Midweek Review

GR’s ouster: Another narrative

Published

2 years ago

2023/05/17

Sahan Weerasooriya

Dilith Jayaweera

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Derana Chief Dilith Jayaweera says the Port City Colombo could have given Sri Lankan economy the turbo boost it required but, unfortunately, the powers that be failed to handle it properly though the country accepted the modern concept. The mega project was in line with contemporary global economy, therefore Sri Lanka’s move received global recognition, Jayaweera said, calling it a progressive economic decision.

But Sri Lanka missed the opportunity for want of a cohesive strategy as well as destructive party politics that dealt a severe blow to the flagship Chinese project, the top entrepreneur who does not shy away from speaking the truth, he said.

Jayaweera questioned the failure on the part of Sri Lanka to properly manage the Chinese flagship project, with national interest at heart, and burying petty party divisions, for the country’s sake. China launched the project in late 2014 as the country was heading for early presidential elections.

Having sabotaged the project, the then Yahapalana administration (2015-2019) went to the extent of ridiculing even the concept, thereby undermining a mega investment that could have laid the foundation to give a turbo boost to the country’s image, as well as its economy.

Their utterly irresponsible actions caused rapid erosion of investors’ confidence in the project, Jayaweera declared, and the decision to revisit a project, launched by the previous government, caused chaos. “Calls for renegotiation of the agreement resulted in inordinate delay in the implementation and the loss of investors,” Jayaweera said, declaring that the Colombo Port City was yet to receive a significant investment, since those deliberate interruptions. The Yahapalana action tainted the project as corrupt and denied investors’ confidence, hence the difficulties in attracting funds. Let me stress: “Sri Lanka couldn’t attract large scale investments because we ruined the project.”

Jayaweera said so, in an interview with The Island, at his posh office at T. B. Jayah Mawatha, a few days ago. The controversial businessman, widely believed to be one of the close associates of ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, discussed a spate of issues, ranging from the formation of ‘Aramuna’ meant to strengthen the business environment with the focus on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), collapse of the national economy, foreign relations and interventions, as well as the hand of a jealous Rajapaksa family, in the ruination of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, elected with an overwhelming majority of 6.9 mn votes.

BR-Dilith meet

Asked about course correction, attempted by him in 2021, as the country was heading rapidly towards economic catastrophe, Jayaweera said that he discussed the issue at hand with the then Finance Minister, Basil Rajapaksa, right there. Jayaweera said: “The Minister couldn’t comprehend the crisis, regardless of my efforts. In fact, Basil Rajapaksa took things lightly, very lightly. Perhaps, the Minister simply didn’t know the situation he was dealing with and the implications, in case the Rajapaksa government failed to address the growing cash flow problem.”

So was Basil part of the grand conspiracy to topple that government by playing dumb at such a crucial juncture?

Basil Rajapaksa was sworn in as the Finance Minister, on July 08, 2021, at the Presidential Secretariat. It was soon after his second entry to Parliament, on the National List, though the circumstances were vastly different.

The Rajapaksas amended the Constitution to accommodate the US, Sri Lanka dual citizen in Parliament in spite of strong opposition from a section of the ruling party. Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanpila and Gevindu Cumaratunga opposed the move. Their concerns were disregarded.

Asked what really had prompted Basil Rajapaksa to visit his spacious office, furnished much better than ministerial offices, Jayaweera explained how the President arranged for the meeting after he brought the impending crisis to the notice of the head of State. Jayaweera strongly maintained that those who had been around the President deliberately furnished him with utterly wrong estimates pertaining to the economic status. “There is absolutely no ambiguity regarding their despicable strategy. As a result of a spate of uninformed and hasty decisions, the country ended up bankrupt and at the mercy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” Jayaweera said.

Commenting on Opposition accusations that the government intended to launch a domestic debt restructuring process, having repeatedly assured the people it would not do so, Jayaweera pointed out that this was to be done at the behest of the IMF. Debt restructuring was certainly not a national requirement at the moment though the issue at hand is why Sri Lanka shouldn’t subject itself to a domestic debt restructuring if the country expected relief from bilateral and multilateral creditors.

IMF bailout package not a panacea

for all our ills

Jayaweera accepted the writer’s suggestion that a domestic debt restructuring was a fair condition laid down by the IMF to provide the USD 2.9 bn bailout package, to be made available over a period of four years. Sri Lanka received the first tranche of the package at the end of the third week of March this year.

