Midweek Review

Prez poll 2024: An unprecedented three-cornered contest amidst external interventions

Published

8 months ago

2024/09/18

Pathfinder Chairman Bernard Goonetilleke, Dr.Dayaratna Silva, Executive Director, PF, Eng. R. W. R. Pemasiri, Convenor PF, Rumeka Perera, Programme Executive PF. and Rasangi Kumarihami, Research Associate PF, were present at the handing over of the two policy documents to presidential candidates (Pix courtesy PF)

None of the election manifestos/policy papers declared in the run-up to Sept. 21 presidential election have taken into consideration the daunting political, economic and social challenges faced by bankrupt Sri Lanka. They never made at least an attempt to discuss a debt repayment plan. Having received time till 2028 to resume debt repayment, serious contestants should have taken the public into confidence and announced their specific plans on how to deal with debt repayment. Instead, President Ranil Wickremesinghe and SJB leader Sajith Premadasa sought to outdo each other by making promises, ranging from unprecedented salary hikes for public servants to lifting of ban on importation of vehicles. With the economy in a precarious state, such promises seemed beyond the Treasury’s capacity. This is the same government, headed by President Wickremesinghe, that bluntly refused to consider a salary increase of Rs 10.000 asked by public servants about six months earlier, citing dire economic situation confronting the country!

By Shamindra Ferdinando

On behalf of the Pathfinder Foundation, its Chairman Bernard Goonetilleke recently handed over what the think-tank called policy documents titled (i) ‘Economic Crisis in Sri Lanka: Policy Challenges for the New Government,’ and (ii) ‘Bridging Borders: Enhancing Connectivity between India and Sri Lanka,’ to presidential candidates Ranil Wickremesinghe (independent), Sajith Premadasa (SJB), Anura Kumara Dissanayake (JJB) Namal Rajapaksa (SLPP) and Dilith Jayaweera (CP).

Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe received the Pathfinder documents on behalf of JVP and JJB leader Dissanayake.

Having served the Foreign Service for nearly 40 years, Goonetilleke received the appointment as Chairman, Pathfinder Foundation, founded by Milinda Moragoda, in May 2010, two years after his retirement.

Goonetilleke served as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador in Washington during the 2005-2008 period as the combined forces were battling the separatist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). The war was brought to a successful end in May 2009. Before being posted to Washington, Goonetilleke also served as Foreign Secretary (2003-2004) during the Norway-led peace initiative that led to Eelam War IV.

Meticulously prepared Pathfinder documents, however, underscored the pivotal importance of future foreign and economic policies as bankrupt Sri Lanka holds the presidential election with much trepidation, later this week, because of the unknowns in the form of foreign agendas, especially from the West.

The Foundation methodically addressed the entire range of issues confronting bankrupt Sri Lanka now trapped in the US-led efforts to contain China. India being part of the strategic ‘Quad’ (The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) alliance is quite clearly worried about Chinese intentions here. Having examined Pathfinder documents, the writer is of the opinion that the organization that described itself as an independent, non-partisan research and advocacy think-tank, in fact, however, appears to be blindly and absolutely backing the International Monetary Fund programme promoted as a panacea for the country’s ills. It also throws its weight behind the ongoing Indo-Lanka initiatives at all levels. In other words it is not a case about finding a winning path, but merely backing a trail trodden by so many from the third world as dictated by the twin sisters in Washington, with hardly any success from South America to Africa and Asia.

It would be pertinent to mention that Milinda Moragoda, the Pathfinder founder and former Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to New Delhi, who has apparently tied his wagon to Indian interests, recently presented a copy of the foundation’s Study Group Report on ‘India-Sri Lanka Physical Connectivity’ to Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval. This happened during the latter’s recent controversial visit to Colombo. The report provides a comprehensive blueprint for physical connectivity between the two countries in road, rail, electricity and petroleum sectors.

It is not difficult to understand that the second policy document ‘Bridging Borders: Enhancing Connectivity between India and Sri Lanka’ also dealt with the issues addressed by the Pathfinder Study Group Report on ‘India-Sri Lanka Physical Connectivity.’ In fact, the thought-provoking reports are the same.

The longest serving Indian National Security Advisor Doval’s latest visit to Colombo caused intense controversy due to the former head of internal and counterintelligence agency meeting three of the contestants – Wickremesinghe, Premadasa and Dissanayake – as well as Tamil politicians representing the North East, upcountry and Colombo. Their decision to leave out SLPP candidate Namal Rajapaksa is understandable. India obviously considers that the SLPP has no chance at all at the presidential election, with its vote base divided between President Wickremesinghe and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s eldest son, Namal.

Doval is on his third term having received the appointment in 2014 after Narendra Modi’s victory at the general election. Whatever the official explanation regarding Doval’s latest visit to Colombo, no one can justify meeting presidential candidates and scores of other lawmakers. From New Delhi’s point of view, India, under any circumstances, cannot allow Colombo to deviate from the post-Aragalaya path.

