Columns

When NPP (National Peoples’ Power) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake proclaimed unblushingly during election campaigning in the North a few days ago that his party is the only ‘non-racist’ party and he is the only ‘non-racist’ candidate in the coming presidential poll, that claim must be taken not only with a pinch but also a whole sack full of skeptical salt.

‘Not to cringe in the face of bigotry’

Reams have, of course, been written about the peculiar ‘Sinhala ethnic chauvinism’ (circa Bruce Mathews, 1989) of the NPP’s driving force, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) when under the iron thumb of its late unlamented founder Rohana Wijeweera. A much later reflection (‘The JVP and the Sinhala voter’, Kumar David, Colombo Telegraph, 2020) contains a kinder assessment on the lines that, this ‘roughness’ has mellowed and that the de-radicalized JVP is no longer ‘racist.’

Even here however and coming from an empathizer at that, there is an important rider that the JVP taking a principled/progressive stand on the ‘national question’ will be ‘electoral suicide’ for the party given its affinity with the ‘Sinhala petty-bourgeois and the Sinhala working class.’ David’s 2020 reflection contained a ringing call to the JVP to abandon playing ‘peek-a-boo’ with Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism and not to ‘shrivel up and cringe in the face of bigotry.’

Fast forward four years later with all the dirty water of the Gotabhaya Rajapaksa (GR) Presidency under the bridges, it is apparent that the JVP has not heeded that call. This is precisely why the Sinhala-Buddhist voting brigades of the GR fanbase have allied themselves firmly behind the NPP/JVP banner, ranging from sizeable pockets of the urban working class to the disaffected Sinhalese in the village, furious at being left to wilt in the despair of post-bankrupt Sri Lanka.

Racist riffraff of the Rajapaksas

So when the NPP candidate declares himself to be the only ‘non-racist’ political contender for the post of the most powerful office in the land, that absurd boast cannot go unchallenged. What Dissanayake should do is, to set out the premise on which he makes that affirmation. The fact that he will be hard put to do so, is evident. In fact, and to give the devil his due, President Ranil Wickremesinghe would probably have been a better contender for that title if he had not allied himself with the racist riffraff of the Rajapaksa tide to claim the Presidency on a vastly problematic elected platform.

It is certainly not enough for the NPP to point to the fact that the racist frontrunners of the Rajapaksa team have split in three with one faction going to the side of President Ranil Wickremesinghe, some drifting to the SJB and others remaining with the Rajapaksa core. ‘We are the only party that has not accepted these break-aways’, the NPP/JVP leader says and he is correct on that count. But that, by itself, is far from being sufficient to lay sole claim to the boast of being the only ‘non-racist’ party in town when wooing the minorities as he does.

And when Dissanayake pledges to ‘eradicate racism’ as he does frequently to local media, that must be buttressed by a solid record of what the JVP/NPP has done so far to demonstrate that commitment rather than pointing to elusive promises in election manifestos.  Current realities are not all that promising to say the least. Recent social media images (un-refuted up to now) of the ‘meeting of minds’ of JVP trade union czar KD Lalkantha and Sri Lanka’s controversial monk, Gnanasara are a case in point.

The NPP’s ‘misunderstandings’

Gnanasara’s less than dharmishta record features communalistic tirades that have been the direct cause of race riots in Sri Lanka as well as serving jail terms for insulting the court. The point is not that Lalkantha seems to delight in controversies. That is very well established, including his overtly sexist talk last year about nurses needing to attract the ‘male persona’ by regular gym attendance which his party seniors said had been ‘taken out of context.’

The more recent ‘Pol Pot’ (akin to the deadly Khmer Rouge persecution in Cambodia which resulted in the genocide of 2 million citizenry) promise that on coming into power, the party will ‘enforce judicial power’ through its cadre at local level raised a hornets nest that his colleagues dismissed by saying that the remarks had been ‘misinterpreted.’ That has been the stock JVP/NPP response to Lalkantha’s ‘misadventures’ so far.

In the face of persistent questioning by reporters, Dissanayaka admitted that such talk, which can be ‘easily misinterpreted’ is ‘best avoided.’ However, that admission by the party leader does not amount to reassurance enough for an anxious citizenry. On the other side of the divide, the same deadly dance with Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism is also played albeit with less force, by Sajith Premadasa, Dissanayake’s rival from the opposing Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) camp as it courts the monks and the military with traditional genuflection to the ‘Sinhala Buddhist State’.

Letting the TRC ‘cat out of the bag’

Even so, the SJB can point to at least some positive notches on its record. One example is when Premadasa cites the fact that it was the SJB that opposed with might and main in Parliament and outside, the GR Presidency’s atrocious refusal to allow Muslims to bury their covid-19 afflicted dead. Meanwhile the SJB’s assurance that it would ‘fully implement’ the 13th Amendment to the Constitution has been repeated ad nauseam by previous leaders, most famously by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa when he promised ’13 plus.’

This is familiar political talk, not to be taken very seriously as it were. As comic back-drama to this tangle of ambitious promises by Presidential contenders moreover, we see frantic scrambling around by the Wickremesinghe Government, his Minister of Foreign Affairs and officials of the interim Truth and Reconciliation Secretariat to protest that, ‘military officials will not be prosecuted’ in terms of the most recent Bill

This has verily let the (TRC) cat out of a leaking bag as it were. That this August Bill is a ‘show’ for periodic questioning by the ‘international community’ in Geneva is publicly admitted.  Locally, it is providing a convenient ‘conspiracy’ theory for Sri Lanka’s lunatic fringe ultra nationalist politicians to whip up communal tensions afresh by alleging that the Bill will ‘betray’ the Sinhalese Buddhist heroes.

Between the known devil and several unknown angels

But for Sri Lanka to look fresh to a new future as our Presidential contenders promise at the top of their voices for both the majority and the minority, the narrative should not be that of ‘persecution’ and ‘prosecution, taken in a generalised form to cover the state services in its entirety. The State must admit atrocities committed by its agents and ensure accountability in regard to emblematic cases of gross human rights violations, allowing the criminal law to take its course.

To do that however requires dismantling the deep security State which few Presidential contenders will take on. That said, establishing another Commission will only repeat the agonizing process of several other Commissions in the past, tasked with exactly this same objective. These Commissions only aggravated the pain of victims.  It is difficult to see what purpose this redundant exercise will serve as repeatedly observed in these column spaces.

In the final result, Sri Lanka’s minorities and indeed the majority are faced with the choice of the ‘known devil’ who is electioneering on a platform of ‘continuity’ (qua President Ranil Wickremesinghe whose entire effort appears to be aimed at demolishing his onetime protégé Premadasa’s political future) or several ‘unknown angels’ (SJB, NPP et al), all promising a ‘radical change.’

That choice is less than ideal, if one is to be frank. But this is a choice that will be made for good or for ill in the coming weeks.