Jayaweera stressed that the country, as a whole, should deliberate whether debt restructuring should take place at the IMF’s directive or in line with Sri Lanka’s overall response to the current economic challenges. The media and business tycoon underscored the responsibility on the part of the government, and all other stakeholders, to examine the impact of such an exercise on the economy with the focus on the money market and the banking sector. The stakeholders should be sensitive to the developments, in case a far reaching debt restructuring process was undertaken, Jayaweera said, calling for a dialogue on the contentious and possible consensus without imposing debt restructuring as a prerequisite.

Asked to compare the latest IMF bailout package and the 16 previous ones that Sri Lanka obtained from it, Jayaweera said those engaged in talks with the lending body as well as other creditors, should be extra cautious as the country was now in the worst possible situation. “On all previous occasions when we sought IMF interventions, the economy was in a much better condition. We were in a much more comfortable environment then. But we are in the worst possible situation, today.”

Jayaweera stressed the responsibility on the part of the government to be vigilant in ongoing talks with lending bodies and other creditors. The businessman quite rightly asserted that the country was in such a precarious situation and therefore it could become vulnerable to various machinations.

During the nearly 90-minute long interview, Jayaweera was not interrupted by calls on his hand phone or the intercom, though a smartly dressed woman brought a tall glass of iced tea for the writer. Sipping the delicious iced tea, with a straw, the writer asked whether President Gotabaya Rakapaksa inadvertently did something good by refusing to seek IMF intervention in 2020. Otherwise, the country would have obtained more loans to settle debt and interest and continued the farce, perhaps for another decade, and placed the economy in an even far worse situation, Jayaweera was told.

A smiling Derana Chief responded that perhaps the President’s intention was good though he was ill-informed of how to implement it. The self-made tycoon pointed out the failure on the part of the then administration have alternative arrangements, in place, to do away with the IMF assistance. The need to meet recurrent expenditure couldn’t have been ignored under any circumstances, Jayaweera said, squarely blaming the then Secretary to the President Dr. Punchi Banda Jayasundera, and Basil Rajapaksa, for the crisis. The duo had been so reckless in taking far-reaching decisions, Jayaweera said, claiming that he didn’t believe even a small vendor would have been so irresponsible. Jayaweera cited a highly controversial Cabinet decision to do away with a spate of taxes at the first meeting of the Cabinet-of-Ministers, in the last week of Nov, 2019, less than two weeks after the last presidential election. So it looks as if the die had already been cast to doom the Presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa from the word go.

The government never made contingency plans to recover the losses caused by that fateful decision. The Treasury is believed to have lost as much as Rs 600 billion per year due to the abolition of taxes.

Rating agencies deliver knockout blow

Jayaweera explained how international rating agencies downgraded the country due to the significant loss of income. Once rating agencies recognized a country as a badly managed economy, that economy rapidly lost opportunity to raise loans at reasonable interest rates, Jayaweera said, emphasizing that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa shouldn’t be faulted for believing that Sri Lanka could stop taking further loans. Jayaweera again stressed that Dr. PBJ and Basil Rajapaksa should accept the responsibility for their failure to manage the economy. Instead of taking remedial measures, the government challenged those rating agencies, he said.

When the writer pointed out that Basil Rajapaksa re-entered Parliament only in the first week of July 2021, Jayaweera hit back: “That was how you viewed the situation. But what really happened? Soon after Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory, Basil Rajapaksa and the clan appointed Dr. PBJ as the President’s Secretary. That was done to take over the management of the economy. In spite of Basil Rajapaksa not being a lawmaker at that time, he received the appointment as somebody who managed the economy from behind the scene. And Dr. PBJ, though only the Secretary to the President, got the de-facto control of the economy.”

We don’t for a moment question the capabilities of Dr. PBJ, the former Central Banker had been seconded to the Finance Ministry, even before the time R. Paskaralingam (Pandora Papers’ fame) was the Treasury Secretary in the Premadasa regime because of his capabilities and served virtually under all regimes before and thereafter as far as we can recall. Dr. PBJ also scored big by managing the economy deftly especially during the last phase of the war as Treasury Secretary and thereafter. But the question is did he double as an “economic hitman” as alleged by some.

Jayaweera accepted the writer’s suggestion that it would be better to assert that grouping took control of the economy than blaming an individual. Jayaweera alleged that the group took advantage of the then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who also served as the Finance Minister (Nov. 2019 to July 2021) as he was not in good health. Jayaweera explained how interested parties exploited the much deteriorated health of the former President, particularly periodic loss of memory. “I had no option but to take up this issue with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The President accepted the ugly truth.”

