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Midweek Review

An Amendment like no other!

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British Tamils protest in Downing Street, in London, in January 2022 against the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka's Constitution. They demanded an end to the country's unitary status and total withdrawal of police and armed forces from the Northern and Eastern Provinces. They declared that devolution, within the existing Constitution, is not acceptable. Tamil sources say that position hasn't been changed (pic courtesy Tamil Guardian)

At the time President J. R. Jayewardene, at the behest of India, enacted the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, the country was on fire. A massive blast at Maradana claimed the lives 30 civilians a few days before Parliament enacted the law. The then SLFP leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike, in a special statement, explained why the 13th Amendment shouldn’t be enacted, especially against the backdrop of the stand taken by five out of nine members of the Supreme Court, in respect of the relevant Bill. Close on the heels of Indian intervention here, the then proscribed Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) launched its second insurrection. The Supreme Court that was sharply divided on the 13th Amendment, however, allowed the law to be passed on the basis the Parliament, with a two-thirds majority, could do away with it.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) is being wooed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa and Jathika Jana Balawegaya (JJB) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake seeking its endorsement at the forthcoming Presidential Poll.

The ITAK, widely known as the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has received repeated assurances as regards the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, enacted in late 1987. Wickremesinghe is yet to officially announce his candidature at the forthcoming Presidential Poll and two other main contenders – Premadasa and AKD, too, are keen to reach consensus with the ITAK as quickly as possible.

For them, ITAK’s endorsement is of crucial importance. The ITAK, consisting of 10 MPs, is widely believed to be divided over the polls strategy, particularly at a time the major candidates have declared commitment to the full implementation of the contentious piece of legislation.

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) is now in two minds as to throw its weight behind Wickremesinghe or field a candidate of its own, and will have to state its position on the 13th Amendment without further delay.

The only political grouping to publicly declare its opposition to the 13th Amendment is the Sarvajana Balaya consisting of the National Freedom Front (NFF), Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU), Mawbima Janatha Party (MJP), Democratic Left Front (DLF), Communist Party (CP), Yuthukama, et al. That grouping is yet to officially announce its presidential candidate though there is widespread belief that MJP leader, entrepreneur Dilith Jayaweera, eyes the candidature.

Whatever the consequences, serious candidates will have to deal with the issue at hand, pragmatically. Fifteen years after the conclusion of the war, the 13th Amendment, that had been forced on Sri Lanka by India in line with the latter’s overall strategy meant to establish an administration in the merged North-East Province beholden to India, is the eye of the storm, so to speak.

It would be pertinent to mention that in addition to the 10 seats won by the ITAK, the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP/two seats), Ahila Ilankai Thamil Congress (AITC/two seats), Thamil Makkal Thesiya Kuttani (TMTK/ one seat) and Thamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP/one seat) won altogether six seats.

The EPDP and TMVP are certain to back President Wickremesinghe’s candidature whereas there is uncertainty regarding the likely stand of TMTK and AITC. Former parliamentarian M.K. Sivajilingam’s recent declaration that he would contest the Presidential Poll unless Tamil political parties agreed on a common candidate, however, is unlikely to influence the Tamil electorate with his one man show.

Therefore, Tamil political parties, too, are under tremendous pressure to take an informed decision. TNA parliamentarian Mathiaparanan Abraham Sumanthiran, PC, publicly regretted the joint LTTE-TNA decision that caused Ranil Wickremesinghe’s defeat at the 2005 Presidential Poll. At the time the ITAK announced the polls boycott order, on behalf of the LTTE, it had 22 seats representing the Northern and Eastern electoral districts. Today, the ITAK is down to just 10 seats with serious differences of opinion causing overall deterioration of its standing among the Tamil community.

Unfortunately, major candidates, in their undue haste to reach agreement with the ITAK, appeared to have failed to conduct proper assessment of the ground situation.

Furious reaction

Lt. Gen (retd) Jagath

Lt. General (retd) Jagath Dias, the former Army Chief of Staff, insists that the country’s unitary status cannot be diluted, under any circumstances. Commenting on the recent political developments, the Gajaba Regiment veteran asserted that no political party exercised the power, whatsoever, to negotiate with the ITAK/TNA, or any other party, regarding the country’s unitary status.

An irate former General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the 57 Division, that had been tasked with liberating Kilinochchi, emphasized the responsibility on the part of all political parties to revisit the 13th Amendment as that piece of legislation in its entirety is illegal. “The issue is the 13th Amendment. Therefore, it should be repealed. Repealed without delay. Those who find fault with the granting of police and land powers, in terms of the 13th Amendment, are playing politics with the issue,” Lt. Gen. Dias said. “Shame on them. They should be ashamed of themselves for bending backwards to appease the ITAK/TNA that surrendered its own authority to the now defunct LTTE,” Dias declared.

