India sets up new command

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Winking at gun-runners

By Our New Delhi Correspondent

But it is now learnt that efficacy of this new command may be very limited, thanks to an order by the Indian Defence Security prohibiting the armed forces from intercepting gun-runners outside India's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).According to a front page report by Shishir Gupta in The Hindustan Times recently, Defence Secretary Ajith Kumar, has asked chiefs of the armed forces not to order the interception of gun-runners on the high seas around the Andaman's without prior permission from the government. 

The armed forces could intercept, without prior governmental sanction, only those ships which were clearly in India's EEZ, Mr. Kumar said in his letters to the chiefs. In the report entitled "Wink at gun-runners, service chiefs told", Mr. Shishir Gupta said that the Defence Secretary's orders, given with the knowledge of Defence Minister Fernandes, would give a free run to a host of terrorist, scessionist and sub-nationalist outfits active in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.Such groups get their supply of illegal arms through syndicates based in the Golden Triangle." Incidentally, the Andaman sea route is the only one available to these gun cartels to access the land bases of their committed underground clientele in the sub-continent," Mr. Gupta said.

From the Blue Corner

Let's not have another do-or die battle

by Paakshikaya

Over enthusiasm, I guess was the winner - or loser? - at Wayamba. Despite being a SLFP supporter I cannot understand why the People's Alliance had to resort to what they manifestly have done: to win the Wayamba polls by hook and by crook.

Now, before my friend Viruddha Paakshikaya screams "rigged", I must be clear about one thing: in my opinion and in the opinion of many others including President Chandrika Kumaratunga herself, the PA would have won anyway.

I know the President told the Ministers this week that she was not at all happy with the outcome of the polls, despite our win. The President also said the UNP however overplayed the rigging cry but did make her point in no uncertain terms: The PA would have won anyway and rigging was never necessary.

My own view - and I know it is shared by many of us SLFP old- timers - is that slugging our reputation as hora voters at Wayamba was not worth the powder and shot. I know that my good friend Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister G. L. Peiris, the honorable man that he is, is extremely unhappy with the outcome - not that the PA won, but the manner in which the election was won.

So, ultimately it is difficult even for me, a somewhat dyed in the wool SLFPer to accept or conscientiously come to terms with our victory. My thoughts went to our founding father S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and what he himself would have thought and articulated about this victory and I daresay that he would have had no hesitation in condemning the conduct of our partymen.

And, what about where it matters, finally the people of Wayamba? Was it worth it? The SLFP, in my opinion quite correctly boycotted the 1988 Provincial Council elections because it was an offspring of the 1987 J.R. - Rajiv Indo-Lanka Accord.

I believe the stand of the SLFP led by Ms. Sirima Bandaranaike was perfectly right in that decision and that it was in keeping with the aspirations of the people at that point of time.

I know some of my colleagues would not like me saying this but I believe it was the Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshakaya (SLMP) led by Vijaya Kumaratunga which obtained some political mileage out of that 1988 election. They gave credence to the system by contesting the polls and gained the reward of at least having a voice in provincial administrations.

But, since then little thought has gone into the functioning of the provincial council system. If I may pay a compliment - rare from us SLFPers these days to The Sunday Times, I recently read in this newspaper about an interesting study on the utter failure of the Provincial Council system in the devolution of power. That study details how the PCs have complicated administration, rather than helping it. I am glad to know that even President Kumaratunga is worried and now wants the PC systems examined in detail.

If we are to have elections like we did for Wayamba, spending some 20 million rupees or there-about for just a single poll, and getting people killed and having cars smashed and burnt, it begs the question: what is this hara kiri attitude of our people.

Now, Viruddha Paakshikaya, don't get me wrong; I'm not putting all the blame on our partymen. As much as I feel they exceeded their mandate to win an election that they would have won anyway I just cannot help repeating the fact that it was the UNP which made an art - or is it science? of mass scale vote rigging.

Some Tamil friends of mine from the North are sniggering at the way the UNP which took ballot boxes and played havoc with the DDC elections in Jaffna in 1981 is crying foul now.

Even you, Viruddha Paakshikaya will confess, I am sure, to the fact that most of the people who came to Jaffna to rig the polls then were UNPers from Kurunegala and that some of the UNP's candidates at this election were the chief architects of that campaign headed by the late Cyril Mathew and the late Gamini Dissanayake. Now, I don't need to cause you further embarrassment by mentioning names, do I Viruddha Paakshikaya?

