|
|
|
| Sunday, 20 November 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Returning a Nation to its roots Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse's accession to the Presidency at last Thursday's election was cast in the heroic mould and in times past would have been celebrated in ballad and song. It reached out in time to the ancient past and invoked the symbolism and imagery so deeply embedded in the native psyche and in space to the vast reaches of the countryside where the bulk of Sri Lanka's peasantry find their spiritual being. Above all else it mobilised and tapped those wellsprings of idealism and passion which had been submerged for almost three decades by a consumerist ethos and a heedless hedonism embodied by the market economy and the urban barons operating its levers. If it was not quite a re-play of the popular revolution led by Prime Minister Bandaranaike in 1956 (an oft-invoked parallel) it nevertheless stirred ancestral memories of braver times in contrast to our own more dull and colourless days. On another level it was a rare act of political daring for Mr. Rajapakse was courageous or foolhardy enough to scorn political orthodoxy and forge an unlikely coalition with the forces of political radicalism and Sinhala nationalism. In the face of concern by even well-meaning sections of his own party and, of course, those political wiseacres of the conservative Right he forged an alliance with the JVP and the JHU which radicalised Sri Lanka's stagnant politics. The result was that while the Prime Minister was able to draw in new allies into his campaign (supplemented by the MEP, LSSP, CP and the NUA who were already his partners) the UNP was stuck with their old faithful, the CWC and the SLMC. It is to his credit that he was able to hold this unlikely coalition together not to speak of such colourful mavericks as Mr. Vasudeva Nanayakkara and lead it to victory in the face of the Cassandra-like prognostications of the pundits that by so doing he had alienated the minorities. What is more this was also entirely in keeping with Mr. Rajapakse's own political character. For although he has never been a communalist or a fanatical Buddhist (his wife after all is a Catholic) he had identified himself being a southerner with the forces of patriotism and Buddhism. This incidentally did not prevent him from sympathetic identification with the broad Left forces although he has never been a doctrinaire socialist. However he was astute enough to see that these nationalist sympathies could be used by his opponents to paint him as being unsympathetic to minority aspirations therefore somewhat queering his pitch and in recompense sought to draw in as much of the non-minority forces as possible into his campaign. He met both Mr. Thondaman and Mr. Hakeem and with hindsight both of them might well have second thoughts about spurning his hand for he has proved even if in a sadly negative way that it is possible to win a Presidential Election fought on the terrain of a national electorate without substantial Tamil and Muslim support. On the whole then his victory has vindicated his strategy of a coalition with the nationalist forces. Mr. Rajapakse was also shrewd enough to seek to shed at least some of the encumbrances thrust upon an incumbent by distancing himself from President Kumaratunga's policy on the P-TOMS and his insistence that any solution to the National Question should be within the parametres of an unitary state. However by travelling to Jaffna and by his insistence on a negotiated settlement leading to a honourable settlement he sought to erase the hard-line Sinhala image foisted on him by his rivals. That this two-track approach has worked is also borne out by an interesting set of statistics. That is the Rajapakse victory in the Sinhala Catholic strongholds of Ja-ela, Wennappuwa, Katana and Nattandiya which gives the lie to the stories peddled by some plutocratic peace merchants that Rajapakse's alliance with the JHU would spell doom to Catholics. If the Prime Minister distanced himself from his President on the ethnic issue in this manner he had no qualms about associating himself with her in his economic policy. The balanced economy he advocates is the same as the people-friendly economy of the Kumaratunga administration and therefore ensures continuity on this front. On the other side of the coin UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was singularly unfortunate to have much of his support base cut off from under his feet by the decision of the LTTE to tell the Tamil people to boycott the election. Although he did retain the support of his old allies, Messrs Thondaman and Hakeem this LTTE diktat was certainly detrimental to the Opposition Leader who had been projected as the peace candidate. It is also doubtful how much Mr. Wickremesinghe gained by being projected as the best manager of the economy for it is clear that large sections of the peasantry and the urban middle-class rejected the UNP's neo-liberal economics although the party's natural allies among the upper and professional classes did not desert the Grand Old Party. Another achievement of the Rajapakse triumph was how it neatly turned tables not only on his conservative critics but also those comfortable urban commentators who seem to fondly believe that they have a monopoly on mass opinion. Jehan Perera for example was widely quoted internationally as seeing the election in terms of binary opposites, namely nationalism versus internationalism and tradition versus modernity. But what the kinds of Perera do not realise is that nationalism is not always a dirty word particularly when the so-called internationalism which is championed is an abject surrender to President Bush or that modernity is only a vogue word for a kind of cultural neo-colonialism which has been deleterious of indigenous values in much of the Third World. Perera's imaginary cultural war had little relevance in a context where UNP propagandists were trying to seduce farmers into slipping into bell bottoms or going in for chewing gum. The lesson of the Rajapakse victory therefore is that in a Third World context there can be a rationale for nationalism particularly where the ruling class is perceived as being slavish to the forces of the new Global Raj. The Rajapakse ascendancy therefore has framed the ideological debate in new terms. On the ethnic issue he is faced with the challenge of forging the broadest southern consensus since Independence on the terms of the settlement of the National Question in a manner acceptable to the broad swathe of the opposite constituency, namely the Tamil people, while Mr. Rajapakse himself will have to work overtime to convince the Tamil voter who either boycotted the polls or voted against him about his bona fides. Again in a situation where in the southern electorate the election was keenly fought (the margin being very narrow in a substantial number of electorates for either winning candidate) the new President will face the challenge of re-drafting the social contract and drawing the Opposition into the nation-building exercise. Given these challenges, however, Mr. Rajapakse can be satisfied with his victory particularly since he was a late starter who initially faced what seemed to be formidable odds. But he showed an instinct for the fight without soiling his hands and has emerged as a formidable leader at a crucial conjuncture in the country's history. It opens a new chapter in post-Independence history where a leader unburdened by either dynastic trappings or the stigma of elitism finds himself at the head of a popular movement. His tenure of office is therefore pregnant with profound possibilities. |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Produced by Lake House |