At the behest of the IMF, in May this year, President Wickremesinghe presented the Economic Transformation Bill, the Public Debt Management Bill and the Public Financial Management Bill. President Wickremesinghe repeatedly declared that these Bills were meant to stabilise the economy and prevent another debt default crisis. Out of that lot, the Economic Transformation Bill can be categorized as the most important and politically sensitive. Enacted in July, the new law brought all political parties backing Wickremesinghe, Premadasa and Dissanayake in line with the IMF formula or strategy or whatever you desire to call it.

Interestingly, the group of dissident SLPP MPs, backing Dilith Jayaweera, never raised objections to it at the time. They could have demanded a vote on the Economic Transformation Bill or at least publicly questioned the circumstances the controversial Bill was passed.

Post-war presidential polls

Sri Lanka conducted three presidential polls since the eradication of the LTTE, widely considered combined forces brought the LTTE to its knees, following a relentless campaign conducted over a period of two years and 10 months.

Those who couldn’t stomach the LTTE’s annihilation, resented President Mahinda Rajapaksa. They wanted to see the back of the war-winning President, who defied the West’s last minute effort to rescue Tiger Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his core group as they were cornered into a sliver of land between the Nanthikadal lagoon and the Mullaitivu beach surrounded by a Tamil civilian human shield they were holding for their protection. Political parties represented in Parliament collaborated with the US in a treacherous attempt to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa. In spite of the JVP, SLMC, CWC joining the UNP in a despicable US backed project, their so-called common candidate, retired General Sarath Fonseka, ended up with egg on his face.

Contesting under the ‘Swan’ symbol, hitherto an unheard of sign at local elections, and the registered political party New Democratic Front (NDF), Fonseka polled 4,173,185 (40.15%) whereas Rajapaksa secured 6,015,934 (57.88%).

Appearing on the live Sirasa political programme ‘Satana’ last week the Sinha Regiment veteran Fonseka, an independent candidate contesting Sept. 21 presidential poll, repeated the preposterous accusation that he was robbed of victory at the 2010 presidential election.

In the wake of Fonseka’s defeat, the late Somawansa Amarasinghe, the then JVP leader, alleged that computer ‘jilmaat’ (jugglery) had been resorted to defeat Fonseka.

Thanks to secrets revealed by WikiLeaks the world knows the US intervention at the 2010 presidential election. Interestingly, Maithripala Sirisena and Sajith Premadasa contested the 2015 and 2019 presidential elections, also under ‘Swan’ symbol, though the JVP quit the alliance ahead of the 2019 poll. Contesting under the JJB symbol for the first time Anura Kumara Dissanayake emerged third at the 2019 election with 418,553 votes (3.16%) but in post-Aragalaya scenario, the JVPer is one of the top contenders.

Having recognized the JJB’s potential to secure power at the next presidential election, the first national poll after Aragalaya, New Delhi extended an invitation to Dissanayake for a five-day tour that enabled him to visit New Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Thiruvananthapuram. The visit assumed greater significance as Dissanayake was granted the opportunity to meet External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar and Doval.

Colombo based longstanding correspondent of The Hindu Meera Srinivasan quoted JJB MP Vijitha Herath as having said: “In our meeting with Mr. Doval, we discussed regional security and bilateral issues concerning India and Sri Lanka.”

The JJB forgetting all their revolutionary zeal also secured US recognition and over the past two years developed its relations with the Western camp and became globetrotting savvy politicians as the party was groomed as a likely alternative to incumbent President Wickremesinghe. The challenge faced by Wickremesinghe should be examined against the backdrop of him having to depend entirely on the SLPP’s support. With the UNP reduced to just one lawmaker in Parliament, Wickremesinghe has no alternative but to reach a consensus with the SLPP – a highly contentious move that caused irreparable damage to that party. At the end, a divided SLPP ended up backing two candidates President Wickremesinghe and Namal Rajapaksa.

Premier Dinesh Gunawardena, who had been with the Rajapaksas for many decades, broke ranks with his erstwhile buddies to pitch camp with his school buddy and UNP leader Wickremesinghe who suffered two major setbacks in the run-up to the presidential poll. Despite desperate efforts to convince the SJB parliamentary group to switch allegiance to him at Premadasa’s expense, the President did not succeed. Firstly the Supreme Court unseated three SJBers, namely Harin Fernando, Manusha Nanayakkara and Diana Gamage who held Cabinet and non-Cabinet portfolios, respectively, in separate cases.

The other devastating setback was his failure to secure the SLPP’s support, thereby preventing a split in the party voter base. Had Wickremesinghe managed to secure the backing of an undivided SLPP along with the majority of SJB parliamentary group, the ground situation could have been much more favourable to the incumbent President.

Turning a blind eye to external interventions

The EU and the Commonwealth are among international poll observation missions already deployed here. However, they are unlikely to pay attention to foreign interventions. In fact, international missions have never discussed the issue in the past. Local polls monitoring missions, too, are unlikely to comment on foreign interventions for obvious reason of them being dependent on foreign funding. So not a hum from them in the past despite worldwide shock revelations, especially by WikiLeaks, nor can the country expect any in the future.

