Sunday, 14 August 2011, 5:44

As expected, TNA-Rajapaksa talks collapse – Armageddon inches closer

August 13, 2011, 4:11 pm

by Kumar David

That talks between the TNA and the Rajapaksa government have collapsed is what any sensible person would have foreseen, not just given the stalemate of the last seven months, but also given an understanding of the prior history of the ethnic imbroglio in this country. My consistent position over the last several years has been, not that the Rajapaksa regime would not reach a settlement with the Tamils, but rather, that it could not. It cannot reach a settlement because this regime is intrinsically what it is. I will return to this topic in the second part of this article.

Before sinking into more political theory however I wish to flag an urgent practical question, or at least flag a crisis that will reach perilous proportions in a few months. What is the TNA going to do now? Given that expecting even a half-decent settlement from the Rajapaksa government is about as foolish as waiting for the resurrection of the dead, what on earth is it do, what are its options?

The TNA press release of 4 August 2011 concluded as follows.

"This we regret to state was clearly demonstrative of the lack of a genuine commitment on the part of the Government to the evolution of an acceptable political solution. While attempting to show the world that the Government was engaged in a political process as an integral part of reconciliation, what the Government was really engaged in was no more than a mere facade. It is in these circumstances that the TNA questioned the continuance of such a deceitful process. The TNA has therefore called upon the government to meaningfully define and state the Government’s response to three issues: 1. The structure of governance, 2. The division of subjects and functions between the centre and the devolved units and 3. Fiscal and financial powers, within a period of two weeks, to carry forward any future dialogue."

The glaring omission is that the TNA does not say what it is now going to do! It regrets that the government has demonstrated a lack of commitment and I guess this is what it expected. What is more important, however, is that notwithstanding calling upon the government to do this or that, the Rajapaksa regime is going to do damn-all! Now comes the Greek tragedy; the Tamil people of the North and East have given the TNA a massive mandate to represent them, that is to find a way out of their dreadful melancholy. It cannot go back and say, "We tried hard but the awful government will give nothing; sorry about that". That’s like interruptus, stopping short of the urgent finale.

What now TNA?

The TNA, if it is to live up to its mandate has to go on and say: "Therefore, we will do such and such, and we call upon the Tamil people to do such and such". From 1956 to the middle of the 1970s the Tamils trod a road and now they have sprinted through the same road again, after the end of the war, but arrived at precisely the same crossroads. The TNA dilemma is exactly the same as the LTTE faced in 1983; first a physical shock, then the absolute certainty that the government of the day would do nothing to devolve power or allow Tamils to administer their affairs in their areas of domicile. On that occasion the LTTE made a cardinal blunder and tragically took the wrong fork in the road; it turned its back on the political struggle and prioritised the armed struggle. Whatever his shortcomings Mao had a pithy turn of phrase and catchy epigrams. "Put politics in command", I am sure I have seen somewhere in Little Red phrase book. What the old boy meant, and he was spot-on, was that the total perspective (the political) must take priority over all and any partial pressure and consideration.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune have landed the TNA in the thick of the bramble-bush. It must fight back on behalf of its people; it cannot shirk or shrink from leading a struggle for which the people have given it a mandate; this cup will not pass, as Jesus discovered rather to his cost in the garden of Gethsemane. But fight by what methods? Link with which allies in the South and abroad? And how avoid the frustration and impotency of the FP-Chelvanayakam epoch and shun the folly of senseless LTTE violence and militarization? The Tamils are again with their backs to the wall and the TNA is back to the drawing board. It does not have much time to develop its responses, and more important, it needs to draw a cadre of educated, intelligent and able young men and women into the leadership. The average age of the current leadership is not far short of seventy!

Why Rajapaksa can’t do it

Delhi, Sri Lanka’s liberal democracy and the international community have appealed time and again to give the Tamils some autonomy and recognize their rights as a community. They have advocated devolution, self-administration, and a negotiated settlement with non-LTTE Tamil parties, enough to fill a library shelf, but with what effect? The underlying assumption is that the government, if it so wishes, can do this. That assumption is incorrect.

