It was just last Friday that the morning newspapers published General Fonseka’s ten point election manifesto. However, before midnight on the same day the Fonseka camp had violated the first two pledges in their own manifesto in the most embarrassingly obvious manner in front of the whole nation. The very first pledge in the Fonseka manifesto relates to ‘Restoring democracy and winning the peace’. Under this section, a matter which has been given the same priority as the abolition of the executive presidency is the freedom of information. Fonseka’s manifesto says that within one month of being elected president, a cabinet paper for a Freedom of Information Act will be placed before the cabinet. The second pledge on Fonseka’s manifesto relates to eradicating corruption. The whole of the last week, Swarnavahini had been advertising a debate on Friday night between the government and the joint opposition on the question whether Sarath Fonseka in his days as the army commander was responsible for any crooked arms deals as was alleged by the government or not.

Instead of a debate what we saw on Friday night on Swarnavahini was something unprecedented in TV broadcasting since J.R.Jayewardene introduced television to Sri Lanka. For nearly two hours, the opposition representative Dayasiri Jayasekera ran round and round in circles, refusing to debate the point he had come to debate. Dayasiri Jayasekera filibustered and left, without debating anything. Minister Rajitha Senaratne who represented the government repeatedly kept saying that the opposition had tried to prevent the debate from being held at all on the pretext that the matter was before courts, and that the opposition had sent a lawyer to Swarnavahini to stress the point. Jayasekera did not deny this and neither did the Swarnavahini moderator. The fact that the joint opposition tried to prevent the debate from taking place at all by raising legalistic objections and when that failed, filibustering and refusing to debate the issue is a damning indictment. Thus the joint opposition has ended up blatantly violating the right of the public to information and seriously compromised their own anti-corruption credentials.

If the opposition was able to meet the arguments of the government on the HICORP issue, they would have sent their best debaters and finished off the government. Though the opposition filibustered and made a mighty mess of it last Friday, the Swarnavahini offer to host the debate still stands and there is still the opportunity to salvage things. Perhaps the only way to do it is for the opposition to send a retired military officer who knows the ins and outs of military purchases and Dayasiri Jayasekera to hammer home the political arguments. The joint opposition appears to have approached this crucial TV debate in a rather flatfooted manner. An unexpected turn of events was that the JVP ducked the debate and left Dayasiri to fend for himself.

Govt. ‘psy ops’

A day or two before this much touted debate, on Wednesday or Thursday last week, a two page document appeared in the newsrooms of various media organizations including ours. One page of this document contained the booking manifest for a party of Sri Lankans at the Fujitsu Royal Hotel in Beijing for Rooms No: 1620, 1630, 1620A, 1618, 1519, 1521, 1626, and 1628. The other page contained an itinerary for a party of Sri Lankans hosted by a Chinese company called NORINCO. This company’s line of business was not disclosed in the documents. The party hosted by this company included a VVIP, his wife, his two daughters and son in law. There was also a major general and his wife, one Brigadier, two Lt Colonels, one Captain and one Lieutenant. The NORINCO itinerary covered seven days from 11th May to the 17th May 2009 - the last days of the war in Sri Lanka. (Prabhakaran was found dead on the morning of the 18th May 2009.)

This document can unnerve anybody and having been sent around to media organizations, the chances are that Dayasiri Jayasekra and the JVP had also seen this before the debate, which is why they backed out. The visit by this party of Sri Lankans appears to have been sponsored by a business establishment called NORINCO and not by the Chinese government. After the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation ‘hedging deal’ controversy, such all expenses paid family trips for high ranking government employees, sponsored by business houses is looked upon with great suspicion in this country. When the parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises met to discuss the Petroleum Corporation last year, all the members of COPE were in attendance, and under the persistent questioning of the MPs present, some officials of the CPC had admitted that they went on foreign trips with their families at the expense of certain banks. This is what the hedging deal is all about. (The supreme irony is that the first item in the list of corrupt deals of the government prepared by the opposition is the CPC hedging deal which so closely resembles this NORINCO affair!)