Recalling the infamous Indian ‘parippu’ drop in June 1987 over Jaffna, Jagath Dias, who had been engaged in ‘Operation Liberation’ to regain control of the Vadamaratchchy region at the time, questioned the legality of the 13th Amendment, enacted under controversial circumstances. In fact, the first phase of ‘Operation Liberation’ had been completed with Dias, at Vasavilan, with his battalion.

The war veteran stressed that those who sought to woo the Tamil electorate, by granting them police and land powers, should at least bother to examine the origins of terrorism here and the enactment of the 13th Amendment.

The writer, too, firmly believe Lt. General Dias’s assertion that India launched its terrorism project here to create an environment conducive for the introduction of legislation aimed at meeting their objectives. Now, 15 years after the eradication of terrorism, Sri Lanka is still struggling to deal with a law that was enacted to appease those seeking a Federal system of government here.

Lt. Gen. Dias stressed that he questioned the rationale in retaining the 13th Amendment in the draft Constitution prepared during Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s tenure as the President (2019 Nov-July 2022).

That draft Constitution proposed to do away with a separate Provincial Council election and to constitute Provincial Councils with those elected separately out of those who contest for Local Authorities which shall constitute 70% members and the balance 30% nominated proportionately, based on the votes obtained by parties at the Local Authority Elections. It was proposed that every elector should be entitled to vote to elect a Local Authority member to represent the ward he is residing and to elect a Provincial Council member to represent his Local Authority, from among the members contesting in his Local Authority area.

Having been a frontline combat officer with the famed Gajaba Regiment with Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Dias is one of the very few senior retired officers who threw his weight behind nationalistic groups, though he kept out of politics.

“If we are really serious about enacting a new Constitution, the country should do so. It should reflect the post-war ground situation. We eradicated the LTTE’s conventional power for once and for all. That is the reality. Tamil political parties should realize that. The major political parties shouldn’t pursue the same old agenda meant to woo the Tamil electorate. What all political parties represented in Parliament must, without fail ,understand is that the Constitution should reflect the post-war situation and without allowing minority groups to hold the country hostage to their parochial interests.”

Having served the Army for over 35 years, Dias retired in Dec 2015. He kept quite a low profile though, a couple of years ago, he declared support for a Sangha led grouping, the Coalition Against Partition of Sri Lanka campaigning against the 13th Amendment. Lt. Gen Dias served as its Convener.

“Let me explain what political parties shouldn’t do. There should be general consensus among them that the 13th Amendment cannot be utilized as a tool to win over the Northern electorate. They should be told of the situation in the post-LTTE scenario.”

Difficult path ahead

Political parties are seeking to advance their despicable agendas at war-winning Sri Lanka’s expense. The SLFP-led coalition that provided leadership during the war is no more. Instead, we have the SLPP, led by war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa, but trapped in Ranil Wickremesinghe’s machinations.

Wickremesinghe, who had been one of the architects of the one-sided 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), which was signed in secrecy with the LTTE that brought us closer to the brink of unprecedented catastrophe, seems confident of securing the TNA’s endorsement. The UNP leader obviously has the edge over both the SJB and JJB/JVP leaders as he had previously worked closely with the ITAK/TNA. What would the ITAK/TNA prefer, the full implementation of the 13th Amendment or a much wider devolution package, something that can be safely called 13+?

The JJB/JVP declaration in support of the 13th Amendment is certainly a triumph for the devolution lobby. Having waged a murderous campaign in the ’80s against, what the JVP then called expansionist Indian strategy here, the Marxist party, possibly spoilt by filthy lucre of the decadent West, has now donned business suits to globetrot and conveniently amended its policy, forgetting the needless blood it shed. Probably, the JJB/JVP has realized the extreme difficulty in advancing their political agenda and amended strategy in the run-up to the public protest campaign aka Aragalaya, launched in March 2022.

The acceptance of the 13th Amendment, as well as the post-Aragalaya relationship with India and the US, should be considered in line with the change in the JJB/JVP overall strategy to suit the times.

Did the Expert Committee, appointed by ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in late 2020, to formulate a new draft Constitution, properly deal with the 13th Amendment? The group, headed by Romesh de Silva, PC, produced a draft Constitution, though there were divergent views on Provincial Council polls held in terms of the 13th Amendment. The Expert Committee proposed some far reaching changes to the existing system but still a section of the nationalist group opposed the move. General Dias is one of those critics who believed the 13th Amendment should be repealed. But, that seems implausible for obvious reasons.

