precisely for the withdrawal of Army from all Govt. buildings and the full implementation of the MoU. In a brilliant judo move of using the opponent’s momentum to throw him, Mr. Prabhakaran is now getting behind the slogan of the MoU and the ‘peace process’ and using it as a stick to beat the Government with. (But then again this may be more a case of the UNF leadership’s folly than Prabhakaran’s perspicacity, because it was that kind of MoU to start with!).

It is against such a backcloth that the impeachment move, the Cold War with the JVP, and the planned slaughter of the sacred cows of the state sector, must be viewed and evaluated. That context makes them dangerously de-stabilising. The impeachment move can freeze CBK’s capacity to pitchfork the UNF into an election. But it worsens relations with the executive Presidency (which even in its dormant state has quite a few constitutional capacities, thanks to JRJ), while enhancing the lady’s threat-perception. And it cannot prevent her from retaliating by means other than calling for a snap election. The only means that would be left open to her by the UNF would be extra-electoral, but not necessarily either extra-constitutional or extra-parliamentary. All she has to do is engage in politico-constitutional guerrilla war, complete with sniping, and planting the odd land-mine, while encouraging the PA’s plebes to get in some good old agitation.

If the LTTE didn’t exist, the UNF leadership could conceivably afford even the worst-case scenario, which is that of the PA and JVP taking it to the streets. But there’s that superb picture of Mr. Prabhakaran in the Sunday Times (July 7), head bowed, eyes wide shut, at the eternal flame lit on Black Tiger Day. He’s meditating on the men and women who died for him, on missions he sent them. They died for him because of the power he wields, a spiritual power. And that spiritual power comes from the nation he represents and has in a sense created or re-created: the Thamil Eelam nation. Not as it is, but as it once was in history, and can be in future history.

This year, thanks to the UNF administration, he was able to celebrate Black Tiger day throughout the North-East, in areas ostensibly controlled by the Sri Lankan state. The Black Tigers are of course the dreaded suicide bombers who murdered several democratic Lankan leaders including an elected President of this country (himself a UNP leader), attempted to slay the incumbent President and barely missed, blinding her in one eye instead, and of course murdered Nehru’s grandson Rajiv Gandhi, not to mention Neelan Tiruchelvam. The Black Tigers, terrorists by even the most liberal yardstick, were openly felicitated in state-controlled areas, thanks to the MoU. I cannot think of any Government in the world that would have been so supine and so utterly devoid of self-respect as to permit the equivalent. With this the Wickremesinghe administration has perhaps transited from a Neville Chamberlain-like policy of appeasement to one of collaborationism a la Marshal Petain’s Vichy regime. Our mass media is hardly better. In a Kafka-esque scene, the MTV’s regular slot One Sri Lanka, part of its news programme, gave itself over entirely to footage of Black Tiger day, with no attempt at objectivity or balance which could easily have been introduced by interviewing a military official (perhaps a retired Army commander), a dissident Tamil spokesman, or an expert analyst like Paul Harris, about the Black Tigers and their history, intercut with video clips of the Rajiv and Premadasa assassinations, etc.

Back to that that Sunday Times photograph. Mr. Prabhakaran does not look like a man who is going to be doing the same thing this time next year. If he continues to celebrate Black Tiger Day with schoolkids in CTB buses and coverage on Colombo TV, then it becomes as cute as a term-end school concert. That may be fine if you are a Sri Lankan politician, but not for this man and his cause. He’s rapidly exhausting what he has to do with the space that has opened out for him. Sure, he can get quite a bit if he accepts an interim administration and runs it for a few years, but he will still be nominally part of — and to him that means under — the Sri Lankan state, with its Sinhala President and Prime Minister, and above all, its Sinhala Army in his land. He stands to actually lose quite a bit too, by accepting an Interim administration and making it work for any length of time. Normality and quiet; the humdrum everyday tasks and rhythms; the constant interface with citizens and civilians with their needs and complaints and limited consciousness; incessant meetings with government officials, NGO’s, assorted UN agencies; the invasions by Sinhala tourists and pilgrims with their carefree and careless ways; exposure to market forces and consumer demand; the soul-killing routine and the paperwork all sap the will to fight for the final goal. And who says that is the final goal? Who knows what greater, more glorious destiny, lies beyond the horizon of Thamil Eelam? Mr. Prabhakaran intends to seize the time.

De-facto Thamil Eelam

Any government that has, at the least, to convince the South to accept a highly visible de-facto Thamil Eelam, and put up with economic hardship as well, should not risk a political confrontation in its ‘rear’, in the Sinhala majority areas. This is more so when the confrontation would be with both the apex i.e., the presidency, and the base — the PA-JVP bloc, trade unions, students etc. Confrontation ‘above’ and ‘below’, with a prospect of conflict on two fronts: the North-East and the South. If I were a UNP politician I wouldn’t want Prabhakaran, Chandrika and Wimal Weerawansa on my case. Not if I’m rational, that is. Don’t give me this line about how smart the UNP elite is. The last time around it dug itself into such a deep pit that the leadership was living under siege, its rank-and file members were placing boards outside their homes declaring their abrupt resignation and many who were murdered could not be accorded decent funeral rites. It wasn’t just the ‘Premadasa policies and programmes’ that saved society that time, it was Premadasa himself ; what he was (a one-man vanguard) and what he represented, symbolised, incarnated (organic, oppressed caste, ‘lower’ class, patriotic-nationalist, man of the people). He quite was singular, unique, can’t be reproduced or even approximated. And please don’t tell me that this UNF leader is smarter than J. R. Jayewardene or Premadasa were. In Harlem they say "if you so smart nigger, then how come you ain’t rich?". If he’s so smart, then how come he ain’t President?