The evidence of such a sponsored family trip alone is sufficient to skew any debate quite apart from any actual corruption. Even last year’s COPE report has taken ‘the prosecution rests its case’ kind of attitude at the admission made by Ceylon Petroleum Corporation officials that they had accepted full expenses paid trips from companies they did business with. This could well be the reason why the JVP made itself scarce last Friday. An additional factor which the JVP specially, would have been profoundly embarrassed about would have been the fact that according to the NORINCO itinerary, senior Army officers and their families had been sightseeing in China, visiting tourist attractions like the great wall, the forbidden city, the Olympic park in between visits to the production facilities of the sponsoring company. All this was during the concluding days of Sri Lanka’s three decade long war against terrorism when Tamil hostages were being dramatically freed and soldiers were dying by the droves in trying to flush out the last terrorists left. There is no spin doctor in the world who can explain away the contents of those two pages. It will be interesting to see in the coming days, how the opposition responds to the standing invitation for the debate on the HICORP controversy on Swarnavahini.

TNA’s support

An important political event that took place last week was that the Tamil National Alliance announced their support for General Sarath Fonseka ending weeks of intra-party debate and argument. On the day before TNA leader R.Sambandan announced the party’s support for Sarath Fonseka, there was a crucial meeting of the party which was attended by 18 of the 22 TNA parliamentarians. Four parliamentarians were absent. When the final vote was taken, of the eighteen present, the following ten parliamentarians voted to support Sarath Fonseka - R.Sambandan, Mavai Senathirajah, Suresh Premachandran, K.Thureiratnasingham, Sivashakthi Anandan, R.M.Imam, Tangeshwari Kathiraman, Solomon Cyril, T.T.William and P.Ariyanethiran. What had happened during the 72 hours prior to this meeting was that national list MP R.M.Imam had finally made up his mind and joined Sambandan and the last four MPs who had earlier been of the opinion that the election should be boycotted altogether had joined the Sambandan camp.

Eight MPs present voted against supporting Fonseka – M.K.Sivajilingam, Vino Noharathalingm, P.Sittamparanathan, Sivanathan Kishor, Selvarajah Kajendran, N.Srikantha, Selvam Adaikalanathan and Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam. The last mentioned had in fact already announced a boycott of the election, but the agreement within the TNA was that everybody would stick by the majority decision and Ponnambalam was seen among the MPs present at the TNA press briefing which announced its support for Fonseka, as was Adaikalanathan who had also voted against the decision. They did not however make any comments to the press. Four MPs were absent on the day the vote was taken. Of those absent, T.Kanagasabai who is overseas had declared in Fonseka’s favour, S.Jeyanandamoorthy who is also overseas had spoken to the members present over the phone and his view had been that neither Mahinda nor Fonseka should be supported. C.Chandranehru had not communicated his views and S.Kanagaratnam is still in custody. Hence one can say that the TNA is split right down the middle with 11 of the 22 MPs supporting Fonseka, and the other eleven holding other views.

On the day that the TNA leader expressed his party’s support for Fonseka, a rumour flew around Colombo that TELO parliamentarian M.K.Sivajilingam had withdrawn his presidential candidacy. This proved to be false. He has handed in nominations and will contest the election. One thing that has worked in favor of Sivajilingam is that Velupillai Prabhakaran’s father T.Velupillai died at a ripe old age with just two weeks to go for the election. For Sivajilingam this is like winning a sweep ticket. As we explained earlier in this column, he is a Karaiyar from Velvettiturai and a kinsman of Prabhakaran. As the only member of the extended family still left in public life, he will naturally play a major role in the funeral obsequies for Prabhakaran’s father and if he handles it well, that alone will be his election campaign. Indeed for the whole TELO organization this is a god- given opportunity to rise and shine and to consolidate their foothold in the north. Any politician in the south would gladly give an arm or a leg for such an opportunity at election time!

