A cautious relationship

Fonseka and the Tamil voter

Tamils will vote for Fonseka in large numbers, though in Jaffna and a few other places it will be obscured by rigging. TNA endorsement started the ball rolling, but what really fired the engine were the promises Fonseka held out; they are deliverable because they are straightforward, unlike the B-C Pact or the Dudley-Chelva Agreement which had constitutional implications. Fonseka’s short-term commitments are to remove high security zones that dislocate public life, ease curfew and travel restrictions, and release the tens of thousands of Tamil youth in detention unless legal action is filed.
These are eminently doable by an ex-army commander; yellow robes will not march demanding extended curfew hours in Jaffna, and if amateurish army types pontificate about the erosion of security, Fonseka, in his characteristic style, is likely to tell them: “Bugger-off and don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs; I know about security better than you”. Hence Tamil expectation that he will deliver, at least partially, is reasonable.
These are not high stakes issues like devolution and power sharing, but they have a psychological impact. A psychologically reassuring and doable package of promises is a tactical master-move. If there is less harassment and people feel secure in their daily lives and if young men and women return home, well Tamils are prepared to vote for it in droves. Why not! It’s a good exchange for a cross on a sheet of paper after decades of neglect and worse, is it not? The only choice for Tamils is between boycott and Fonseka (the sophisticated few will vote Bahu), hence the master-move is to have offered something much better than a boycott.

The long-haul

The long-haul is economic reconstruction and political transformation of the state; the first easier than the second. Some reconstruction has commenced and Indian capital is being touted. Lanka will never make economic progress nor overcome its ethnic lunacy except by greater integration with the subcontinent; I speak not of the current or any particular Delhi administration but in broad perspective.
Hence I welcome Indian involvement and when some friends on the Left beat their chest about exploitation by Indian capital I am inclined to inquire; “Will our workers get a better feeling if they are screwed by local capitalists?”
The most important single project in the North is reopening the railway, and despite a typical Rajapaksa- style bogus two-mile run of a diesel engine, no progress has been made in rebuilding the track and infrastructure; there is only talk, talk of Japanese, Indian and maybe Martian investment. A highway from Vavuniya to Jaffna, improving harbours and a functional civilian airport at Pallali are also critical. Transmission reinforcements, power plant and possibly a submarine power cable to India are needed. This will all get done over the years, but the sine qua non is political stability, and that’s the catch.

The national question

Dismantling fences around high security zones is not going to transform the Sinhala State, nor is the state going to morph into a national democratic state because curfews are lifted. Much as these measures are welcome they only scratch the surface of state power.
Categories are solemn entities, not to be thrown around or misused; therefore when I describe the state in Sri Lanka as a Sinhala State, I do so as a considered and theoretically validated category. A state becomes what it is through a historical process; the ephemeral and elitist bourgeois democratic state that put in an appearance at Independence, morphed into what it is now, through a process. The transforming factor for half a century has been the national question, the unresolved ethnic issue, the Tamil question. The makeover is visibly manifest in every sphere; institutions of state power, constitutions, ethnic composition of governments, and the hegemonic national ideology. Social and economic changes in Sinhala society led the way, but the LTTE by its ruinous and exclusive obsession with armed struggle helped the process no end.
The civilisational belief systems of a society constitute the foundational ideology of its state, in this case the cultural-emotional timbre of the Sinhalese people. In a nutshell the Sinhalese Buddhists regard Sri Lanka as the land of the Sinhala race and language and the repository in which Buddhism was preserved for two millennia. This is fortified by myth and anecdote, irrigation-based civilisations, kings and kingdoms and resistance to foreign armies.
The gist of Fonseka’s remarks in a Canadian interview was: “The Sinhala Buddhists are the overwhelming majority, they are the nation’s primary citizens, members of minority communities must be respected and afforded equal rights and opportunities on an individual basis, but they must understand that as a group, as a collective entity, they are a minority. Minorities cannot expect their collective rights to be on par with those of the majority”. The historical, demographic and socio-economic aetiology of the processes through which this ideology came to dominate a multi-ethnic country is a much told narrative. One aspect stands out above others; the state, in its avatar as a Sinhala State, can never countenance the ‘other’, the Tamil other, manifesting itself as another territorial entity to which power is devolved - federalism, autonomy or whatever. What then? An irresistible force meets an immovable obstacle; no way are the Sinhalese willing to grant territorial devolution of power on an ethnic basis, and no way are the Tamils willing to give up the demand for recognition of their identity. Here are excerpts from Fonseka’s leaked e-mail, which he never denied, published in Lanka Web News a few weeks ago.
“Now we have a daunting task to protect our motherland from India and the Western World . . . I am saddened that our politicians are conniving with India and the Western World to separate the country in a different way. The proposed political solution through the 13th Amendment would foil the military victory and create a division in the country. If the present Sri Lankan leaders are going to sing the same old song which was solely composed by India in 1987 for their own benefit, then the recent military victory would be a total loss and in vain. . . The government is planning to provide a political solution to the national problem through the 13th Amendment. India and several western countries are attempting to thrust upon us a political solution against the wishes of all communities. If the Thirteenth Amendment is going to be implemented, then it is like the Ealam the terrorists were fighting for is granted, and will be a most traitorous act”.
Fonseka is a fast learner and has come a long way from this gibberish, but can he go further? When the ideology and structures of a mono-ethnic state, of however numerous a majority, reins over a multi-ethnic realm, then, a regime of crisis is born. Will a putative President Fonseka be out of depth in this predicament? Time will tell, but the January 26 result is not going to solve the national question. No way, that depends on a long road far into the future. The presidential election, however, for Tamils like everybody else, offers a different priority, a not- to- be missed opportunity for regime change.