A progeny of Mahinda Chintana, the Lankaputhra Bank, will be bailed out by the Treasury to the tune of Rs. 400 million, to make up for the (irrecoverable) loan it gave to another Mahinda Chintana progeny, Mihin Air. That transaction is symptomatic of the financial thinking and praxis of the Rajapakse administration. But the government is not the sole culprit. The Auditor General is on record expressing his dissatisfaction with the parliament for failing to act on his 2007 Report which criticised several major institutions including the Finance Ministry and the Armed Forces for malpractices. (According to an Island report, the parliament is busy seeking prime real estate to build ‘a state of the art’ housing complex – for parliamentarians).

Under the Rajapakses, there is a steady erosion of the line of demarcation between the state and the ruling family; consequently dumping scarce public funds into the financial black hole that is Mihin Air, simply because it is the President’s brainchild and bears his name, is in no way remarkable. Equally unremarkable is the resounding silence of the gargantuan cabinet. But the inability of the Opposition (particularly the UNP and the JVP) to deal with these wanton abuses, even after they have been detailed by the Auditor General in an official report, is inexplicable and unforgivable. Even the COPE, which had an ‘hour of glorious life’ under the able chairmanship of Wijedasa Rajapakse, has degenerated into silence.

Denial is the leitmotiv of Rajapakse Rule. Sri Lanka is compelled to seek IMF assistance because the regime ignored the signs of a financial scissors crisis, and spent lavishly money it did not have (Mihin Air was and is a noted guzzler). When reputed international organisations warned about the dangers ahead, the Governor of the Central Bank, instead of lending an ear, resorted to verbal fisticuffs. Until recently the government was boasting of the miraculous properties of Mahinda Chintana which made Sri Lanka immune to the global financial plague. Today the same regime has gone back to the IMF in the guise of a supplicant, while telling the public that the IMF offered a loan, unconditionally. It is almost as if the government believes, and wants us to believe, that Sri Lanka is taking an IMF loan, as a favour to the IMF.

Non sequiturs

Where does propaganda end and delusion begin? Take the antithetical reports by the Presidential Secretariat and the US State Department of the first telephone conversation between President Rajapakse and Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton. According to the state department Ms. Clinton called to express ‘deep concern over the deteriorating conditions and increasing loss of life’ in the war zone; she stated ‘that the Sri Lankan Army should not fire into the civilian areas of the conflict zone’, called for a ‘political solution to the ongoing conflict’ and urged Colombo ‘to give international humanitarian relief organisations full access to the conflict area and displaced persons camps, including screening centres’. But according to Presidential Secretariat the conversation was just ‘warm and cordial’; Ms. Clinton ‘appreciated the assurances given by Secretary Defence that civilians should not be subjected to any attacks by the military’ and ‘acknowledged that Sri Lanka is now on the verge of defeating terrorism, and that this presented a great opportunity to restore peace, leading to reconstruction and rehabilitating of the country’. Must propaganda be this puerile?

"Children and their families caught in the conflict zone are at risk of dying from disease and malnutrition" according to a statement by UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman (BBC – 18.3.2009). The casus belli of the current politico-propaganda offensive against Sri Lanka is this worsening plight of the trapped civilians. With no civilians dying in the crossfire, and of hunger and sickness, there will be no outcry in Tamilnadu, or EU resolutions. The UN Human Rights Commissioner would not be talking about war crimes and the world will permit Sri Lanka and the LTTE to fight it out any which way they can. Indian and international concern will be on the conditions of the displaced, the needs of reconstruction and the shape of a political solution.

So what is the government doing to deprive the Tigers’ of this monstrous advantage? According to ‘The Hindu’ Sri Lanka has refused offers by India and the US to help evacuate the trapped civilians, as stated by Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama to the visiting British Shadow Secretary Liam Fox. Why? Mr. Bogollagama "cited the LTTE’s fierce resistance in releasing the people as the reason for the inability of his government to consider the offers" (The Hindu – 16.3.2009). The government turning down international offers of help because it believes the LTTE would not cooperate - does that make sense? Wouldn’t it have been better and smarter to accede to international requests, leaving it to the Tigers to either accept or turn down the US or India or the UN? At the least the Tamils and the international community would have known that the Lankan state went the extra mile to save the trapped civilians.