Professor A. Sarveswaran, a member of Romesh de Silva’s Committee, is of the view that the structure, introduced by the 13th Amendment, should be retained. Others disagreed. Professor G.H. Peiris, Manohara de Silva PC and Samantha Ratwatte PC asserted that the 13th Amendment is prejudicial to the independence, sovereignty, unitary character, territorial integrity, and national security of the State. They favoured the repealing of the Provincial Councils, established under the 13th Amendment. The overwhelming majority of those who made representations before Romesh de Silva’s Committee supported a unitary state and were against the Provincial Council structure introduced by the 13th Amendment. But, in the run-up to the presidential poll, major parties/alliances seemed to be in favour of the Provincial Council polls. Sarvajana Balaya appeared to be the only group taking a different view.

The section of Romesh de Silva’s Committee report, that dealt with 13th Amendment is evidence that the issue at hand remained unresolvable in the foreseeable future. Manohara de Silva has explained how their proposals effected far reaching changes to the existing Provincial Council system but those opposed to the concept seemed hell-bent on getting rid of it.

Karu for 13A

With the Presidential Poll just a couple of months away, former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, in his capacity as the Chairman of the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ), has declared his support for SJB leader Premadasa’s anticipated promise to fully implement the 13th Amendment. The UK headquartered Global Tamil Forum (GTF) that has been engaged in a controversial reconciliatory moves with the backing of a section of Maha Sangha, too, supports the SJB leader’s move. Taking a common stand on the SJB’s leader’s declaration, the NMSJ and GTF are pushing for political parties represented in Parliament to build on the SJB leader’s declaration.

Premadasa, the first Opposition Leader to make such a declaration, is quite confident of the SJB campaign. Close on the heels of Premadasa’s Kilinochchi declaration and subsequent meeting with the ITAK/TNA leadership, rebel SLPPer and former External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris was in Jaffna to promote Premadasa’s candidature. The former academic declared, in Jaffna, that unlike other leaders (an obvious reference to Wickremesinghe and AKD), Premadasa wouldn’t make empty promises.

The stand taken by the NMSJ and GTF matter, but whatever the political parties represented in Parliament and various other groups aligned with them say in respect of 13th Amendment, it would be pertinent to examine public sentiments.

Did the enactment of the 13th Amendment, in late 1987, make a difference in the lives of Tamil speaking people? That should be examined, taking into consideration that the LTTE shunned the Provincial Council system and the Tamil speaking people, living in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, had no qualms in overwhelmingly voting at the 2010 Presidential Poll for General Fonseka whose Army crushed the Tiger terrorists’ formidable conventional fighting capabilities in the battlefield itself in 2009. Had the Rajapaksas listened to the West and allowed the Tiger Supremo Prabhakaran and the rest of his inner circle to be rescued by the West we would still be wracked by their terror. The country should be ever grateful to the Rajapaksas for rescuing the country from terrorism, while bringing forth unprecedented development projects to the country at the same time, whatever their detractors, paid for by the West, say about them.

In spite of bombastic declarations by some Tamil politicians and Tamil Diaspora groups over the years, Tamil public participation at the Mullivaikkal commemorative event, in May, has apparently deteriorated with each passing year. Over the years, the public appeared to have realized that various interested parties played politics with the issues at hand and pre-poll talks on the 13th Amendment formed part of their agenda.

Premadasa earned the wrath of Sarvajana Balaya with former ministers Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila and Gevindu Cumaratunga mercilessly attacking the proposal. They warned of dire consequences in case the Provincial Councils were granted police and land powers. They shouldn’t forget that years ago, the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa, during his second term, declared his readiness to grant 13+. What did he really mean by it?



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Midweek Review

Ranil in Head-to-Head controversy

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Wickremesinghe responds to Hasan during the controversial interview recorded in London

Former Commander-in-Chief and ex-President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s inadequate defence of the war-winning armed forces underscores the failure on the part of successive governments to address war crimes allegations. Wickremesinghe’s responses highlighted Sri Lanka’s collective and pathetic failure to defend its armed forces. The country missed an opportunity to question the absurdity of UN war crimes accusations based on claims by persons who couldn’t be questioned till 2030 as a result of shocking confidentiality clauses in the Panel of Experts’ report. Imagine a one sided trial where you cannot cross examine your accusers for 30 long years. No wonder much of the world is increasingly demanding urgent reforms in the United Nations as much of its system is rigged by the collective West since its formation.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Al Jazeera’s Head-to-Head presenter Mehdi Hasan and former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in an interview recorded in February but released last week, dealt with the conclusion of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 without referring to the origins of terrorism here, while prolonging the narrative we were the bad guys throughout and not a word about the LTTE and how it terrorised this country for about 30 years.