In fact, foreign interventions have made election manifestos/policy statements of leading candidates irrelevant. The recent Doval visit as well as the US stand during Aragalaya and post-Aragalaya showed the growing dangers facing the country. Trapped in developing economic-political and social crises, the Wickremesingthe-SLPP government continuously struggled to overcome daunting foreign policy challenges.

In the face of relentless Indian and US pressure, Sri Lanka had no option but to impose a one-year ban on the entry of foreign research vessels to Sri Lankan waters. The ban came into effect on January 1, this year. It would be a major issue that would test whoever wins the Sept. 21 contest as China would be determined to have that ban lifted whereas India and the US wanted restrictions imposed on foreign research vessels extended. That order is meant to bar Chinese vessels.

External interventions here have reached a dangerous level with foreign powers seeking control over political parties. One-time Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, in ‘Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy’, launched in 2016, discussed how China funded earlier election-winning apparatus for defeated President Mahinda Rajapaksa. In the same year, the then US Secretary of State John Kerry crowed in public about how they funded ‘regime-change’ operations in Nicaragua, Myanmar and Sri Lanka to the tune of USD 585 mn. This declaration was made in the wake of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s defeat at the 2015 presidential poll. That US statement proved beyond doubt that the US got involved in the 2015 presidential election, too.

None of the contesting political parties here would dare to complain to foreign election observation missions about external interventions. Election monitors issue statements about setting up so-called party offices, an utterly useless exercise that wouldn’t have any impact whatsoever on the electorate whereas external powers brazenly intervene here, both overtly and covertly.

The Parliament, too, remained conveniently silent over external interventions though some lawmakers addressed the issue. Current State Finance Minister Shehan Semasinghe raised the US funding made available to those who had been opposed to Mahinda Rajapaksa at the 2015 presidential election.

In spite of a high profile US statement Sri Lanka never took any notice. The Election Commission never even acknowledged the issue at hand.

The second Pathfinder policy document that had been presented to presidential contestants blatantly promoted the overall Indian project here. That document comprehensively dealt with five key aspects namely (i) maritime (ii) air (iii) energy and power (iv) trade, economic and financial and (v) land connectivity meant to transform Indo-Lanka relationship to a new level. Pathfinder foundation discussed the developing situation against the backdrop of President Wickremesinghe’s meeting with Indian leader Narendra Modi in New Delhi on July 21, 2023.

Let me stress that ‘Bridging Borders: Enhancing Connectivity between India and Sri Lanka’ is not a secret document but one that can be accessed at (https://pathfinderfoundation.org/images/publications/policy%20papers%20and%20reports/2024/indo%20-%20lanka%20connectivity%20-%20breif%20report.pdf). It gives the reader a clear understanding of what is happening on the ground and status of discussions regarding these projects.

Security factors, concerns

Even ordinary people have expressed serious fears of an outbreak of violence over the coming weekend. The SLPP backing President Ranil Wickremesinghe as well as the SJB have accused the JJB of premeditated violence. The JJB has categorically denied these accusations whereas Kumar Gunaratnam, the General Secretary of the Frontline Socialist Party aka Peratugaami Pakshaya and former military wing member of the JVP has publicly defended their decision to take up arms in 1987, after they were driven underground by the JRJ regime.

The armed forces and police pathetically failed to prevent overthrowing of a democratically elected President with an overwhelming majority in July 2020. Their failure should be discussed taking into consideration extremely serious accusations directed at the military top brass by no less a person than ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The armed forces pathetically failed on May 09/10, 2022 and July 09, 2022, as organized gangs systematically torched properties of SLPP parliamentarians and sometimes those of their close supporters and relatives in many parts of the country with meticulous intelligence, including in the Colombo district.

It would be the responsibility of the armed forces and police to swiftly and decisively tackle any unforeseen post-election situation/development. There cannot be another countrywide security crisis again. The armed forces and police top brass should be directly held responsible for maintaining law and order as the possibility of interested parties resorting to violence cannot be ruled out.

It would be a grave mistake on the part of the National Security Council (NSC), chaired by President Wickremesinghe, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and the Minister in charge of Defence, not to have a specific plan to deal with any eventuality. One might say that such a plan is inevitable and concerns raised by the writer irrelevant. Then, the country needs a clear explanation as to why such a contingency plan hadn’t been implemented especially after mobs caused countrywide destruction on May 09/10, 2020.

The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government mishandled the Rambukkana incident where one person died when police opened fire to prevent a mob from setting fire to a bowser carrying petrol on April 19. 2022. The police arrested the senior officer in charge of the area SSP K.B. Keerthiratne along with three other police personnel for doing their job. That government move sent the wrong signal and the total collapse of the law and order situation in the second week of May, 2022 and again in July, 2022 cannot be discussed without examining the Rambukkana incident.

