Be prepared

There is little doubt among thinking people here who followed the U.S. presidential election that Donald Trump was bad news for a land which prided itself as being the cradle of democracy in the world. He did everything but “Make America Great Again,” leaving a legacy of blunders and a personal stamp of a man too small for the very big pair of boots he wore during the last four years. But as the ‘Trumpkin Pumpkin,” (orange on the outside and hollow inside) depicted by a cartoon on this page, is plotting his last stand to remain in office, there have been expatriate Lankans mounting social media platforms to express fears that the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket leaves openings for LTTE supporters, particularly those living in North America, to exploit Harris’ Indian ancestry to further their cause in a country where the Tigers remain a banned terrorist organization.

Given the worldwide media focus on the U.S. election, most Lankans are well aware that Kamala Devi Harris is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. Her publicists took pains to project the vice-president elect as a politician who throughout her life took pains to preserve her Indian roots about which she was justifiably proud. We ran an appropriately illustrated story during the campaign of her fondness for idli, a favourite South Indian dish. Indians throughout the subcontinent, and more particularly those living in Tamil Nadu, have predictably exulted about what she has achieved in a country that is not only among the world’s richest and most powerful, but also a land that is justifiable considered a place where “anything is possible.”

Although we in Sri Lanka like to think that the LTTE is well and truly dead and buried, we cannot ignore the reality that a rump remains that is alive and kicking. This is true not only of Tiger sympathizers living this country, but of the Tamil expatriate community spread out through the wider world. They may not take arms on behalf of a separatist cause, but their sympathies lie there. Many of these expats, some voluntarily and others through extortion, were among the major funders of the LTTE throughout the 30-year war. The Black July pogrom of 1983, for which the J.R. Jayewardene government of the day, and a misguided section of the majority Sinhala community must take much of the blame, drove many Tamils out of the land of their birth. Among them were professionals, some the best and the brightest of this land, who fled particularly to the West. There were also the numerous so-called “economic refugees” who migrated to Europe and North America taking advantage of the climate created in many developed countries that Sri Lanka was not safe for Tamils.

The mere fact that the woman who will be vice-president of a world power has a Tamil ancestry, does not mean that she will be a puppet on a string easily manipulated by pro-LTTE lobbies. US foreign policy, like that of most countries in the world is anti-terrorist, and there is no escaping the fact that the LTTE was terrorist and what remains of it is separatist. It has been widely acclaimed that the Tigers were among the deadliest terrorist groups of their time. Nevertheless, expatriate Tiger sympathizers would do their best to exploit the slightest opening, the remotest possibility. During the height of the war, the LTTE ran a skillful propaganda campaign, often with a homely touch. There was a time when journalists would be invited to expatriate homes and wined and dined on delectable Lankan cuisine not easily available in restaurants and other eating places in those countries. As there is no such thing as a free lunch (or dinner), the guest would be brainwashed with a vengeance on what had happened and was happening in Sri Lanka with the intention of influencing whatever he/she would write in the media.

The various posts that have surfaced after the Biden-Harris victory have provided other tidbits, including that the new vice-president will have a woman of direct Tamil ancestry, Rohini Lakshmi Ravindran Kosoglu as her chief-of-staff. This lady is the daughter, a post said, of Dr. Wijeydevendram Ravindran who has been practicing for over 35 years as an Emergency Room physician in New Jersey. He had emigrated to the U.S. many years ago and presumably his daughter was born there. While there will be many here, and among the non-Tamil expatriate community overseas who are strong nationalists wary of incipient dangers, who would see this as a possible ethnic access route to the very top of the U.S. administration. This need not be necessarily true. Hopefully, vested interest lobbies will be seen for what they are. But it will be both useful and appropriate for Sri Lanka to be aware of a worst-case scenario and not let down its guard.

This is particularly true at a time that the incumbent administration, like all its predecessors, is making patronage ambassadorial appointments to important capitals abroad while at the same time recalling senior and experienced professional diplomats on a 60-year age rule. There has been a proposal under consideration that the public service retirement age to be raised to 62-years and this may be announced in the forthcoming budget. It is high time that a realistic cost-benefit assessment of our overseas missions is made and those that are redundant are closed down. We are massively over-represented in terms of the number of the high commissions, embassies and even consulates that we, as a country with limited resources, run abroad. Cutting them down to size is long overdue. This is true of nearly all areas of government, and in the context of sharply declining revenue and essential Covid 19 related expenditure, now is the time to grasp the bull by its horns.