The chosen audience at London’s Conway Hall, too, conveniently refrained from bringing up accountability on the part of India in sponsoring terrorism, beginning early ’80s. The issue is would there have been Mullivaikkal bloodshed if India didn’t step in here to pacify Tamil Nadu sentiments? Separatist terrorism received extensive backing in the West and there couldn’t be a better example than the LTTE being allowed to operate its International Secretariat in London, even after it assassinated former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, while campaigning in Tamil Nadu.

The discussion covered heavy defeat suffered by Wickremesinghe at the last year’s presidential election, still unfinished investigations into the 2019 Easter bombings, the failure on his part to prosecute the Rajapaksas, as well as why punitive measures weren’t taken against Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and unleashing the military on Aragalaya immediately after Parliament elected him President, in July 2022.

Hasan had conveniently forgotten that Wickremesinghe earlier threw his weight behind Aragalaya . Harin Fernando, who had been a SJB member of Parliament at the time of the Aragalaya, is on record as having said that Wickremesinghe directed him to join the campaign to oust Gotabaya Rajapaksa. One-time UNP MP Prof. Ashu Marasinghe, too, disclosed the UNP’s role in Aragalaya.

UK-born British-American broadcaster Hasan aggressively pushed Wickremesinghe on the accountability issues while the UNP leader, at least ended up defending General Shavendra Silva, the wartime General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the celebrated 58 Division (former Task Force 1) accused by the US and UN of perpetrating war crimes without providing any evidence.

Wickremesinghe should have exploited the reference made by the audience to the 1983 violence directed at the Tamil community to remind the world of the events leading to the unprecedented riots. Let me stress that no right thinking person would condone targeting civilians, under any circumstances. However, the country wouldn’t have erupted in July 1983 if not for the Indian military training Tamil terrorist groups and for some inexplicable reason, most probably out of fear, the failure on the part of JRJ to nip the riots in the bud. There were also some extreme elements of the UNP, led by its notorious trade union arm JSS, that perpetrated some of the violence. Some in the police, too, played a part in encouraging rioters, often to make a killing for themselves by taking part of the looted items. President Jayewardene even failed to address the issue for several days. The 1983 riots should be always examined, taking into consideration how the Indian trained LTTE terrorists successfully attacked an Army patrol at Thinnaweli, Jaffna. Of the 14-man contingent, only one survived. There had never been such a devastating attack on the Army, though there were sporadic small arms attacks on police.

Strangely, Hasan and Wickremesinghe discussed war crimes, atrocities and war-related allegations without once referring to the war waged by the Indian Army in the Northern and Eastern regions as if Indians were sacred cows. The audience, too, remained silent. Those who had been demanding accountability on the part of Sri Lanka never once questioned India’s culpability or the innumerable acts of terrorism resorted to by the LTTE, probably taking more Tamil lives, especially those of its rivals and moderate Tamils, who dared to speak up, than the number of security forces personnel and innocent Sinhalese civilians it killed. The fact that India suffered 1,300 officers and men killed and nearly 3,000 others wounded in encounters with the LTTE during July 1987-March 1990 deployment of its euphemistically called Indian Peace Keeping Force here proved the massive security crisis New Delhi helped to create here.

Have you ever heard of anyone seeking an explanation from New Delhi for the 1988 PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam) raid on the Maldives? Indian trained PLOTE cadres carried out the sea-borne operation, targeting the then Maldivian leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom at the behest of influential Maldivian Abdulla Luthufee. Would Hasan, born to parents from Hyderabad, and nine at the time of the PLOTE raid, dared to question India’s culpability. We haven’t heard anyone demanding to know the identities of those who perished in the failed Maldivian operation or Sri Lankan Tamils killed in India after the assassination of its one-time Premier Rajiv Gandhi by a teenage suicide bomber in Tamil Nadu.

Seasoned politician Wickremesinghe could have taken advantage of the Head-to-Head ‘show’ to set the record straight in the presence of Frances Harrison, former BBC-Sri Lanka correspondent, Director of International Truth and Justice Project and author of ‘Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War,’ and Dr. Madura Rasaratnam, Executive Director of PEARL (People for Equality and Relief in Lanka), that was formed in 2005 in the run-up to the Eelam War IV (2006 August to 2009 May). The other panelist was former UK and EU MP and Wickremesinghe’s presidential envoy, Niranjan Joseph de Silva Deva Aditya whose interventions didn’t help Wickremesinghe at all. Aditya’s declaration towards the tail end of the 49-minute programme that Wickremesinghe caused a devastating split in the LTTE, in 2003, during Oslo arranged talks, seemed absurd.