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Midweek Review

A look back at now mostly forgotten Eelam war in the aftermath of Kashmir massacre

Published

6 days ago

2025/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

LTTE directed two claymore mines at an overcrowded SLTB bus, at Kebithigollewa, on June 15, 2006. The blasts claimed the lives of 68 civilians. Seventeen years after the war, some interested parties sought to muddy the waters by falsely claiming the Karuna faction triggered the Kebithigollewa blasts at the behest of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the
catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army
from NE, Sri Lanka

In a telephone call to Indian Premier Narendra Modi, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake condemned the massacre of 26 civilians – 25 Indians and one Nepali – at Pahalgam, in the Indian controlled Kashmir, on April 22.

President Dissanayake expressed his condolences and reaffirmed, what the President’s Media Division (PMD) called, Sri Lanka’s unwavering solidarity and brotherhood with the people of India.

Having described the massacre as a terrorist attack, New Delhi found fault with Pakistan for the incident. Pakistan was accused of backing a previously unknown group, identified as Kashmir Resistance.

The Indian media have quoted Indian security agencies as having said that Kashmir Resistance is a front for Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Pakistan says it only provides moral and diplomatic support.

Pakistan has denied its involvement in the Pahalgam attack. A section of the Indian media, and some experts, have compared the Pahalgam attack with the coordinated raids carried out by Hamas on southern Israel, in early October 2023.

President Dissanayake called Premier Modi on the afternoon of April 25, three days after the Pahalgam attack. The PMD quoted Dissanayake as having reiterated Sri Lanka’s firm stance against terrorism in all its forms, regardless of where it occurred in the world, in a 15-minute call.

Modi cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia as India took a series of measures against Pakistan. Indian actions included suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) governing water sharing of six rivers in the Indus basin between the two countries. The agreement that had been finalised way back in 1960 survived three major wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999.

One-time Pentagon official Michael Rubin, having likened the Pahalgam attack to a targeted strike on civilians, has urged India to adopt an Israel-style retaliation, targeting Pakistan, but not realising that both are nuclear armed.

Soon after the Hamas raid some interested parties compared Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the ongoing Israel war on Gaza.

The latest incident in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and Gaza genocide, cannot be compared under any circumstances. Therefore, suggestions that India adopt Israel-style retaliation against Pakistan do not hold water. Also, Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE that was brought to a successful conclusion in May 2009 cannot be compared with the conflict Israel is involved in.

Sri Lanka can easily relate to the victims of the Pahalgam attack as a victim of separatist terrorism that bled the country for nearly 30 years. India, however, never bothered to express regret over causing terrorism here.

Indian-sponsored terror projects brought Sri Lanka to its knees before President JRJ made an attempt to eradicate the LTTE in May-June 1987. JRJ resorted to ‘Operation Liberation’ after Indian mediated talks failed to end the conflict. Having forced Sri Lanka to call off the largest-ever ground offensive undertaken at that time with the hope of routing the LTTE in Vadamarachchi, the home turf of Velupillai Prabhakaran, followed by India deploying its Mi 17s on July 24, 1987, to rescue the Tiger Supremo, his wife, two children and several of his close associates – just five days before the signing of the so-called Indo-Lanka peace accord, virtually at Indian gun point.

First phase of Eelam war

During the onset of the conflict here, the LTTE routinely carried out raids on predominantly Sinhala villages where civilians were butchered. That had been part of its strategy approved by ‘controllers’ based across the Palk Straits. That had been a volatile period in the run-up to the July 29, 1987, accord. Although India established half a dozen terrorist groups here, the LTTE had been unquestionably the most violent and the dominant group. To New Delhi’s humiliation all such groups supported by it were wiped out by the marauding Tigers.

Those who compared the LTTE with Hamas, or any other group, conveniently forget that the Sri Lankan group caused significant losses to its creator. India lost over 1,300 officers and men, while nearly 3,000 others suffered injuries during the Indian deployment here (July 1987-March 1990).

The world turned a blind eye to what was going on in Sri Lanka in the ’80s. The war launched by India in the early ’80s against Sri Lanka lasted till the signing of the peace accord. That can be broadly identified as phase one of the conflict (1983 July – 1987 July). That first phase can be safely described as an Indian proxy war aimed at creating an environment conducive for the deployment of the Indian Army.

Having compelled President JRJ to accept deployment of the Indian Army in the northern and eastern regions in terms of the “peace accord”, New Delhi sought to consolidate its hold here by disarming all groups, except the one it had handpicked to run the North-East Provincial Council. The Indian Army oversaw the first Provincial Council election held on Nov. 19, 1988, to elect members to the NE council. The whole exercise was meant to ensure the installation of the Varatharaja Perumal led-EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Forint) administration therein.

The second phase (1987 July – 1990 March) saw a war between the Indian Army and the LTTE. During this period, the Indian Army supervised two national elections – presidential on Dec. 19, 1988, and parliamentary on Feb. 15, 1989, that were won by Ranasinghe Premadasa and the UNP.

During that period, the UNP battled the JVP terror campaign and the South bled. The JVP that resorted to unbridled violence against the Indo-Lanka accord, at that time, has ended-up signing several agreements, including one on defence cooperation, recently, and the country is yet to get details of these secret agreements.