The very next year 1982, the Referendum to extend the life of the 1977 Parliament was held by the UNP and that was a bigger joke. When I myself went to vote at my polling booth at Mahanama Vidyalaya I thought for a moment that I had walked into Sirikotha and not a polling booth.

As I recall, the solitary cop was virtually on the road counting the vehicles go by as green shirted UNPers where busy at the booth. So, really, Viruddha Paakshikaya, when you sow with the wind, you reap the whirlwind, don't you?

Now, I don't want excuses, my friend. Your leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe was very much a part of that UNP government from 1977 to 1994. Starting as a young fresh faced Deputy Minister of Foreign affairs he got promoted as Minister of Education and Youth Affairs and then became Minister of Industries before finally becoming Prime Minister. In the interim, he saw it all and he defended it all.

Today, he is crying foul and calling for an independent Elections Commission, an independent' Police Commission, a free media and an independent public service. All these are very noble ideas and they are what everybody dreams of but only while they are in the Opposition!

You must concede, Viruddha Paakshikaya, that at least on this occasion, President Kumaratunga, once she was appraised of the incidents on voting day, made a public statement about it.

She showed not only her close associates but also the entire country publicly that she was not happy with what was happening. Then, in an unprecedented move, the President even wanted the results of some counting centres annulled. That, my dear Viruddha Paakshikaya, was much more than what J. R. Jayewardene, R. Premadasa, D. B. Wijetunge or Ranil Wickremesinghe ever did.

Unfortunately, under the law of the land, the Elections Commissioner, despite the President's instructions, is powerless where it really matters. He is not a judicial officer who can adjudicate on the matter, and that role -of declaring the election valid, or in the alternative, null and void, is for the courts of law. So, you can't really blame the President for what every Sripala or Punchi Singho who is a SLFPer does in Wayamba, can you Viruddha Paakshikaya?

Undaunted by all this, I understand that some UNPers have already launched their respective campaigns for other Provincial Council elections. Everybody wants power, isn't it, Viruddha Paakshikaya? They are blind to the election violence that is inflicted on others to get them to those seats of power. They love to be somebody even a mere "Palaath Sabha Manthree" in a system which is decidedly an utter failure, and is a waste of money, time and energy. And of course, they all say they are doing it for the masses, the down-trodden and the poor.

At least a hundred million rupees will be busted up at the next five PC elections. For what purpose is all this money spent? Already the proportional representation system is causing all kinds of intra-party rivalry apart from the inter-party rivalry. You must know that, Viruddha Paakshikaya, because it is definitely happening in your party too.

To be candid, and not shy away from issues, I shall cite the situation in Puttalam. Minister Ashraff is complaining that none of their candidates were elected. Now, what can we in the SLFP do if our Minister Fowzie's son is more popular than their candidates. But the fact is that this dispute is threatening the unity of the People's Alliance.

If and when polls are held in the other Provincial Councils, the situation, I confess will not improve. The crisis with regard to the DUNF and Ms. Athulathmudali for one will worsen. So as the Americans say, you aint seen nothing yet, Viruddha Paakshikaya.

And that is why I say we should take a long, hard look at this entire Provincial Council concept. After all, in the good old days, we did have a system to test a government's popularity - the "by election" and there were so many famous battles fought on that system: Dedigama, Kalawewa, Akmeemana, Galle, Kalawana and Mahara to name a few. We won some, we lost some but those were not a colossal waste of money and time like what Wayamba was.

So, Viruddha Paakshikaya, let us re-think this strategy. You can be rest assured that the elections that really matter - the General and Presidential polls - will be held on schedule next year.

Then do we want to mess up our agendas in our respective parties by having more provincial polls with more charges of rigging - no doubt while up North, the LTTE continues to take a toll on our security forces?

Of course not. If so, let us carry on our respective programmes of action and let the people decide - (without ballot stuffing or charges of rigging) I hope next year as to who should carry the burden of leading our country into the next century. 

Tell me, Viruddha Paakshikaya, do you support me on that or do you want another do- or-die battle at Uva for example?

Newsmaker

Sunanda, courted yesterday, hounded today

by Rajpal Abeynayake

Says Sunanda that the top echelon of the present government "would troop behind us'' when they were seeking to oust the UNP. Now the present government is promising to hound him for monitoring an election on behalf of the Free Media Movement. 

"Today, the UNP is trooping behind us,'' he says , "and it's natural that an opposition will attempt to take advantage of the public causes that the FMM espouses.'' 

