Who are we? A matter of identity

RESPONSE TO DR. NALIN SWARIS

By Dayan Jayathillake

(February 26, Singapore City , Sri Lanka Guardian) Dr. Nalin Swaris simply must learn to make his political and ideological criticisms without imputing personal motives and thereby descending into the realm of psychological speculation and gossip.He heavily hints that my criticism of the Govt’s handling of the Fonseka affair is a matter of sour grapes, meaning I didn’t get something I expected or asked for from the President or the administration. May I set the record straight? In the middle of last December I was offered an ambassadorial posting to an important country of considerable significance to Sri Lanka—a message conveyed at the residence of a senior minister by a very senior official, which I politely but promptly declined. A month earlier, in November 2009 I had presented a paper by invitation at an international seminar at a respected think tank of highly rated university, been invited to spend two years as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow writing a book on the Sri Lankan crisis, and had accepted the offer. This I might add, took place after my rapprochement with President Rajapakse and my visit with him to Hanoi, so I was hardly bereft of options and was aware of the possibility of playing a diplomatic role once again in the near future. I indicated however that I would be ready to serve my country again in an appropriate posting, at a future date.

I met President Rajapakse once again in mid-January at the height of the election campaign and our relations were warm. I was hardly “out of favour”. However, at this stage of my life, I found the prospect of serious independent intellectual work more compelling, not least because many of my fellow ambassadors in Geneva and heads of UN/multilateral organizations had strongly urged me to write a book on the thirty years conflict in which I have been observer-participant. This is nothing new. In early 2006, when, just prior to the first round of talks with the LTTE in Geneva, newly elected President Rajapakse graciously offered me the post of Secretary General of SCOPP, with Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Secretary Foreign Affairs Palihakkara, and Ministers Nimal Siripala and Bogollagama in the room, I politely declined and went overseas to complete my doctorate and book on Fidel Castro.

Dr Swaris says that he for one would not have accepted a trip to Vietnam after the manner in which I was treated. I shall not reciprocate with examples of Dr Swaris’ conduct which I would not choose to emulate or uphold. Suffice to say I did not initiate contact with the President upon my return to Sri Lanka for two months, precisely for that reason, but I was not churlish enough to refuse a invitation to breakfast, not least because I was able to serve my country at the UN in Geneva at a crucial moment in our current history, because of an invitation to do so by the President. Nor was I ungracious enough to refuse an invitation to join him on the visit to Vietnam, since, as he explained it was the first ever visit by a Sri Lankan head of state to Vietnam, and therefore in its own way, historic. As a student of Vietnam’s history it also gave me the chance to observe its leadership close at hand.

My initial endorsement of President Rajapakse over Gen Fonseka was in an Island article dated Dec 7th. My support for President Rajapakse in the electronic media was after I had been offered and instantly declined a posting, and had already accepted an overseas offer of independent scholarly work at a senior level.

As for Dr Swaris’ criticisms of my ten point critique of the government’s handling of the Fonseka affair, I hope I am wrong, but surely it is still far too early to tell? It took several years for the de-stabilising impact of President JR Jayewardene’s decisions which deployed legality without legitimacy, to make themselves manifest. I would argue that the jury is still very much out on this one.

More substantive is Dr Swaris’ double implication that I have softened my line on tactics and shifted my line on the West. This brings us to the very core of the question. To my mind, that which is appropriate and necessary when dealing with an enemy of the state -- especially an armed enemy of proven intransigence-- is completely inappropriate with dealing with a political foe, especially an unarmed rival and political competitor. Thus the strategy and tactics that I argued for in public and on the record for decades, as concerns the LTTE, is entirely the wrong mindset to have when dealing with General (Retd) Sarath Fonseka.

Dr Swaris likens the use of black masks by the troops outside the Cinnamon Lakeside hotel on Jan 27th, with their use by Indian commandos when storming the Taj hotel in November 2008. It may have escaped his notice that there was a gun battle blazing on the latter occasion with armed terrorists who had infiltrated Mumbai by boat and murdered several civilians were holing up and holding hostages in that Taj – as witnessed the world over by TV viewers. As the same TV viewers worldwide witnessed, there was absolutely no such situation outside the Cinnamon Lakeside after the Lankan elections!

The contradiction between the state and the LTTE, indeed between the people and the LTTE was an antagonistic contradiction with an existential enemy while the contradiction with Sarath Fonseka falls into the Maoist category of “contradictions among the people”; a “non–antagonistic” contradiction. To do otherwise is to elastically extend the category of enemies, and prevent the return to political normalcy and “harmony” (to use a key Chinese term).

In the run-up to the election, the possibility of an Orange Revolution strategy in play had already been signalled, days before Dr Swaris, by “Tania Noctiummes” (writing from Latin America) in Transcurrents, Sri Lanka Guardian and several websites. The point however, is that the Fonseka challenge was defeated by the people, peacefully, at a democratic election and this possibility aborted. In all probability this defeat would have been repeated at the parliamentary election. If there was any conspiratorial illegality on his part (which I do not doubt) this should have been dealt with exclusively by the regular, civilian courts.

I took a hard line on the armed JVP and LTTE, but a soft line on Southern political dissent and Tamil grievances. That is the liberal or more correctly social democratic approach. As for the West, my successful approach in Geneva (which always encompassed a dialogue with the US, especially under the Obama administration), was intended to thwart an attempt by powerful Western elements to prevent our final military offensive and subsequently to punish us for it; in short to prevent a UN resolution/mandate which could have been used for a R2P/Kosovo type intervention or interference. It was a battle in defence of our vital national interests and sovereignty. The issue of the handling of Sarath Fonseka has brought discomfiture even to our non-Western friends. It is one thing to resist the West when we must, and another to brush off constructive advice from all and go it alone, filled with self righteousness. Those who supported us on the issue of the Tigers and Western interventionism do not necessarily do likewise on the use of a heavy hand in domestic politics. If Dr Swaris thinks this is an exclusively Western concern he should access more Asian newspapers and journals on the internet, be it the Frontline, the Economic and Political Weekly or the Straits Times.

What is at stake here is this: do we or do we not belong to the system of representative pluralist democracy? Do we or do we not intend to play by the rules of the game? It was one thing to defend liberal democracy from the armed JVP and the Tigers – which latter the UNP and the SLFP “liberals” failed to – and another, to fail to restore that liberal, pluralist democracy ourselves. It is an abiding failure of Sri Lankan political discourse to identify liberal democracy with the West and to use a necessary Non Aligned identification either as evidence of deviation from liberal democracy or as warrant for it. What we have failed to do is learn from the examples of say, Brazil and India, to name but two, which do not play the Western game and build countervailing international coalitions, while at the same time, adhering to the rule of law and functioning as exemplary pluralist liberal democracies. Do we share those values of non alignment, sovereignty, progressivism and rights based-liberal democracy? That is the choice before Sri Lanka: one of political practice, ethos and identity.

Related Article: Comrade Dayan’s Sour Grapes? by Nalin Swaris