Raid on the Maldives

The second phase of the Eelam conflict ended when India pulled out its Army from NE Sri Lanka in March 1990. The sea-borne raid that had been carried out by Indian-trained PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam) targeting Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in Nov. 1988, is perhaps a significant development during the second phase of the conflict, though it was never examined in the right context.

No one – not even the Maldives – found fault with India for exporting terrorism to the island nation. India received accolades for swift air borne intervention to neutralise the PLOTE group. The Indian Navy sank a vessel commandeered by a section of the PLOTE raiders in a bid to escape back to Sri Lanka. The truth is that PLOTE, that had been trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka, ended-up taking up a lucrative private assignment to overthrow President Gayoom’s administration.

India never regretted the Maldivian incident. It would be pertinent to mention that two boat loads of PLOTE cadres had quietly left Sri Lanka at a time the Indian Navy was responsible for monitoring in and out sea movements.

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army from NE, Sri Lanka.

Resumption of hostilities by the LTTE in June 1990 can be considered as the beginning of the third phase of the conflict. Having battled the Indian Army and gained valuable battle experience, the LTTE, following a 14-month honeymoon with President Ranasinghe Premadasa, resumed hostilities. Within weeks the LTTE gained the upper hand in the northern theatre of operations.

In spite of India banning the LTTE, after the May 1991 assassination of Gandhi, the group continued to grow with the funds pouring in from the West over the years. Regardless of losing Jaffna in 1995, the LTTE consolidated its position, both in the Vanni and the East, to such an extent their victory seemed inevitable.

But resolute political leadership given by Mahinda Rajapaksa ensured that Sri Lanka turned the tables on the LTTE within weeks after the LTTE appeared to be making significant progress at the beginning. Within two years and 10 months (2006 August – 2009 May) the armed forces brought the LTTE to its knees, and the rest is history. As we have said in our earlier columns that victory was soon soured. Spearheaded by Sarath Fonseka, the type of General that a country gets in about once in a thousand years, ended in enmity within, for the simple reason this super hero wanted to collect all the trophies won by many braves.

Post-war developments

Sri Lanka’s war has been mentioned on many occasions in relation to various conflicts/situations. We have observed many distorted/inaccurate attempts to compare Sri Lanka’s war against LTTE with other conflicts/situations.

Unparalleled Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, triggered a spate of comments on Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE. Respected expert on terrorism experienced in Sri Lanka, M.R. Narayan Swamy, discussed the similarities of Sri Lanka’s conflict and the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. New Delhi-based Swamy, who had served UNI and AFP during his decades’ long career, discussed the issues at hand while acknowledging no two situations were absolutely comparable. Swamy currently serves as the Executive Director of IANS (Indo-Asian News Service).

‘How’s Hamas’ attack similar to that of LTTE?’ and ‘Hamas’ offensive on Israel may bring it closer to LTTE’s fate,’ dealt with the issues involved. Let me reproduce Swamy’s comment: “Oct. 7 could be a turning point for Hamas similar to what happened to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka in 2006. Let me explain. Similar to Hamas, the LTTE grew significantly over time eventually gaining control of a significant portion of Sri Lanka’s land and coast. The LTTE was even more formidable than Hamas. It had a strong army, growing air force and a deadly naval presence. Unlike Hamas, the LTTE successfully assassinated high ranking political figures in Sri Lanka and India. Notably, the LTTE achieved this without direct support from any country while Hamas received military and financial backing from Iran and some other states. The LTTE became too sure of their victories overtime. They thought they could never be beaten and that starting a war would always make them stronger. But in 2006 when they began Eelam War 1V their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran couldn’t have foreseen that within three years he and his prominent group would be defeated. Prabhakaran believed gathering tens of thousands of Tamils during the last stages of war would protect them and Sri Lanka wouldn’t unleash missiles and rockets. Colombo proved him wrong. They were hit. By asking the people not to flee Gaza, despite Israeli warnings, Hamas is taking a similar line. Punishing all Palestinians for Hamas’ actions is unjust, just like punishing all Tamils for LTTE’s actions was wrong. The LTTE claimed to fight for Tamils without consulting them and Hamas claimed to represent Palestinians without seeking the approval for the Oct.7 strike. Well, two situations are not absolutely comparable. We can be clear that Hamas is facing a situation similar to what the LTTE faced, shortly before its end. Will Hamas meet a similar fate as the LTTE? Only time will answer that question.” The above was said soon after the Oct. 2023 Hamas attack.

Swamy quite conveniently refrained from mentioning India’s direct role in setting up one of the deadliest terror projects in the world here in the ’80s.

Former Editor of The Hindu, Malini Parthasarathy, who also had served as Chairperson of The Hindu Group, released a list of politicians assassinated by the LTTE, as she hit back hard at those who raged against the comparison of the Hamas to the LTTE. The list included two Jaffna District MPs, Arumugam Murugesu Alalasundaram and Visvanathan Dharmalingam, assassinated in early Sept. 1985. Slain Visvanathan Dharmalingam’s son, Dharmalingam Siddharthan, who represents the Vanni electoral district on the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), is on record as having said that the two MPs were abducted and killed by TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation.) gunmen. The list posted by Parthasarathy included PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, assassinated in Colombo in July 1989. The LTTE hadn’t been involved in that killing either. Maheswaran is believed to have been killed by his onetime associates, perhaps over the abortive PLOTE raid on the Maldives in Nov, 1988. India never bothered at least to acknowledge that the Maldives raid was carried out by men trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka. There is no doubt that Maheswasran’s killers, too, were known to the Indian intelligence at that time.