Addressing a hastily arranged press conference in Colombo, Wickremesinghe alleged that the husband of Executive Director, PEARL and senior lecturer at City University of London Dr. Madura Rasaratnam, had been an associate of LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham. Wickremesinghe asked her to correct him if he was wrong. It would have been better if Wickremesinghe reminded that the late Balasingham had been a British citizen and his Australian-born wife Adele, who promoted recruitment of child soldiers and appeared in LTTE ‘uniform’ and garlanded LTTE female soldiers with their trade mark cyanide capsule, which they always carried around their necks, as they passed out after undergoing training for propaganda purposes. She is now living in the UK, so perhaps Al Jazeera can interview Adele about her sordid role in marching those girls, many of them being underage, to a certain gory death, especially in the event of being captured, as they had been ordered by the LTTE to bite their cyanide capsules.

Hasan accused the Sri Lankan military of depriving the Tamil people of food, medicine and other basic essentials during the war. Unfortunately, former president and six-time Premier Wickremesinghe pathetically failed to counter often repeated lies. Had Wickremesinghe perused the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts (PoE) report (read Darusman report) released in 2011, he could have comfortably defended the war-winning military. The UN report acknowledged that the ICRC (International Committee for Red Cross)-run ships evacuated the wounded and the WFP (World Food Programme) sent food to Puthumathalan until the very end. Though the programme is headlined Head-to Head, our ex-President pathetically failed to counter Hasan with credible answers on one-sided questions raised by the interviewer.

Forgotten Lord Naseby’s disclosure

It would be pertinent to mention that Wickremesinghe’s UNP never backed our fighting the Eelam War IV. The UNP quite confidently thought the LTTE could never be defeated, militarily. Actually, the UNP humiliated the military and questioned Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka’s suitability to lead the Army. One of its top rung Ministers, the late Mangala Samaraweeer,a even claimed in public that Fonseka was not fit even to lead the Salvation Army, that would have been a case of USAID money disbursed underhand to people like him, working overtime.

Hasan accusing Wickremesinghe of defending the military and the Rajapaksas seemed ridiculous against the backdrop of the latter’s treacherous co-sponsorship of an accountability resolution against one’s own security forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) by his government.

Then Premier Wickremesinghe teamed up with Yahapalana President Maithripala Sisisena to betray the warwinning military. In line with a backdoor agreement with the US and Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Yahapalana government agreed to establish hybrid war crimes mechanism to investigate alleged war crimes.

The former President could have used Lord Naseby’s disclosure of confidential wartime British High Commission dispatches from Colombo to question Hasan and the audience on war dead. Both British diplomatic cables and a UN report that had dealt with war dead placed the figure between 7,000 and 8,000 whereas the PoE estimated 40,000 dead. Wickremesinghe couldn’t have been unaware of Lord Naseby’s revelation and the much discussed Colombo based US Defence Attaché Colonel Lawrence Smith’s declaration at the first ever Colombo Defence seminar, in 2011, regarding claims of planned surrender by a section of the LTTE. The writer was present at the event when Smith responded to questions raised by Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, who had served as the Indian commander in charge of the Barricaloa-Ampara sector during the 1987-1988 period.

“Hello, may I say something to a couple of questions raised. I’ve been the Defence Attaché here at the US Embassy since June 2008. Regarding the various versions of events that came out in the final hours and days of the conflict — from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE — Nadesan, KP — people who weren’t and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE.

“So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real.

“And I think the same is true for the version of events. It’s not so uncommon in combat operations, in the fog of war, as we all get our reports second, third and fourth hand from various commanders at various levels that the stories don’t seem to all quite match up.

“But I can say that the version presented here so far in this is what I heard as I was here during that time. And I think I better leave it at that before I get into trouble”, he said.

No point in blaming Wickremesinghe for not exploiting such available information in the public domain when the warwinning team (read Rajapaksa governments) shamefully failed to mount an effective counter attack. The Rajapaksas were always in denial mode and never really wanted to address issues in a methodical way. Instead of using all available information to mount an effective defence, the Rajapaksa government squandered millions of USD for propaganda efforts in the US.

Wickremesinghe should have mentioned before the Conway Hall WikiLeaks revelations pertained to the war. WikiLeaks revealed a US dispatch that quoted ICRC Head of Operations for South Asia Jacques de Maio as having told US Ambassador in Geneva, Clint Williamson, though there had been serious violations of International Humanitarian Law, there was no genocide.

Perhaps, one of the most significant declarations that had been made by de Maio was that the Army actually could have won the military battle faster with higher civilian casualties, yet chose a slower approach which led to a greater number of Sri Lankan military deaths. Obviously Wickremesinghe hadn’t been aware of developments he should have been conversant with and as a result the former President couldn’t hit back hard.