But this shy man is twice shy about cohabiting with the UNP. He says he was careful about not taking any UNP candidates in his vehicles, when he was in Wayamba monitoring the recently concluded elections. (Or maybe he was saying metaphorically that he had no truck with them. "Api eh gollo ekka ekkama truck eke noyanna vishesayen ballagatha.") 

Interesting information comes cascading from this man in a conversation at the sparse Yukthiya editorial office. (He is suitably speaking with a large photograph in his background of journalist Richard de Zoysa, a free media champion grafted later to the PA political cause.) 

In puttlam, he says, by way of example, the Muslim candidates were not returned in the Wayamba election, because the Muslim Congress did not have state power to rig the ballot. Small wonder Mr. Ashraff looks painfully hurt. When Sunanda says the government carried out a shameless ( nirlajjitha ) campaign to manipulate the vote, he sounds credible, partly because it's palpably difficult to associate dubious motives with his disarming persona. 

When he says interested parties had cast the votes in three polling stations in Mawathagama before 8.30 in the morning, and when he says that even the governments supporters had their votes cast, he doesn't sound as if he is on a campaign to change the world — his demeanour says that these are after all, facts. 

Sunanda visited 30 polling stations in Wayamba and discovered that only three of them had UNP polling agents in them. The others had been chased out, and this is in contrast to the fact that there was 100 per cent PA representation at these same polling stations. 

The task was accomplished, he says through the chit system. "In five polling stations, the agents were kidnapped by men in police jeeps. Subsequently, chits were sent to the rest with threats to liquidate their entire families if they do not vacate the polling booths." (The chits incidentally were passed on to the agents through PA voters who went into the polling stations to caste their vote.) 

Sunanda, a former militant JVPer himself, would understand the workings of terror. He theorizes that a fear psychosis has inbred in the minds of people who have known terror in the past and one threatening chit is enough to send them scooting. 

His past credentials have enabled Sunanda to work into the PA's polls team as well. He is well connected among PA candidates who ingratiated with him in the past, and he says they confided in him on how they cast the extra votes to win the poll in certain electorates. 

He shoots down the PA's latest spin that the UNPs vote banks were maintained, by saying that the PA's vote in Hiriyala, Mawathagama, Dodangaslanda and Polgahawela was an improvement on their vote in the 1997 local government elections. His political commentary on this state of affairs is that these are all unprecedented trends in Sri Lanka's electoral history. 

With the violence that has been reported in these areas, there is no doubt, he says that these "trends'' were artificially manufactured by the stolen or rigged vote. (He also points to examples of where the majority of 2000 in the last presidential election has been increased to 9000 in this election. Improbable, he says, nay impossible.) 

In Wariyapola, Sunanda had the dubious honor of witnessing a hundred per cent of the votes being cast by 1 p.m., at which time he visited the station which had 1135 votes on the list. Voters who had been disenfranchised by this situation, a great many of them PA supporters , told Sunanda that they are going back home as their votes (annae ape chanda) had already been cast. 

Sunanda contends that all this would have definitely changed the outcome of the election, particularly because there were 212 polling stations or 20 per cent of the vote which had been annulled. But that's not the end of the story he observes, as there are polling stations in which the presiding officers have signed and given the "all clear'' when patently the vote was rigged because there were unperforated ballots in the boxes.

In the final analysis, his political observation of the election in retrospect is that rigging was more widespread and more openly done in this poll compared to the UNP's past. 

By contrast, he says that the PA secured some seats in the "great poll robbery'' of the Referendum. So it is a very dubious honour that the PA now covets. (400 airport taxis were used in the Wayamba for the rigging machine for instance.) 

One of the most symbolic signs of the atmosphere of intimidation was that there were no green caps or red caps to be seen on any of the heads near the polling stations. But, there were caps and flags of the PA that were seen all over the countryside…. The net result was that the PA institutionalized vote rigging in its future electoral strategy, but learnt to do it in a different climate where the media is more vocal. 

"They necessarily have to learn to lie better, to manipulate better when there is a vigilant media — and they have done that." 

The bottom line then says Sunanda is that the election has to be invalidated as it was not a legitimate one. 

Instead , he sees the PA now calling the media a media mafia, which was not something they maintained just ten days before the election when Mangala Samaraweera met the election monitors and promised his support. Neither did the PA call the media a mafia when they worked with the FMM to establish media freedom after the Premadasa era, so if not mafia then, why mafia now? 

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