Jayaweera said that he sought a meeting with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to discuss the forex crisis, about 20 months ago. Having explained the looming crisis on the basis of the widening gap between government income and expenditure,

Jayaweera had got involved in an argument with President Gotabaya over the latter’s accusation that the Derana Chief misinterpreted facts as he was in dispute with Dr. PBJ. “I denied that allegation, insisting that my assessment was entirely based on official figures, also made available to the President. The President regretted the situation but scolded me. But, three or four days later, the President called me again for a meeting. I was provided with a cash flow statement. I quickly pointed out how unrealistic the income column was.”

The President’s economic team quite conveniently failed to explain the impact of rising crude oil prices at that time. That lot provided the President with unsubstantiated and unrealistic figures therefore the decisions taken on such advice caused the crisis, Jayaweera said, referring to the silly bloated assessment of USD 6 bn from tourism, whereas we know not even one bn USD income was realistic, after the Easter carnage, followed by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

Jayaweera said that he contacted the President again as he couldn’t bear the impending catastrophe. Jayaweera recalled how President Gotabaya Rajapaksa suggested that he discuss the situation with Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa and the meeting took place at the very place where we met last week.

Basil Rajapaksa’s simple dismissive reaction had caused fear and anxiety in the Derana Chief, especially pertaining to the direction of the national economy, Jayaweera said, adding that over dinner, too, he tried to convince the Finance Minister of the threat due to the frightening cash flow problem.

Jayaweera quoted Basil Rajapaksa as having declared that the public wouldn’t come to the streets to protest scarcity in goods though they demonstrate against high cost of living. “I suggested that fuel consumption should be cut by 50 percent. The need for a realistic pricing formula was also suggested. But, the Minister simply dismissed my suggestions. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself told me Basil Rajapaksa and Dr. PBJ managed the economy. Therefore, they couldn’t absolve themselves of the responsibility for the current crisis.”

Jayaweera didn’t mince his words when he alleged that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s first major fault was accepting the family nominee Dr. PBJ as the Presidential Secretary. The President did so in spite of knowing it would be the end of his presidency, Jayaweera said.

Aramuna

vision

In this context, ‘Aramuna’ that had been established years before the public protest campaign against the Rajapaksa administration, in March 2022, was making representations on behalf of the affected communities, Jayaweera said. When queried about the recent declaration in Jaffna that they should pursue talks with banks as a group to secure much needed relief, Jayaweera explained the discussions they had with top level management of state and private banks. “We are trying to obtain as much relief as possible. But, overwhelming challenges cannot be surmounted without political will,” Jayaweera said. The outspoken ‘Aramuna’ initiator found fault with the government for shrinking the economy. That was disastrous, Jayaweera said, comparing the current situation with that of a gravely ill person deprived of medicine.

Citing the deterioration in the construction industry as a case in point (From 10 percent of the GDP to just one percent), Jayaweera said that import restrictions badly affected the export sector for want of intermediary goods. Volatile foreign currency market undermined all sectors as they found it difficult to furnish a proper quotation.

Acknowledging that certain restrictions were necessary, Jayaweera, however ,insisted that it was the responsibility of the government to properly manage the crisis by ensuring the sectors which contributed to the growth of the GDP received the support they deserved.

Jayaweera emphasized that one of their key missions was to motivate what he called human capital. If human capital lost confidence a country could face catastrophic consequences, he said, pointing out that professionals and others alike wanted to migrate in the absence of a proper strategy. Obviously, they felt concerned and not sure whether the country could overcome the unprecedented mess, Jayaweera said.

“In response to the challenge, we intended to promote entrepreneurship among the population. But, it would be important at least now to recognize the shortcomings, failures, mismanagement and unproductive investments by way of loans,” he said.

Jayaweera explained how unbridled use of loans for consumption and not sufficient returns for investments contributed to the current mess while flaying the powers that be for failing to adopt course correction even after the declaration of bankruptcy.

Responding to another query, Jayaweera said that the latest IMF intervention, too, hadn’t been sought in line with strategy to uplift the country but simply as a reaction to the crisis. He declared that nothing had changed as the existing political party apparatus continued to do the same.

Jayaweera denied any similarity whatsoever between ‘Aramuna’ and Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ‘Viyathmaga’ while insisting the former didn’t promote political strategy at all. Pointing out that at the time they established ‘Aramuna’, four years ago, it didn’t have a political outlook, Jayaweera explained in response to the current challenges, the outfit now operated on the premise that the issues at hand couldn’t be addressed without a ‘political solution.’

