Point of view:

Mahinda Rajapaksa may not be a visionary, but respect him as the Sri Lankan President

by Aditi Phadnis

Politics in Sri Lanka is a dance of seven veils. You have to peel them away to see the dancer (Tamil/Muslim/Sinhalese) and see what he's actually doing.

And guess what? It's showtime again! The ideologue of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Anton Balasingham, has "apologised" for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, though his colleague Daya Master, who is running the war on the ground, has denied it is an apology, and said that it is only a "monumental tragedy".

Why has the LTTE chosen this moment in time to repeat a version of the statement it made in the 1990s? Clearly, to make the most of the international condemnation the Sri Lankan state has attracted by the actions of the Sri Lankan Navy in Mannar last week (a grenade was lobbed in a church in Pesalai where civilians had huddled together). The independent Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) as well as human rights bodies including those constituted by the government itself, have blamed the Sri Lankan Navy. An enquiry was ordered that is headed by a Major General of the army, so we all know where that's headed.

This incident was followed by the revenge assassination of the number 3 in the Sri Lankan Army, Gen P Kulatunga, in Colombo. A spate of other high profile killings - including an attack on Chief of Army Staff Gen Sarath Fonseka two weeks ago - is the surest indication that a war in Sri Lanka that had been dormant is about to break out in all its bloody splendour.

Fighting his own war

At the heart of all this activity is the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is fighting his own little war - for the control of his party, against the LTTE and, much more covertly, against India.

Rajapaksa has been described as a hardline anti-federalist who would be more comfortable establishing Sinhala suzerainty over the Tamil-dominated north and north-eastern Sri Lanka than granting the Tamils a devolution package.

On direction from Rajapaksa, his party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), has just amended the party constitution to make him the president of the government as well as the party, something that hasn't happened in the 60 years of the history of the SLFP.

You could argue that a man so obsessed with centralisation of power would be loath to give the Tamils or the Muslims any meaningful rights to govern themselves. Exactly, cry the LTTE-minded opinion makers. Hence, the hard work to soften up Indian policymakers through seemingly unqualified apologies, the tearful pleas to prevent "genocide of Tamils" through Indian intervention, the command performances by political actors in Tamil Nadu who ask why India has given surveillance equipment to the Sri Lankan security forces.

But start peeling away the veils and things will begin to reveal themselves. True, Rajapaksa is a unitarian by instinct, which is why he rejected the call for Eelam when he launched his presidential campaign.

But if you wanted to become president of Sri Lanka, would you consent to seeing the division of the country on your watch? Rajapaksa's friends say they were alarmed last week when he called some of them to sketch out what-if scenarios if he were to reverse the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution (as part of the Indo-Sri Lanka accord, it envisages the merger of the north and the east, marking the first step towards a Tamil homeland).

This is easier said than done. A devolution package for the north and east is in the works, top government officials say. But in a country where nothing is what it appears to be, this might have been a red herring.

A red herring, but to what end? The fact is, to ensure he continues as president, Rajapaksa had to do a deal with the devil.

The ultranationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Buddhist nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) are continually pressing the President to take steps to militarily crush the LTTE, lately after the killing of 64 Sinhalese villagers in a mine blast near the town of Kebitigollewa on June 15. Under the circumstances, Rajapaksa would be curbing his natural instincts if he were not Sinhala-minded. But Sinhala chauvinist, he is not.

His background

Consider his background. He is a practising Buddhist from the south, Hambantota, supporting left of centre politics. He became an MP at 24 because of the support of fishermen and peasants and, since then, has been nurturing that constituency. You might have had Sri Lanka's version of pseudo-secularism if England-educated party colleague and former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar had not been assassinated - he was a Tamil who was a firm believer in polyethnic identities. But nature and the LTTE dealt a hand.

How should we in India view Rajapaksa and the way things are unfolding? India initially supported Rajapaksa but upon his making undesirable affiliations, dropped him in the last month of his campaign. By implication, opposition candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe became New Delhi's candidate.

Neither Sri Lankan was particularly happy at this. Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh advised Sri Lanka to implement a devolution package.

The implied criticism has made the Sri Lankans bristle. There are reports that Indian covert agencies are training cadres in the east that belong to LTTE rivals. So the spooks are back in business as well.

For years Indian policy was to treat Jaffna as the capital of Sri Lanka. It is not. Colombo is. Dealing with Sri Lanka's elected President Mahinda Rajapaksa, no matter how distasteful his ethnic politics or how limited his vision, is the only way to respect India's tiny, voluble, fractious neighbour.