How could Yahapalana Premier Wickremesinghe fail to mention two mega lies that had been propagated during his tenure, but subsequently exposed? High profile accusations regarding Mannar mass graves accepted no less a person than UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet and the then Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran’s claim of the Army poisoning over 100 LTTE cadres in custody proved to be nothing but lies.

The Fonseka factor

Wickremesinghe could have mentioned conscription of children by the LTTE and indiscriminate use of women in high intensity battles, particularly in the Northern theatre. The ex-President failed to do so. Perhaps, Wickremesinghe should have reminded the Conway Hall crowd that the people of the Northern and Eastern Provinces had clearly disregarded unsubstantiated war crimes accusations by overwhelmingly voting for retired General Sarath Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. Although Fonseka lost by a staggering 1.8 mn votes, he comfortably won eight predominately Tamil-speaking administrative districts, including Jaffna, just nine months after the conclusion of the war.

War crimes allegations ended up in a wastepaper basket the day the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), one-time LTTE mouthpiece, declared its support for Fonseka. Against the backdrop of the TNA backing Fonseka, whose Army had been accused of human rights violations on a massive scale, often repeated allegations seemed untenable.

Wickremesinghe cannot, under any circumstances, forget that episode as it was his project that brought UNP-TNA-JVP-SLMC and CWC together in 2010. WikiLeaks exposed US dispatches from Colombo pertaining to the US hand in the political project.

We haven’t heard of PEARL or any other organization with similar vision requesting the LTTE to release civilians held during the last phase of the fighting as a human shield by the besieged LTTE. Having forced over 300,000 people to accompany retreating LTTE units, they used them as human shields. The bottom line is that the Diaspora remained blind to civilian sufferings as long as they felt the LTTE could deliver a knockout blow to the Army on the Vanni east front. Canada-based veteran journalist, D. B. S Jayaraj, then considered as an authority on the conflict by many, confidently predicted, in late Dec. 2008, an impending devastating LTTE counter attack and the rolling back of the Army. Then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had been a frontline combat officer during his entire military career till he retired in the early ’90s , told the writer at the time that the LTTE was not in a position to reverse the situation. Within two weeks, the Army overran Kilinochchi, the headquarters of the LTTE. That was the end of the story.

Wickremesinghe and none of those seated at the Conway Hall ever anticipated the fall of Kilinochchi in early January 2009 and the total collapse of the Tiger fighting formations, within five months.

RW’s response to Aragalaya

Hasan questioned Wickremesinghe regarding his response to Aragalaya as well as what was known as the Batalanda torture camp that existed in the late’ 80s.

Hasan never sought Wickremesinghe’s opinion on the alleged US role in Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ousting, in spite of recent US declarations about USAID interventions in many parts of the world and accusations the US intervened in support of Aragalaya. Interestingly, Hasan found fault with Wickremesinghe for ordering the military to restore law and order while the former President recalled massive destruction caused by Aragalaya and the bid to storm Parliament. Wickremesinghe reminded Hasan how Aragalaya activists killed SLPP parliamentarian Amarakeerthi Atukorale at Nittambuwa. Atukorale was the last MP killed in violence. The LTTE and the JVP killed over 50 serving and ex-parliamentarians and many lesser politicians.

Batalanda operation, whether we like it or not, had been in line with President JRJ counter insurgency strategy at a time the JVP threatened to overwhelm the UNP-led dictatorial government, taking advantage of the Indo-Lanka accord and the deployment of the Indian Army here to inspire violence. Countries that had been threatened by terrorism adopted controversial measures such as ‘extraordinary rendition’ (apprehending/kidnapping suspected terrorists and detain them in countries where torture is widely practiced. The US-led operation received the backing of many countries, including the UK and Sri Lanka).

The second JVP insurrection had to be crushed, whatever the consequences were, though President JRJ should be held responsible for the catastrophic political measures that plunged the country into turmoil. Wickremesinghe had been a member of JRJ’s Cabinet and should be held collectively responsible for the mayhem the then President caused.

Proscription of the JVP in the run-up to the 1982 presidential election and the postponement of parliamentary election that was to be held in 1983 to 1989 caused resentment among all communities and set the stage for terrorist campaigns in the North and the South. The UNP that had caused so much political destruction is today represented in Parliament by just one MP (CWC member as the party contested under the Elephant symbol).