Before rushing into conclusions regarding Hamas and the LTTE, perhaps a proper examination of the circumstances they emerged is necessary. The two situations – fourth phase of the Eelam conflict and the latest Hamas strike on Israel and the devastating counter attack – cannot be compared under any circumstances. Efforts to compare the two issues is more like comparing apples and oranges, though mutually Tamils and Sinhalese have so many commonalities having intermingled throughout history like the Arabs and Jews.

It is no doubt Jews are a people that suffered persecution throughout known history under Assyrians, Babylonians to Romans and so forth. Such persecution includes expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain 1492. So what Hitler and the Germans did was to take the historic process to another extreme.

Yet to blame the Palestinians and treat them like animals and to simply butcher them for the latest uprising by Hamas for all the humiliations and suffering they have been going through non-stop since Naqba in1948, from the time of the creation of Israel is to allow the creators of the problem, including the UK, the USA and United Nations to wash all their sins on the true other victims of this conflict, the Palestinians.

It would be pertinent to mention that Israel, in spite of having one of the world’s best fighting armed forces with 100 percent backing from the West, cannot totally eradicate Hamas the way Sri Lanka dealt with the LTTE. Mind you we did not drop 2000 pound bombs supplied by the US on hapless Tamil civilians to commit genocide as is happening in Palestine in the hands of the Israelis.

The circumstances under which the LTTE launched a large-scale offensive in Aug. 2006 and its objectives had been very much different from that of Hamas. The LTTE really believed that it could have defeated the Sri Lankan military in the North by cutting off the sea supply route from Trincomalee to Kankesanthurai and simultaneously overrunning the Kilali-Muhamalai-Nagarkovil forward defence line (FDL). The total collapse of the FDL could have allowed the LTTE to eradicate isolated fighting formations trapped north of the FDL. But, in the case of the Gaza war, the Hamas strike was meant to provoke Israel to unleash a massive unbridled counter attack that caused maximum losses on the civilians. As Hamas expected the Israeli counter attack has triggered massive protests in the West against their leaders. They have been accused of encouraging violence against Palestine. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other US allies are under heavy pressure from Muslims and other horrified communities’ world over to take a stand against the US.

But in spite of growing protests, Israel has sustained the offensive action not only against Gaza but Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

Instead of being grateful to those who risked their lives to bring the LTTE terror to an end, various interested parties are still on an agenda to harm the armed forces reputation.

The treacherous Yahapalana government went to the extent of sponsoring an accountability resolution against its own armed forces at the Geneva-based UNHRC in Oct. 2015. That was the level of their treachery.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

The Broken Promise of the Lankan Cinema:

Published

6 days ago

2025/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

Asoka & Swarna’s Thrilling-Melodrama – Part III

“‘Dr. Ranee Sridharan,’ you say. ‘Nice to see you again.’

The woman in the white sari places a thumb in her ledger book, adjusts her spectacles and smiles up at you. ‘You may call me Ranee. Helping you is what I am assigned to do,’ she says. ‘You have seven moons. And you have already waisted one.’”

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

by Shehan Karunatilaka (London: Sort of Books, 2022. p84)

(Continued from yesterday)

Rukmani’s Stardom & Acting Opportunity

Rukmani Devi is still remembered for her incomparable singing voice and her studio photograph by Ralex Ranasinghe with its hint of Film Noir mystery and seduction, and for the role of Blanch Dubois she played in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. This is a role she shared on alternate nights with Irangani Serasinghe in the late 60s or early 70s. (See my Island Essays, 2024, p114) She was immensely happy to be able to act in a modern western classic directed by a visionary theatre director like Dhamma Jagoda and it was to his credit that he chose to give her that role when all acting roles had dried up for her. I observed those rehearsals held at Harrold Peiris’ open garage.

I, too, am happy that Swarna has had a chance to perform again in her 70s. The question is, how exactly has she used that very rare opportunity to act in a film that has doubled its production cost within two months, and now showing in private screenings in multiplexes in Australia with English subtitles, with ambitions to be shown on Netflix and Amazon Prime. These outlets also now fund films and make challenging mini-series. Rani has clearly been produced and marketed with this global distribution in mind. How does this important fact affect Swarna’s style of acting and the aesthetics of Asoka’s script, are the questions I wish to explore in the final section of this piece.

