On the growing of the ‘home grown’

By Malinda Seneviratne

(July 21, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In September 1988, a group of student activists officially affiliated with the Student Action Committee off the University of Peradeniya and therefore the Inter University Student Federation (IUSF) and unofficially with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, went around the residence halls asking students to sign a petition. The petition was a simple request for a blank cheque: ‘I hereby agree to support unconditionally any decision taken by the Inter University Student Federation in the interest of furthering the cause of the student movement of Sri Lanka’. I didn’t sign and neither did some 15 of my friends in the second year of the Arts Faculty who were at the time opposed to the JVP-led student movement. I remember saying ‘If the IUSF decides that murdering my mother would serve the interests of the student movement, I would have, if I signed, sanctioned that act as well’. I remembered this because I have been reflecting on blank cheques and how they are used and abused.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is reported to have told the leaders of the ruling coalition not to speak on the 13th Amendment. He is reported to have said that he will formulate and present a ‘home grown political solution’ and has indicated that this would be done after the next presidential election, which will be held sometime early next year according to some. In other words, he is confident about winning the next election (not an unrealistic wish) and believes he can ride the (natural) wave of popularity to do what he believes is right.

The problem is that good intention is not the same thing as good democratic practice. The President is of course well within his rights in requesting party leaders of the ruling coalition not to upset things, to keep silent about ‘solution’ because it is not the right time to talk about it. He will, most likely, win a second term if he went before the people at the end of the year. However winning an election, in and of itself is not mandate enough to ‘do as I like’. In short, he ‘can’, but he ‘should not’. Not if he is a democrat and not if he is the custodian and not owner of this land, its resources and people, as he claimed when he assumed office in November 2005.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa alone knows the content of his election manifesto. He has signaled that he will not mention what he would do if elected in terms of a constitutional arrangement or amendment that redresses Tamil grievances. I am not faulting him for not being hasty. Indeed, at this point, this can be seen as a virtue. In the post-LTTE, post-terrorism moment we are in, the focus correctly is on resettlement, development, democratization and an effort to obtain normalcy in the North and East.

However, to the extent that the conflict is sourced to grievances that are perceived to go beyond problems that are common to all Sri Lankans, they should be addressed. As I have said before, these grievances should be reexamined in terms of how real they are, they should be divested of mythological claim, the attendant aspirations considered in terms of overall national prerogatives and possible political fallout, especially in how conceding aspiration would infringe on other aspirations and create new grievances for other communities, etc.

The danger of saying ‘after I win’ is that the people can pick him because a) he wiped out terrorism, b) because there is no credible alternative. He can therefore go before the people and say ‘give me the mandate to come up with a solution’, win and do the ‘as I please’. That is not democratic in substance or spirit; it is a perversion of the same.

The President’s reference has been to the deliberations of the APRC. The problem is, can the APRC deliver something that is authentically and comprehensively ‘home grown’? The APRC is made up of politicians. They are ‘experts’ if at all only on the matter of riding the power equation. The various statements made by Tissa Vitarana and the written iterations that have so far reached the public amply support this thesis. The nation is not a power-tree, it is a tree that has history, heritage, culture and certain economic realities. The APRC has not taken any of these other elements seriously so far. This is not surprising because if the APRC is the ultimate ‘guideliner’; in the matter of constitutional reform it is a very poor and inadequate entity. It is not in its composition, mandate and process anything close to the Constitutional Assembly required to deliberate these issues and make recommendations.

A home grown solution cannot be planted, tended, watered, fertilized etc by people who are not familiar or conversant with agriculture, to extend the metaphor a little. Where are the historians? Where are the archaeologists? And where, most pertinently, are the economists? Is it not a fact after all that in the post-LTTE situation development prerogatives have come to the fore? And, even if this were not the case, what is the logic of installing political structures that inhibit processes that can enhance the overall well being of the people? Shouldn’t such questions be asked? And, if such questioned are raised, shouldn’t there be people competent to respond to them?

The President, then, has to make sure that the Government, the people and he himself are informed by a body that is capable of considering all these aspect, synthesizing the information and making recommendations based on the same. As of now, we lack such a body. What we have is structurally impoverished intellectually. The APRC will deliver a deformed baby with inherent and uncorrectable breathing difficulties and other flaws. Generations to come will have to pay for its upkeep.

There’s at least five months more to go for a probable Presidential Election. That’s time enough to correct this flaw. The President can and will get away by playing ‘safe’, i.e. keeping mum on ‘solution’. That is nothing more and nothing less than playing with the concerns of both majority and the minority. By the time the ‘solution’ is birthed, someday, neither will have the political power to turn back things. It would be far more honest and democratic to put his ‘solution’ on the table.

Admittedly this is no easy task. That is why he should get farmers and not carpenters to do the growing of the ‘home grown’. He can, I repeat, get away by not doing it, but that will decide the colour with which his name will be written in the history books. Playing safe, political manipulation, abusing popularity and exploiting a situation where there is no opposition to speak of will not get Mahinda Rajapaksa gold letters.

There is time. We are watching. After all, we are a people whose culture and sensibilities can be sourced heavily to earthy things. Like farming. We are a nation that is for ‘home grown’, with ‘home grown’ and of ‘home grown’. That’s the colour of our democracy and it is something that Mahinda Rajapaksa knows and should not ignore.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com.

-Sri Lanka Guardian