Published On: Wed, Oct 12th, 2011

| By elamaran

“Those who seek power at any price detect a societal weakness, a fear they can ride….” Carl Sagan (The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)

Last week President Mahinda Rajapaksa came up with a new conspiracy narrative. Some analysts believe in the existence of a ‘conspiracy meme’ in the psychological make-up of humans – a hypothesis history seems to validate. In any case, conspiracies are ‘must haves’ for anti-democratic rulers.

They provide powerful rallying-cries, unfailing excuses/justifications and enough ingredients for the creation of the witch’s brew that is mass-phobia. An astute ruler can use the tools at his/her command to conjure up threats and to persuade a sufficient number of people to succumb to belief and surrender to fear.

The latest conspiracy tale, according to President Rajapaksa, consists of “an attempt to create religious and ethnic unrest in the country

Rajapaksa warned his cabinet of the “plot” to create unrest in the country….” (PTI – 7.10.2011). According to the Government Spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella, “President shared this intelligence information with his cabinet to make those appropriate aware in order for them to take preventive action…… The President wanted the cabinet to be aware of this plot…..ahead of Saturday”s local council election for 23 councils, including the capital Colombo’s municipality” (ibid).

The Government Spokesman’s pronouncement was raddled with fear-mongering innuendo but rather short in detail. The only details Minister Rambukwella mentioned were that “people with ‘a mob mentality’ were fast spreading baseless rumours with the intention of creating trouble” and that “news websites (are) carrying unverified and false stories as part of this campaign” (ibid). Websites and Mobs: does the regime see the one as cause and the other effect?

Perhaps the latest conspiracy tale is nothing more than a pre-emptive attempt to divert public attention, in case the ruling coalition does not fare as well as expected in the third round of local government polls. If that is the case, various ministers will wax eloquent about how the conspirators impeded another landslide win by the UPFA, for a week or so, until other issues come up to command public attention.

It is no secret that the regime is keen not just to win but also to win massively. That is why the Local Government election – like the Provincial Council election – was held in several stages, at enormous expense to the country and at unnecessary inconvenience to the public.

The Rajapaksas are still popular; in any case ruling parties almost always win local government elections. Thus the UPFA could have won most of the local councils even if the election was held on a single day (which had been the practice until now). But the regime was nervous, because its ambition was a superlative rather than just a good performance. Thus the holding of the PC and the LG polls on a staggered basis, so that the regime could use all the power and the resources of the state to win ‘difficult’ councils, such as Colombo.

So the Rajapaksas not only want to win, by hook or by crook; they also want to win outstandingly, by whatever means necessary. And to achieve this purpose they are willing to break almost every single rule in the book, as the latest batch of Wikileaks cables reveal. During the 2010 presidential election, “the President’s campaign has ordered eight GAs including those in Ampara, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Batticaloa to send election results directly to the President’s house for his review before sending them to the Elections Commissioner” (Colombo Telegraph– 3.10.2011).

If true, this is an act of illegality suffice to make the election victory of Mahinda Rajapaksa null and void in any unbiased court of law. The fact that the Ruling Family took such an unprecedented step demonstrates that, for all the populist rhetoric, the Rajapaksas distrust the people. Incidentally, if this is how the Rajapaksas conduct elections when they are popular, what malpractices and irregularities will they not resort to, once their popularity wanes and electoral outcomes become far more uncertain?

The other, and far more dangerous possibility, is that this latest conspiracy narrative is a prelude to an outburst of repressive laws and deeds. The Rajapaksa security state needs to enact the next round of repressive legislations; it also needs to launch another carefully-targeted crack down on dissent. The purpose of the latest conspiracy saga may be to prepare the politico-psychological landscape in which to enact and justify these necessary measures.

If so, in the coming weeks, the Rajapaksas and their acolytes will construct an intricate web of intrigue, involving all the usual suspects – the Tigers, the anti-patriots, the West, the NGOs and INGOs, the media

When the regime wanted to silence senior journalist J Tissanayagam, he was accused, among other things, of trying to create ethnic disharmony. To accuse Mr. Tissanayagam of such a deed was preposterously ridiculous. Those who gave evidence on his behalf, debunking the regime’s ludicrously illogical assertions, included UPFA parliamentarian Vasudeva Nanayakkara. And yet, a court of law found Mr. Tissanayagam guilty as charged.

Since that tactic worked in the past, it is possible that the regime is planning to reuse, against another batch of opponents. Perhaps this is why the President reportedly characterised the ‘conspiracy’ as a ‘plot’ to create ‘ethnic and religious unrest’ in the country. After all, JR Jayewardene did accuse the NSSP, the CP and the JVP for orchestrating the Black July, banned all three parties and imprisoned some of their leaders. Are the Rajapaksas preparing a similar farce?