Sakvithi Ranasinghe and Lalith Kotelawala are both accused of the same crime; but Lalith Kotelawala’s conduct is more outrageous, precisely because he is Lalith Kotelawala, honour-bound to act differently from the Sakvithi Ranasinghes of this world. The Lankan state, precisely because it is a legitimate and a democratic entity, cannot use the crimes of the Tigers to justify its own sins of omission and commission. According to the website, Transcurrents, the number of civilian casualties in Pothumaththalan hospital in the first 10 days of March was 964, with 95% of them coming from ‘safe areas’. But as far as the government is concerned there are no civilian casualties, other than the ones caused by the LTTE. Is it logical to claim that the only danger faced by the trapped civilians is being conscripted, injured or killed by the Tigers? Is it reasonable to aver that the civilians are not plagued by hunger and sickness or killed and injured by our shelling?

Denial did not make the economic crisis go away. Denial cannot resolve the humanitarian crisis in the Vanni either. When people (especially children) continue to die in increasing numbers, the government which denies this tragedy begins to look as heartless as the LTTE that is holding them hostage. The only way out is to publicly accept some international offer of help, thus placing the ball in the LTTE’s court. Instead some Rajapakse allies are accusing the UN of conspiring against Sri Lanka and threatening to surround UN offices. What is the root cause of this suicidal extremism which prevents Sri Lanka from doing the decent, rational and wise thing? Why is Sri Lanka so manifestly unable to translate her military victories into political successes?

Tigers and Tamils

From Indo-Lanka Accord onwards, the LTTE has been the main impediment to a negotiated peace and a political solution to the ethnic problem; had Mr. Pirapaharan been a little less intransigent, the war could have ended if not in 1987, definitely in 1989 or 1994 or 2002. The other impediment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, Sinhala supremacism, was not dominant within the polity or society during this period and it was Tiger maximalism which kept the country and the Tamils locked in a war benefiting neither.

Today, though the LTTE is being trounced militarily, Sinhala supremacism is in ascendance within the state and society. Sinhala supremacists do not distinguish between Tigers, Tamil separatists or Tamil nationalists, any more than they make a distinction between separate, federal or quasi-federal. For them any departure from the unitary state is akin to separation. When it comes to a political solution they are as intransigent and as maximalist as the Tigers. They want to defeat the LTTE without making any concessions to the Tamils and with no quarters given to the civilians caught in the middle; they also see a diabolical conspiracy in any expression of international concern about the Lankan conflict (Sinhala supremacists have their own version of Huntington’s ‘Clash of civilisation’ theory and a rendition of history premised on it). They believe that peace can come only after Tamils have learnt their place in a Sinhala ruled Sri Lanka. These ideas are being articulated not by political delinquents on the lunatic fringe but by powerful personages and influential entities such as the Army Commander and the JHU.

A failure to understand the difference between the Tigers and non-Tiger Tamil separatists would lead to the monumental error of responding to them identically rather than differently. The Tigers must be defeated militarily (because Vellupillai Pirapaharan will not settle for nothing but jure Eelam) while non-Tiger Tamil separatists have to be neutralised politically and Tamil nationalists who do not subscribe to separatism accommodated with a generous political solution to the ethnic problem. The absence of such a nuanced approach will weaken non-separatist Tamil nationalists who want to live in a united Sri Lanka and strengthen the separatists of every variety.

Sinhala supremacists believe that since all Tigers are Tamil separatists and all Tamil separatists are Tamil nationalists, the obverse is also true - that all Tamil nationalists are Tamil separatists and all Tamil separatists are Tigers. This fallacy is the root cause of the regime’s indifference to the fate of the civilian Tamils caught in the war zone and its determination to incarcerate displaced Tamils in ‘camps’ for an indefinite period of time. Does this fallacy also play a role in the arbitrary manner in which the regime deals with media personnel accused of being ‘Tiger supporters’? When a journalist from Australia’s SBC TV asked about the purported arrest of Sudar Oli editor, N Vidyadaran, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse responded with an (now increasingly characteristic) outburst: "He is involved in the recent air attacks. I’m telling you if you try to give a cover up for that person you have the blood in your hands… He is a terrorist. He is responsible for coordinating air attacks in Colombo. He is a terrorist. We have arrested him and it is the right thing to do. We will take legal action against him" (Hunting the Tigers – Dateline).

Arresting Mr. Vidyatharan legally and taking legal action against him are unexceptionable; what was exceptionable was the manner of his arrest; that he was forcibly taken away in a white van and initially even the police denied arresting him. Such methods are both wrong and counterproductive, but perhaps inevitable, if the regime (or those within it with real power) fails to differentiate between Tigers, Tamil separatists or Tamil nationalists, lump all under the category ‘terrorist’.