TNA’s conditions

What was noticeable was that those who were in the original group in favour of boycotting the election, were not willing to make any comment on the TNA stand to the public. Selvarajah Kajendran declined to make any comment at all. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam was unreachable. The present columnist spoke to Selvam Adaikalanathan, the TELO parliamentarian who was not in the boycott camp but in support of the Tamil candidate Sivajilingam. When the vote was taken, on Wednesday, Adaikalanathan was one of the eight who voted against the decision to support Fonseka. Now that the majority had decided, Adaikalanathan holds that he stands by the majority decision. According to Adaikalanathan, there is no written agreement as such between the TNA and General Fonseka, but there is an ‘understanding’. The main components of this understanding relate to: 1. Dismantling the high security zones. 2. Resettling people and restoring them to their original condition. 3. Lands belonging to Tamils and Muslims should not be given to anybody else. 4. Releasing political prisoners with no evidence against them. 5. The ethnic problem should be solved through dialogue.

It is with regard to this last point that controversy has erupted with the government making various allegations. When I asked parliamentarian Adaikalanathan what exactly was discussed under the last heading, what he said was that that the last topic would be discussed only after the election. When told that when the JVP and the JHU arrived at an understanding with Mahinda Rajapakse in 2005, they had written agreements and asked how it was that the TNA trusted Fonseka to such an extent that they have decided to support him without a written agreement, Adaikalanathan’s answer was that written agreements are useless anyway and that what they have with Fonseka is only an understanding. Asked what they would do if Fonseka did not fulfill his pledges, Adaikalanatahn said that they would openly go against him and tell the people that he has reneged on his promises.

There seems to be a profound need on the part of those like Adaikalanatahn and even Kumar Ponnambalam to see that the unity of the TNA remains intact. This makes sense because the TNA no longer has a monopoly of the northern voter in the absence of the LTTE and the people no longer vote on command. If we go by the results of the last local government elections in Jaffna and Vavuniya, the TNA may be deemed to now control only around 40% of the electorate in the Northern Province. If the TNA splits, then their influence will wane further with the splinter groups being unable to compete with other organizations in the north and east, like the EPDP, PLOTE and the TMVP. If the TNA remains united, there is at least the chance of being able to win up to ten seats in the north and east and still emerge as the biggest single Tamil political party. One notices that among those most interested in maintaining unity even against their own conscience, are MPs like Ponnambalam and Adaikalanathan who stand a good chance of re-election even in the more competitive post-LTTE scenario. In 2004, Ponnambalam came third in Jaffna and Adaikalanathan came first in the Vanni. They need the TNA to remain intact to get back into parliament and to wield influence.

Receiving TNA support cuts both ways. On the one hand, it will bring in a proportion of the northern and eastern Tamil vote. With the TNA support coming in, there were immediate dividends for the Fonseka camp. One of the reasons that obviously motivated the defection of the Batticaloa Mayor Sivageetha Prabhakaran to Fonseka’s side a day after the TNA announced their decision could be because three of the four Tamil MPs from the Batticaloa district have declared in favour of Fonseka. Ms Prabhakaran contested the Batticaloa mayoralty through the TMVP and later joined the SLFP. The SLFP is not really a force to reckon with in the east and without either TMVP or TNA/UNP support, she may not have been able to get re-elected mayor at the next local government elections which were due this year but have been postponed because of the presidential and parliamentary elections. These are among the dividends accruing from TNA support.

But when the government starts screaming that the ‘LTTE proxies’ in parliament have pledged their support to Fonseka, and that there is a ‘koti’ line emanating from the LTTE diaspora running within the joint opposition campaign, that is going to cause some trepidation among his potential voters in the south. The government claims that the TNA has come to an understanding with the General on matters which includes the merger of the north and east and the reduction of the military presence in the north. When the present writer asked Adaikalanathan whether the understanding with the General included a reduction in the military presence in the north, he answered in the negative saying that they had not discussed any such thing. However, the grounds on which the government makes this claim is because R.Sambanthan had presented the same conditions to the president. The meeting which was attended by Sambandan and Mavai Senathirajah was reported in this column.

What adds credence to these claims of the government is that Sarath Nanda Silva, the former chief justice and the man widely believed to be the main aspirant to the position of ‘non-political’ prime ministerial candidate was reported in a newspaper last Sunday, hinting at a ‘rethink’ of the north east demerger. It was Silva himself as chief justice who de-merged the north and east, and it appears that with him as a prime ministerial aspirant, the TNA may have wanted some reassurance that there would be some flexibility in this regard. We asked Adaikalanathan whether the TNA has received any pledge from Fonseka on the north east merger. He answered in the negative saying that no such thing has been discussed. But when asked what position the TNA holds on the merger, his answer was that the NE merger was one of the main demands of the TNA and the Tamil people. The question is whether the people will believe that the TNA has jettisoned this main demand while deciding to support General Fonseka.