Asked whether ‘Aramuna’ would take a stand at the next national level election, particularly against the backdrop of the UNP propagating the possibility of presidential election before Local Government polls, the maverick businessman said that on the basis of a set of minimum conditions, meant to overcome national challenges, they would push for a consensus with most suitable party/alliance.

Need for infallible systems

Pointing out that the country suffered for want of infallible systems and recklessly having faith in people, Jayaweera was asked whether he believed in systems or politicians. This was raised on the basis of accommodating businessman Dhammika Perera on the SLPP National List, in early June 2022, and Ranil Wickremesinghe receiving appointment as President after entering Parliament on the National List, though rejected by the Colombo electorate. Jayaweera declared: “We need a system not a system change. We are in such an unstable situation, unless remedial measures were taken the country can be shut down overnight. That is the reality,” he said emphatically.

Jayaweera strongly denied the query whether he in any way influenced and benefited from the utterly reckless tax cut announced in Nov. 2019. “How could I benefit when that idiotic decision ruined our economy. What is the point in my enterprises receiving some benefits against the backdrop of economic annihilation? That decision cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Jayaweera said.

The Derana top honcho quoted the then Inland Revenue Chief having told him that there was no basis for assertion such tax cuts could trigger significant economic growth.

Jayaweera questioned the rationality in pushing for a new Anti-Terrorism law to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) at a time the government should fully concentrate on economic recovery programme. An irate Jayaweera said that the new anti-Terrorism law should be at the bottom of the list of priorities.

Commenting on the leasing of Hambantota port to China for a period of 99 years in 2017, during the Yahapalana administration, for USD 1.2 bn, Jayaweera said that shouldn’t have happened, under any circumstances.

The deal deprived Sri Lanka of its most strategic asset but USD 1.2 bn received was not even used to settle the loans procured from China for the building of the harbour.

Asked whether he supported constitutional restrictions imposed on the number of ministers (30) and non-cabinet ministers (40), Jayaweera ridiculed the concept. Such constitutional interventions had been made in response to a greedy political party system. The number of ministers should be entirely based on the requirement of the government of the day and certainly not to appease greedy lawmakers, Jayaweera said, asserting that the country could manage with a much smaller Cabinet if appointments were on a scientific basis. Jayaweera also dismissed the much-touted National Government concept, too, as a mechanism to appease a far larger number lawmakers by appointing an extra-large Cabinet.

The outspoken businessman, who does not fear to call a spade a spade, asserted that print, electronic and social media would have to re-examine overall strategy as their impact on the electorate, particularly the floating vote,would be much less in the developing political-economic-crisis. It would be a grave mistake to believe the electorate could be exploited the way they did before the 2022 explosion.

The indefinite postponement of Local Government polls has deprived the JVP of an opportunity to improve its vote. Pointing out that the JVP, at the moment had just three percent of the vote, Jayaweera said that even if it doubled that it wouldn’t make a big difference. But with the relatively improved ground conditions, the JVP couldn’t sustain its strategy, Jayaweera said.

The JVP based its campaign on the allegation that the economy collapsed due to Rajapaksa corruption. Against the erosion of JVP’s new support base, UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has emerged stronger and acceptable to a section of the electorate, he observed.

Finally, The Island raised two vital questions (i) who would be the two major opposing parties at the next presidential or parliamentary polls and (ii) what should be our foreign policy whether to stand with China and Russia or Quad comprising the US, Japan, Australia and India.

Jayaweera asserted that the electorate would look at the two major alliances on the basis of their economic programmes. The better grouping would win but the electorate wouldn’t ignore the nationalistic views and those who voted for Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the last presidential election as a group remained a force to be reckoned with, Jayaweera said. In the current context, President Wickremesinghe could lead one alliance and the other spearheaded by the SJB. But, both camps essentially follow the same strategies pertaining to the economy et al. The issue at hand is whether President Wickremesinghe could follow the identical strategy while receiving the backing of the ‘Pohottuwa’ vote that represented the interests of what he called ‘jahikathwa’ kandawura.

Jayaweera warned the powers that be against taking sides in the continuing US-China battle. Stressing the pivotal importance in our relations with New Delhi, Sri Lanka couldn’t afford to pursue foreign policy strategy at China’s expense, Jayaweera said. The success of Sri Lanka’s short-medium and long term recovery depends on how the country manages foreign relations. Asked whether he backed signing of MCC and SOFA against the backdrop of entering into ACSA with the US in August 2017, Jayaweera said that as he said before there is no ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to that query, too. “We as a modern nation it is important for us to get into bilateral agreements. We need to evaluate the pros and cons of them along with a comprehensive country strategy and then decide.”

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Midweek Review

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

Published

7 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

7 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