In his peroration on the new conspiracy, the President reportedly singled out ‘websites’ which ‘are spreading baseless rumours to spread trouble’. That the regime is intent on cracking down on the internet is no secret. Already a couple of websites have been banned (Tamil Net and Lanka News Web ). Perhaps others are slated to join them. Perhaps a crackdown on internet use is what the regime is really planning – an understandable precaution for any half-way intelligent despot, after Arab Spring.

Anti-government websites are few in number and their readers probably constitute a micro-minority of the populace. Still their importance in the current political climate cannot be overstated. The print and the electronic media, with the occasional exception, have succumbed to the carrot and stick policy the Rajapaksas wield with such consummate dexterity.

Most newspapers and TV and radio stations police and censor themselves far more effectively than any state-appointed censor would have done, in their pathetic eagerness to stay in business by staying out of trouble. In this context, political websites have an exaggerated role to play, particularly as disseminators of information the regime does not want disseminated.

For instance, many news stories about the conduct of the security forces in the North go unreported by the mainstream media; if they are carried at all, in Sinhala and English, it is by non-mainstream websites.

These websites are also an important source for the less legal and wholesome doings of the Ruling Clan. In many instances they ‘break’ the news which is then carried by the mainstream English media.

They also act as an important psychological prop for the anti-Rajapaksa minority. Commenting on the political role of his writings, Stefan Zwieg said, “It is far from my purpose to over-estimate these small isolated essays. It goes without saying that they had not the slightest effect upon the course of events. But they helped as well as many an unknown reader. They eased the horrible isolation, the spiritual despair… (The World of Yesterday). The anti-Rajapaksa websites play a similar role vis-à-vis the opponents of the regime, especially the silent ones. If the websites can be shut down, it will demoralise the already severely weakened opposition even further.

Thus there is very real possibility that the regime will use its latest conspiracy tale to shackle several more anti-Rajapaksa websites, as the corollary of a well-targeted crackdown on opponents and critics of the Ruling Family.

The Rajapaksas are popular now; but so were Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali and Muammar Gaddafi in their day. And there are signs that the Southern consensus in favour of the regime is fraying a bit at the edges. The outpourings of anger at the killing of a suspect by the Dompe police and at the attack on the Registrar of the Sri Lanka Medical Council are cases in point.

Barely a month after the Colombo High Court sentenced four policemen to death for causing the death of two suspects in Angulana, a 28 year old father of one child, Gayan Saranga, was murdered while in the custody of the Dompe police. Mr. Gayan was arrested on suspicion of assisting in the theft of a water-pipe. The next day the police claimed that he died while trying to escape – the standard police excuse for all custodial deaths. The people of his village did not believe this story – naturally. Like in Angulana, they surrounded the police station and attacked it. Alarmed by this outburst of public anger, the authorities arrested several policemen and transferred the rest, en masse.

Commenting on this incident, the Cabinet Spokesman condemned it as an act of ‘mob violence’. He also said people should not take law into their hands. True; but in this particular case, the people took law into their hands because they had no other way to protest a blatant act of criminality by the uniformed guardians of law and order. The people of Dompe, like the people of Angulana, were protesting against the death of an innocent man (the presumption of innocence, until proven guilty in a court of law, is a pillar of our legal system) while in police custody.

The police broke the law and their act of illegality was far more criminal, because it caused a death. The demonstrators caused some damage but no deaths.

In Rajapaksa Sri Lanka, the law of the rulers routinely take precedence over the rules of law. It is evident in the way politicians and security forces (including the traffic police) violate all road-rules. It is evident in the way the Defence Secretary engages in political campaigning openly. It is evident in the ubiquity of waste and corruption. It is evident in the land-grabbing by the regime, evicting entire communities to free land which can be sold for a buck.

Over the last several years, the Rajapaksas and their acolytes never lost an opportunity to demonstrate their total contempt for laws and rules. Minister Rambukwella’s concern thus stems not from a fidelity to the rule of law but because the Dompe demonstration demonstrates that in the South too people can and will oppose injustice, especially when it affects them directly. And that definitely is not welcome news for the Rajapaksas. The Ruling Siblings would have nothing against mobs, so long as the mobs are theirs. Mobs against them would be quite another matter.

Perhaps a new conspiracy is the answer to this nascent problem. Give the people an enemy to hate and fear and the regime has an excuse for all ills. A population seeped in fear is likely to demand a strong government which can protect them. Such a population can be persuaded easily to support repressive laws and repressive deeds. Can a tyrant desire more?

by Tisaranee Gunasekara