Another defection that took place last week was that of veteran Tamil politician M.S.Sellasamy from the government to Fonseka’s side. In terms of sheer numbers the defections have been going against the government. In substance however, it’s another story. Sellasamy is a Colombo based politician and the last time he won a parliamentary election was two decades ago in 1989. He is now a national list UNP parliamentarian on the recommendation of the Ceylon Workers Congress. As he is 83 years old today, there is not a snowflake’s chance in hell of him being appointed on the national list through the UPFA. It is also highly unlikely that the CWC would ever recommend him for a national list slot in any party – and indeed they would have to be insane to do so. All the three CWC stalwarts who joined the Fonseka camp in recent days were on their way out anyway. The story is that both the previous two defectors, R.Yogarajan and M.Sachithananthan have been promised UNP national list slots. We pointed out last week that Sachithananthan cannot win in the Badulla district, and Yogarajan has never won a parliamentary election in his life, and any Tamil votes he may have are already in the UNP with Mano Ganesan. What will really take the cake will be if Sellasamy too has been promised a national list slot as all three seats will be wasted!

Blueprint for chaos

Coming back to the ten point election manifesto of the joint opposition candidate, published in the newspapers last Friday, there was a point which has to be noted especially by the English reading public. Those who read English newspapers are still the people who make decisions, control resources, run businesses and generate employment in the country. After the ending of terrorism, the stock market has been experiencing an unprecedented boom, with the All Share Price Index topping 3,500. Foreign reserves are higher than it has ever been in post independence history. Prospects are looking brighter than ever before. Irresponsible acts or even a statement of a main presidential candidate can disrupt everything and plunge this country into chaos and in this context, there is a major problem in Fonseka’s ten point plan. The pledge to increase the salaries of government servants to Rs 10,000 is a cornerstone of the Fonseka campaign and this is mentioned on the election platform by the General himself everywhere he goes. This pledge is also mentioned as item number three in the ten point manifesto.

To the cynical, this would appear to be another election promise like Mrs Bandaranike’s ‘rice from the moon’ in 1970 and the ‘Eta ata’ pledge of J.R.Jayewardene in 1977. But this is not the UNP or the SLFP. This is a hotch potch of political parties where the JVP is a dominant component. One of General Fonseka’s main campaign arguments is that he delivers on what he promises and the people actually expect him to follow up on this promise in particular. Besides, the General’s campaign is being conducted by the JVP which has to deliver this promise of a Rs 10,000 raise if it is to survive politically. So unlike earlier pledges of this nature, the Fonseka camp will have to take steps to implement this pledge at least in part if elected to power. The most dangerous thing is that this pledge of a salary increase is made parallel to the opposition campaign on the cost of living and the high tax burden. The opposition’s election advertisments on the tax burden refers to taxes on fuel, gas, mobile phones and telecommunications in general. What all this has created is an explosive situation where if elected to power, General Fonseka’s camp will have to increase salaries while reducing taxes.

Increasing government salaries across the board by Rs 10,000 or even half that, is a pipe dream even without a reduction in taxes. When combined with a reduction in taxes, which reduces government revenue, it becomes an impossibility. Even if the government manages to pull it off and pay all its employees Rs 10,000 more, the majority of the workforce is in the private sector and their salaries too will have to be increased. I can almost hear the Employer’s Federation big wigs chewing their own backsides in anguish. Most private sector employers cannot manage any wage increase at all. The whole world is only just recovering from the worst financial crisis since the great depression of 1929. It is in such a context that these reckless promises are being made in order to win votes. For most employers, wage increases of a few hundred rupees is an issue as we saw in the estate workers wage negotiations recently. If a government is elected to power with the pledge of a Rs 10,000 increase in salaries, that is going to plunge the country into chaos. An increase in salaries entails increases in EPF and ETF payments as well. Employers will be driven into bankruptcy. When the promises fail to materialize strikes will paralyze the whole nation.