A Sensational-Thrilling Political & Family Melodrama

‘Melodrama’ is a popular genre with a history that goes back to 19th century theatre in the west and with the advent of film, Hollywood took it up as it offered a key set of thrilling devices known as ‘Attractions’, for structuring and developing a popular genre cinema. The word ‘Melodrama’ is a compound of the Greek word for music ‘melos’ and drama as an action, with the connotation of a highly orchestrated set of actions. The orchestration (not only with sound but also the speed and rhythm of editing, dramatic expressive lighting, ‘histrionic’ acting, etc.,) always reaches toward thrilling climaxes and at times exaggerated display of emotions. The plots are sensational, propelled by coincidences and written to reach climaxes and dramatic reversals of fortune, and sudden revelations. Hollywood was famous for its happy endings with resolution of the dramatised conflicts, while Hindi melodramas and Lankan copies often ended sadly.

In the history of cinema there are highly sophisticated melodramas within Hollywood, classical Hindi cinema and also in European art cinema. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the German directors who developed a modern ‘Brechtian-Melodrama’ of extraordinary political and aesthetic power in the 70s. And of course, there are very poorly conceived melodramas too like many of the Sinhala films which were copies of Indian prototypes. Melodramatic devices inflect the different genres of Hollywood, for example the Gangster Film, the Western and created durable genre types in character, e.g. the Gangster, the Lonesome Cowboy and Indians; all national stereotypes, one embodying the underbelly of American capitalism, an anti-hero and the other the American hero actualising The American Dream. ‘The Indian,’ merely the collateral damage of this phantasy!

When the stories were centred on women the genre classification was ‘Women’s Melodrama’ as it dealt with interpersonal relations, conflicts, and sadness centred on the home primarily. Feminist film theory has developed a vast archive of scholarship on the melodramatic genre, cross-culturally, with a special focus on Hollywood and Hindi cinema decades prior to the formation we now call Bollywood, made with transnational capital and global reach. It was assumed that the audience for the family melodramas was female and that as women, we enjoy crying at the cinema, hence the condescending name ‘The Weepies’. I cut my scholarly/critical teeth studying these much-maligned melodramatic films for my doctorate, which I had enjoyed while growing up in a long-ago Ceylon.

Asoka’s Melodramatic Turn

Asoka in Alborada, but more so in Rani has made melodramatic films with his own ‘self-expressive’ variations on the structure, with an ‘Art Cinema’ gloss. He has said that Rani is more like Alborada and unlike his previous films made during the civil war. This is quite obvious. Though the advertising tag line for Alborada claimed it as a ‘Poetic film that Neruda never made’ it was a straightforward narrative film. I have argued in a long essay (‘Psycho-Sexual Violence in the Sinhala Cinema: Parasathumal & Alborada’, in Lamentation of the Dawn, ed. S. Chandrajeewa, 2022, also tr. into Sinhala, 2023), that the staging of the rape of the nameless, silent, Dalit woman is conceived in a melodramatic manner playing it for both critique and exciting thrills. This is a case of both having his cake and eating it.

Swarna’s Melodramatic Turn

The film appears to be constructed, plotted melodramatically, to demonstrate Swarna’s ability to perform dramatic scenes of high excitement in areas of taboo, the opportunity for which is unavailable to a Sinhala actress, in a Sinhala film, playing the role of a Sinhala Buddhist mother, who has lost her son to an act of terror unleashed by the Sinhala-Buddhist State terror and Sinhala-Buddhist JVP.

In short, Swarna has been given the opportunity to demonstrate how well she can perform a range of Melodramatic emotions that go from say A to, say D. She has been given the chance to move smoothly from English to Sinhala as the middle classes do; use the two most common American expletives which are part of the American vernacular; drink for pleasure but also to the point of getting drunk; offer alcohol to her baffled domestic worker; coax her son and friends to drink; dance with them in an inebriated state; pour alcohol, whisky, not arrack, like one would pour water from a bottle; chain smoke furiously; dash a full mug of tea on the floor in a rage; crumple on the floor sobbing uncontrollably; shout at her loyal aid Karu; speak with sarcasm to a police officer insisting that she is ‘Dr Manorani …’ not ‘Miss or Mrs’, like feminists did back in the day; chat intimately with a minister of the government; look angrily and scowl at President Premadasa when he comes to the funeral house to condole with her; stage Richard’s funeral in a Catholic church with a stain glass window of the Pieta; to quote a well-known Psalm of David from the Bible, ‘Oh Absalom my son, Oh my son!’; etc.

Rani is Swarna’s chance to show that she can perform in ways that no Sinhala script has allowed a Sinhala actor to do up to now, that is, behave like the Sinhala cinema’s fantasy of how the upper-class Anglophone Lankan women behave. In short not unlike, but much worse, than the ‘bad girls’ in the Sinhala melodramatic genre cinema who always ended up in a Night Club, the locus of licentiousness that tempt them. I am thinking of Pitisara Kella from the 50s and a host of other films. Sinhala cinema simply cannot convincingly present the upper-class English-speaking milieu, with any nuance and conviction, it just feels very stilted, poorly acted therefore. Saying this is not class snobbery on my part. Even Lester James Peries from this very upper class and a Roman Catholic, in Delowak Atara couldn’t do it with Irangani Serasinghe and others. The dialogue meant to be serious or just plain normal sounded stilted and even funny. But when Lester did the Walauwa as in Nidhahanaya, it was brilliant, one of our classics. Brecht it was who said (on the eve of WW2, creating a Modern Epic mode of theatre in exile, that it’s not easy to make drama about current events. It’s much easier to look back with nostalgia at a genteel aristocratic Sinhala past for sure.

