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If the UNP spurned the UNHRC out of electoral necessity it would have
kissed good relations with the West and India goodbye and folded plans to
move the economy away from the cupidity of exclusive dependence on
China. Heads the UNP would have lost the next election; tails it would have
lost the election it won on 8 January! Delaying the UNHRC Report till after
the elections was a necessity. I am pleased with the delay; anything that
strengthens the Rajapaksas is ghastly. Secondly if the report is issued
later, and if the SLFP is kept out of power, some follow-up may be possible.
Mangala rides West
Was it possible that Foreign Minister Mangala was sent overseas to play
good-cop in a good-cop bad-cop dramatisation of the national question?
The evidence does not support this; the guy pitched much farther than
needed to win Kerry and State Department, Ban Ki-moon and Zaid alHissein for a deferral. The West is committed to regime change as I have
repeatedly insisted from early 2014; with an anti-Rajapaksa India on board
it is not going to scuttle this government in its infancy. Mangalass
presentations at Carnegie Foundation and New York Press Club were
excellent and can be taken at face value. Ranil and Mangala have made a
commitment to implement 13A-slightly-minus (most land to be returned,
military harassment of the public to terminate and a decent police force
albeit under the Centre).
This is not great devolution, and a far cry from the right to selfdetermination, but it is miles ahead of Rajapaksa tyranny, and realistic,
given power balances. Circumstances may dictate after the election that
the TNA accepts positions in a liberal-bourgeois UNP government provided
Tamil rights are secured. Let the dogs in the diaspora bark, but the
caravan must move on. This would be wonderful as it leaves the opposition
space empty for a strong and principled left, including the JVP and those
coalescing around the Reconstituted LSSPs strategy, I hope, of a unified,
unitary left party the Syriza model. The left as a whole must strive for a
unitary structure as a medium term perspective; its immediate function is
oppositional as in 1948-1970 and undertaking political education of the
middle and working classes.
Father-in-Law Acute Race Trauma (FLART)
When relatives develop similar chronic ailments one attributes it to a
shared genetic defect; but there is no way a fruitcake gene can stretch
between fathers-in-law. Vasu, instead of timely (dis)graceful retirement
has chosen to climb aboard the dishonourable, chauvinist, WimalGammanpila-Dinesh bigot-wagon, the RMZ. But Wigeneswarans (CV)
malady is more complex. Previously, he rightly insisted that Tamils had
been deprived of civic and human rights, and possibly suffered war crimes,
but that there was scant evidence of genocide. Then he succumbed to
FLART (dont omit the L) and sponsored a Northern Provincial Council
(NPC) resolution asserting that what had not happened had happened.
CVs political career is not at an end; he is strong and can afford to talk
sense without kowtowing to emotional hot-heads; but he flipped at a time
when ethnic relations were on the mend and it would have been wise to
show restraint. Was he concerned that in the euphoria of election victory
Tamil concerns were being marginalised or is he exhausted struggling
against loony Tamil extremists? (the Tamil people are not itching for a
showdown with Sirisena-Ranil) Whatever the reason it was unwise and also
erroneous. The TNA, unsurprisingly, has not disassociated itself due to
electoral calculations. Ranils cousin and deputy defence minister Ruwan
Wijewardena went to Mullaitivu army camp and gave an undertaking never
to take the military jackboot off Tamil necks.
Some Tamil groups claim that large tracts of civilian land have not been
returned but a Defence Ministry statement says 27,000 of the 35,000
acres sequestered in the N&E during the war has been given back to
civilian owners and that 50 battalions have been withdraw from the North.
Still there is bitterness about land seized by the military from Jaffna
people. Bulldozing of homes and temples continued apace in the KKS area
all of last year, hence Tamil frustration. The new government must not let
the military dominate the public as the previous one did. An out of control
military is a power unto itself and a menace to society. Rumour among
Tamils has it that Ranil even proposed making Karuna a deputy minister;
so there is much distrust on all sides.
These annoyances notwithstanding, the assertion of genocide is flawed
because though Tamils have been subjected to oppression and repression,
genocide in the proper sense is moot. Killing hundreds in 1958 and
thousands in 1983 was foul, but race-mobs that evaporate afterwards
dont equate to intentional institutionalised genocide. Arguably, there was
premeditated butchery in the last months of the war and if the NPC
confined its assertion to this it would have been on firmer ground; but