President Rajapaksa - the all-conquering hero - TIME magazine
“We showed that we can defeat terrorism” - President:
The widely-read TIME Magazine has tagged President Mahinda Rajapaksa
as the all conquering hero. While commending President Rajapaksa for
this inspiring leadership in Sri Lanka’s relentless battle against
terrorism, the TIME Magazine has branded the President as a
“down-to-earth family patriarch, nourished as much by the red rice,
jackfruit curry and spicy fried fish as by the praise and demands of the
supplicants who interrupt him”.
This is how TIME gave an introduction to the interview with Sri
Lanka’s Head of State; President Mahinda Rajapaksa sits at the head of a
long banquet table, presiding over what looks like a hotel’s lunch
buffet. The mood is informal as Cabinet ministers, their clerks and
assorted relatives and friends line up patiently to eat in the main
dining room of Rajapaksa’s official compound. Outside, on the streets of
Colombo, he is the all-conquering hero.
In May, President Rajapaksa’s government ended Sri Lanka’s
26-year-long civil war against the separatist LTTE and the capital’s
broad avenues are dominated by enormous banners glorifying him: “You are
a divine gift to the country. May the gods bestow their blessings on
you.” But here, inside President Rajapaksa seems more like a
down-to-earth family patriarch, nourished as much by the red rice,
jackfruit curry and spicy fried fish as by the praise and demands of the
supplicants who interrupt him. At one point, a young couple present him
with a stack of betel leaves to be blessed. He chats casually with them;
they show off their infant son.
A barrel-chested rugby fan, the Lankan President, 63, will need that
common touch to bring Sri Lanka to a true and lasting peace. The war
began in earnest in July 1983. The LTTE took up arms in the name of
those grievances, raising the call for a separate Tamil homeland and
eventually becoming one of the world’s most feared terrorist
organisations. Over the years, moderate Tamil political leaders worked
to reach a political solution, and several governments in Colombo tried
talks with the LTTE, but by 2006 a shaky ceasefire had fallen apart. The
army pushed full-bore to finish off the Tigers, particularly its leader
Velupillai Prabhakaran and President Rajapaksa would not brook
questioning, by the press or his opponents, of his government’s tactics.
But now that the fighting is over, Rajapaksa’s overwhelming military
victory could prove Pyrrhic if he fails to give equal attention to
reconciliation.
President Rajapaksa must revive an economy that has been badly
strained by military spending. Most importantly, he will have to restore
to their homes and livelihoods some 300,000 Tamils in the North, a major
chunk of the population of that region, who fled the fighting only to be
housed at IDP camps.
In a rare interview with TIME recently, President Rajapaksa made no
apologies about how he prosecuted his war with the Tigers. “We showed
that we can defeat terrorism,” he said. The US and Europe, his biggest
trading partners, publicly criticised his apparent disregard for human
rights, but he dismisses the West’s objections. “Some people think we
are still colonies,” he said. “That mentality must go. “Who is the man
who tamed the Tigers” His sarong and tunic are the spotless white of a
devout Buddhist; his reddish brown scarf the colour of kurakkan, a rough
grain eaten as the staple diet of poor farmers. Everything about
President Rajapaksa - his big laugh, his rough—and-ready English, his
bejewelled fingers and ink-black hair-marks him as part of the rural
bourgeoisie, not the urban elite educated abroad. This is more than just
an image.
He was elected to Parliament as its youngest member in 1970 and moved
slowly up through the ranks of his party while building a base of
support in his home district of Hambantota. One minister in his
government, who has known him since his early days in politics, says his
desire to be President was obvious: “He was methodical.”
Rajapaksa’s political biography was crucial in maintaining support
for the final military offensive against the Tigers.
The LTTE pioneered suicide bombings, and a generation of Sri Lankans
lived in fear of random attacks on buses and markets, and relentless
political assassinations. Four Presidents before Rajapaksa had tried a
combination of military action and negotiation against the Tigers;
within a year of his presidency, he abandoned talks and bet everything
on force.
He appealed to Sinhalese nationalism to recruit soldiers, promising
them good salaries, pensions and respect. The cost was high. At least
6,200 troops were killed in the last three years of the war - more than
the total U.S. military deaths so far in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet President Rajapaksa’s popularity remains undiminished. In his
victory speech to the nation on June 3, he spoke a few lines in Tamil as
a gesture of reconciliation, but most of the oration was spent in praise
of “Our Armed Forces who astonished the world by their skill in war.” He
linked their effort to the nation’s heroic past defending itself against
invaders.
“The lessons we learnt from those great battles of the past are
ingrained in our flesh, blood and bones.”
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