Wickremesinghe should be grateful to Hasan for not asking him to explain how under his watch the UNP deteriorated to such an extent that it was reduced to zero in Parliament. It would have been better if Hasan asked Wickremesinghe to explain why the Yahapalana administration from 2015 to 2019 borrowed billions of dollars from the international bond market, at high interest, and contributed to the economic bankruptcy of the country in 2022.

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Midweek Review

Guru Geethaya:

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A Melancholic Song for Public Education and Social Enlightenment

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

Guru Geethaya , the song of a teacher, the Sinhala version of Chingiz Aitmatov’s famous novel, The First Teacher, is one of the most inspirational novels among Sinhala readers. Rendered to Sinhala by the veteran translator, Dedigama V. Rodrigo, the novel entered the Sinhala literary scene through the admirable efforts of the Progress Publishers of the former Soviet Union. And like many other Russian and Soviet classics, Guru Geethaya was available at a cheap price. Progress Publishers must be commended for that service. With the fall of the Soviet Union, one of the phenomenal entities that shaped our literary knowledge and taste, the Progress Publishers fell apart. Now, those Russian classics are not easily available, certainly not at an affordable price.  Perhaps, a separate essay must be written about the progressive contribution that the Progress Publishers made to enrich Sinhala literary culture. And of course, those Russian classics were translated into Tamil as well.

Sinhala film of a Soviet Novel

  Upali Gamlath has made a Sinhala film out of Guru Geethaya, and after waiting in line for many years, the film was recently released. It was heartening to see a sizable audience attended an evening show of Guru Geethaya last weekend at Kandy. I came to know that the film was doing well. Guru Geethaya, the film, regardless of its quality as a work of art, must continue to attract audiences, and it has potential to contribute to the rebuilding of the Sinhala film industry.

 As a work of art, I have mixed feelings about Guru Geethaya. After all, it is the first film by the director. Here and there, there are glimpses of cinematic excellence. The actors in the leading role make an admirable effort to create the Duishen and Altynai, one of the best-known fictional couples in the Sinhala literary world.  The Sinhala film version of the novel focuses mostly on the latent romantic relationship between the central couple. When Duishen arrives in this remote Kirgiz village in 1924 to establish a school, Altynai was just fourteen years old, and Duishen is, perhaps, in his late twenties. Just seven years after the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union is in the process of propagating modern education even to distant villages in massive Soviet Russia.  This idealist young teacher from the communist party wants the children of these backward hinterlands to receive modern education. When he arrives there, both parents and children of these mountains are illiterate and trapped in a tribal mode of existence. If there is anything called ‘education’ they have received, it is the religious dogma passed on to them by Islamic mullahs.

Youthful Idealism

   In an extremely patriarchal world, a fourteen-year-old girl, an orphan, living under the oppression of distant relatives, Altynai has no hope for a happy future.  And there is no hope for modern education. Right at that moment, Duishen arrives at the village as an agent of the Russian revolution and as a harbinger of revolutionary modernity. He is passionate about establishing a school there. By the third decade of the twentieth century, education is a right, and every child born into this world must be educated. In Soviet Russia, educating the Russian population was a goal of the revolution. ‘Abolition of illiteracy’ was a revolutionary goal often articulated by Lenin himself.

    Among those village kids, only Altynai can share the idealism of Duishen. She has never known a school. But she instinctively knows that education is something desirable and the only way to get out of the trap of ignorance and poverty. In that male-dominated world ruled by Mullah-ethics, she is sold to be the second wife of a much older man. Duishen must liberate the girl from those uncultured men before she is sent away to Moscow for an education institute newly established by the Soviet government. The teacher manages to get her away those men but not before she was abducted and raped.

    This slim novel, less than one hundred pages, captures the essence of what the agents of revolution had to face when modernising distant Soviet lands. Of course, they had to engage in this process of social development while the liberal West led by the US, and the religious West, led by the Catholic church, were unitedly working to defeat the revolution. Ironically, the Russian revolution shared many ideals of Western modernity. For example, the liberal West could have supported what people like Duishen were doing in these remote Kirgiz villages in the 1920s. But geopolitics did not work that way, especially during the cold war. It may be cold, but it was certainly ‘war’, and the West was so sure of it. We may have all kinds of issues about the brutality of Stalinist Russia, but the early idealism of the Russian revolution represented in this slim novel, The First Teacher or, Guru Geethaya, has been so inspirational for many of us in the developing world.

   Growing up as a son of a working-class family in rural Sri Lanka, I would not have become a professor at a university without the free education system of our country. When I first read Guru Geethaya as a teenager in the mid 1980s, I literally fell in love with the novel. Of course, like many others, I too idealised the teacher, Duishen. Many years later, I learned that there were greater novels. Even among Russian novels, this is not the greatest. I would rate Doctor Zhivago, a critique of revolutionary violence and idealism, much higher than Guru Geethaya. Aitmatov himself has written greater novels- many of which have been translated into Sinhala. But people adore this slim novel about a devoted teacher. Perhaps, the love for our free education system is unconsciously projected onto Duishen. Sinhala people often liken good schoolteachers to Duishen.