In taking the opportunity to explore kinetic and emotional behaviour considered to be taboo for a Sinhala woman, a fantasy Tamil woman has been fabricated. The plot of Rani is constructed by Asoka to provide Swarna the opportunity to indulge in these very taboos. In short, the fictional Tamil Rani offers Swarna an acting opportunity to improve her career prospects in the future. In so doing she has weakened her ability, I fear, to evolve as an actress.

A Domestic Melodrama: The House Suspended in a Void

If Swarna so desired, if the script ‘allowed her’ to, she could have tried to develop a quieter, more restrained and therefore a more powerful Rani. A friend of the family, when asked, said that, “The most striking feature of Manorani was her quiet, confident dignity, before and after Richard.” To testify to such a person, Asoka and Swarna could have asked the obvious question, did she have any close friendships formed as undergraduates, who supported her during this tragedy, as there certainly were cherished friends who shared her grief. After all, she was among the elite first generations of Ceylonese women to enter University in the 1940, to medical school at that!

Asoka and Swarna have entrapped their Rani in a vacuum of a house, friendless, with a little cross on Richard’s wall to signify religion. A lot of effort has gone into the set decoration and art direction of the house, as in Alborada, to stage a fantasy/phantasy melodramatic scenario. There is no real sensory, empathetic feel and understanding of the ethos (character), of this urbane Anglophone Ceylonese-Lankan mother and son, hence the fictionalised scenarios feel synthetic, cosmetic in the best traditions of the Sinhala genre cinema’s representation of the ‘excessive and even grotesque upper-class’. Except, here the Realism of the mise-en-scene (the old-world airy house and furniture and composition of the visual components) makes claims to a realist authenticity. A little modest research would have shown that Manorani and Richard moved from one rented apartment to another in the last few years of his life and when he was abducted, lived on the upper-floor of a house, in a housing estate in Rajagiriya. Asoka said in an interview that it wasn’t possible to find in Colombo the kind of old house they required for Rani. So, they went out of town to find the ideal house suited to stage their phantasy.

I suspect that it was Swarna who called shots this time, not Asoka who was recovering from a serious illness. He said that she brought the project to him and the producer and that he had no idea of making a film on Manorani, but added that he wrote the script within 3 months. I suspect that this Rani, (this out of control, angry, scowling, bad tempered, lamenting, hysterical Rani, reaching for the alcohol and cigarettes to assuage her grief, performing one sensational, thrilling melodramatic turn after another), was Swarna’s conception, her version of Manorani that she has nursed for 28 long years. Had she resisted this temptation to display her high-intensity acting-out skills yet again, she might just have been able to tap unsuspected resources within herself which she may still have as a serious actress. Its these latent affective depths that Rukmani Devi undoubtedly tapped when she was invited to play the drunken and lost Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire in Sinhala, as a desperate, drunken, aristocratic lady, in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu (1971?).

Jagoda / Irangani

It is reported that before going on stage, Rukmani Devi went on her hands and knees to pay her respects to Dhamma, not as feudal act of deference but to acknowledge his Shilpiya Nuwana, craft knowledge/intelligence’, as one very perceptive Sinhala critic put it. That gesture of Vandeema was foreign to the Tamil Christian Rukmani Devi, but nevertheless it shows her sense of immense gratitude to Dhamma for having taken her into a zone of expression (a dangerous territory emotionally for dedicated vulnerable actors), that she had never experienced before, so late in her life. But ‘late’ is relative to gender, then she was only in her 50s!

Challenge is what serious actors yearn for, strange beings who may suggest to us intensities that sustain and amplify life, all life. Swarna might usefully think about Rukmani Devi, her life and her star persona as a Tamil star in countless sarala Sinhala films, in whose shadow and echo every single Sinhala actress has entered the limelight, Swarna more so now than any other!

As for Asoka, he needs to rest and take care of himself before he commits himself to this recent track of films which are yielding less and less with each of the two films done back to back. His body of work is too important to trash it with this kind of half thought out ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, which is a precise definition of Melodrama at its best. This film, alas, is not one of those.

That young Tamil women, often silent and traumatised, appeared following Sinhala soldiers in Lankan ‘civil-war cinema’ of the modernists, all male, is a troubling phenomenon. A ‘Sinhala Orientalism’, an exoticising of Tamil and Dalith young women as Other, is at work in some of the civil war films, as in Alborada and Rani. And then this very elevation always leads to unleashing psycho/sexual and/or other forms of violence, because the elevation (Mother Goddess in Alborada) only feeds violent male psychosexual phantasies, which in the Sinhala cinema often leads to the violence of rape and other forms of violence towards women, both Tamil and Sinhala. (To be continued)

by Laleen Jayamanne