The mood of the Sinhala-Buddhist mass on which the regime leans for its survival and the balance of power within the government are such that the regime would court disaster if it made concessions to the Tamils. The forces of chauvinism in society are so strong that in the unlikely event GoSL undergoes epiphany and embarks on a deal with the Tamils its stability would be shattered. Rajapaksa, his brothers and his close advisors correctly sense this danger to themselves. Having ridden on the backs of the chauvinists for so long the leadership cabal is not strong enough to betray them now even in the unlikely event it did have a moral awakening.

The crucial point, and this bears much repetition, is that regime will not grant substantial devolution to the Tamils, nor "solve the national question", not because the leadership is cussed and chauvinist (it is, but that’s not the point); the reason is that it cannot make concessions and survive. The Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact on regional councils was torn up in 1958 and the Dudly Senanayake-Chelvanyakam deal buckled in the mid-1960s not because the two premiers were spineless (which they were) but because racist sentiments whipped up on the streets, in society, and in the temple, were too powerful for the government of the day to withstand. It is the malady facing this regime; damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t. Sri Lanka’s naïve liberal community and sections of the international community are novices who don’t get this.

The regime’s core constituency

In countries at the stage of development corresponding to Lanka, the petty-bourgeoisie, that is the petty-bourgeois class, is the most numerous and of course the Sinhalese portion is the largest among ethnic groups. The Sinhalese are 75% of the total population and the Sinhalese petty-bourgeoisie about two-thirds thereof, that is say half the population. There is some confusion in the careless use of the categories middle-class and petty-bourgeoisie interchangeably; there is overlap but the two terms should more appropriately be used to denote different groups. Strictly speaking the middle-class belongs in the modern economy; examples would be those young fellows in starched white shirts in private sector companies, professionals, civil servants and corporate managers.

Culturally, middle-class includes English speakers who blend in with a Westernised outlook. The petty-bourgeoisie is more numerous and dominated by the rural mass who are not wage labourers in a capitalist production process, but self-employed on the land. The petty-bourgeoisie, neither bourgeois nor working class, and not positioned in the modern capitalist economy, includes the self-employed, the informal economy, small traders and the influential clergy in yellow and the native physician and school teacher in white. The term can be used to include or exclude the peasantry, but this should be made clear when writing; in this article I include the landholding peasantry.

The petty-bourgeoisie, even after such careful delineation, is a fairly broad-brush category and social scientists refine it with a finer comb. We do not need to do so for this discourse; but we do need to make one further split between two portions of the petty-bourgeois foundation on which this government stands. There are two distinct components. One is the rural mass, the village folk, the phalanx of SLFP support in the deep-south and other areas. There is also a distinctly different component, ideologically Sinhala-Buddhist and materially middle class-like, deep-set in semi-urban regions such as those encircling Colombo – Maharagama-Kotte, Dehiwala-Ratmalana and Gampaha (the exception is the Catholic belt in, and beyond the north of the city). These two distinct components, the village folk and the Sinhala-Buddhist revivalists, respectively, are the legs on which this government stands.

The government cannot grant any degree of devolution to the Tamils because of the nature of this core constituency. The loyalty of the village mass can, and will split when the urban areas turn against the government; and this seems to be happening in the universities, business classes and even sections of the working class. The Ceylon Tamils always detested Rajapaksa and the Muslims and Upcountry Tamils, though their leaders are in cabinet, will desert when times change. Though village society will divide as the government’s popularity declines, the loyalty of the hard-core Sinhala-Buddhist petty-bourgeoisie is predicated entirely on just one matter – that is whether the government preserves an uncompromising attitude to the Tamils or not. Therefore the odds are, GoSL will remain obdurate; if not ministers like Wimal Weerawansa will be on hunger strike whipping up the mobs, minister Champika’s party will walk out, and some Mahanayakes may call on the faithful to rise. Rajapaksa cannot stand against such forces because this is his heartland.

The Tamil problem will not be resolved for so long as this government remains in power. Perhaps it may run its full six-year term, perhaps it will become unstable before that (take no notice of the two-thirds in parliament, those who have been bought will just as quickly desert if the ship begins to list) or perhaps there will be a change. After that a fresh and more hopeful attempt can, perhaps, be made. Till then it is more constructive to aim at another set of targets; political education, raising public consciousness against narrow nationalism, exposing the primitiveness of chauvinist ideologies and rejecting the ethno-centric state.

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