    As I said earlier, the focus of Upali Gamlath’s film version of the novel is on the unexpressed romantic love between Duishen and Altynai. In the novel as a man of revolution and as an adult, Dushen controls his emotions about the pretty and intelligent Altynai. In the Sinhala film, his love is much more pronounced though never expressed in words. In the novel, Altynai from her Moscow school writes a letter to Duishen expressing her love. We do not get to know whether he ever received it. By this time, World War II was around the corner, or the war had already arrived, and the counter-revolutionary forces in Russia were also creating troubles. Stalinist state machine is doing all the bad things that we now know. So, Duishen must have been preoccupied with other things. Or being an ideal teacher, he did not want to accept her love.

Creative Readings and a slim novel

It may be slim in terms of number of pages, but Aitmatov’s novel offers so much to an inventive reader. One could even argue that it is implicitly critical of the Soviet education endeavor. For example, with all due respect to the idealism and kindness of Duishen, he is an extremely limited first teacher. Except for his idealist loyalty to the communist party, he does not have any serious idea of education. In that sense, the novel can be read as an implicit critique of the kind of education the Soviet government established in distant villages. Except for just one girl, we do not know how many others were freed from illiteracy.  During much of the early decades of the twentieth century, Lenin wrote extensively about the need for ‘proper education.’ Many of those writings have been collected as On Public Education (1975), again, by Progress Publishers. Writing to safeguard the revolution, by education Lenin meant, a kind of indoctrination aimed at liberating people from ‘bourgeois ideologies’ and getting them under the dictatorship of one party.  For me, it is an extremely limited understanding of education. But when he firmly believed that “Russia is the country assigned by history the role of trailblazer of the socialist revolution(p. 77)”, it was easy for Lenin to see education as a huge propaganda programme intended to establish the dominance of a single party, by extension the dominance of a single ideology. When Duishen starts his school in the Kirgiz village, he pastes a photo of Lenin on the wall. There Duishen is an instrument of spreading the ideology of a single party.  But with all those ideological limits, the revolutionary government was trying to make the Russian population literate. In a short essay called, “About our schools” written in 1913, included in the book mentioned above, Lenin explains how badly funded and poorly administered Russian schools were under the Tsar administration and religious authorities. It was clear that for the Tsar regime illiteracy was a tool of ruling.  The role of teachers such as Duishen needs to be appreciated in that context.

By now history has given Guru Geethaya its proper place. It is a simple, short novel, about a teacher who attempted to live an ideal life within his own historical context.

In the novel, Aitmatov does not tell us what Dushen teaches. The content of that education is not known to us. Reading the novel now, and of course watching the movie, exactly one hundred years after Duishen arrived in that village, we are experienced and theoretically equipped enough to see beyond the context of the novel’s original context. The Sinhala movie, however, does not provide us with such rich artistic experience.

 

Saving the Girl/Women

When the revolutionary guards arrive in this remote village to assist Duishen, Altynai has been abducted and raped. If the education system was better planned the girl would have had a much more dignified life without going through that humiliation. Her traumatic experience is so much that she does not return to her village until after she becomes a professor, and she is invited to attend a function.

The Sinhala film industry seems to be making a comeback. And it needs a wide variety of movies to regularly attract a diverse audience. In that sense, I am more than happy that Guru Geethaya is doing well. At the same time, in the context of recent political change, where the need for revitalising our free education system is voiced from many quarters, this film is a melancholic song for an uplifting education. Not to get everyone under the ideological will of a single party, our education must be one that liberates us from all forms of dominance and authority.

Though written in 1962, the novel is set in 1924, which was also the year of Lenin’s death -an incident beautifully described in the novel. There he is represented as a visionary man who wanted to create a better future for these rural children. Within a very different context those who initiated the free education system in Sri Lanka also envisioned a better future for us. That is perhaps why Guru Geethaya has been a beloved piece of literature that draws crowds even to its film version.

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Midweek Review

Her Story and His Come Together

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By Lynn Ockersz

She and He have stood their ground,

In factories and farms down the ages,

Braving the lashings of manor and nature,

Invisible yet radiating the Dignity of Labour,

Giving selflessly the Bread of the nations,

And in March when She is celebrated,

For very good reason too, I assert,

It is apt to revisit the timeless lesson,

That in the matter of feeding the masses,

Her Story and His come together

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