Gota Versus The Tamils & Muslims
Prof. Kumar David
Rajapaksa has won an immense landslide victory among the Sinhalese (72% of Sinhala Buddhist and nearly 60% of other Sinhalese – Catholic/Christian – voted for him). Equally stunning was his total rejection by Tamils and the Muslims. Never before has polarisation been so stark in our electoral history. However, that is all water under the bridge now. How to go forward? The spirit of this column is: 1) Let’s make proposals that are legitimate and feasible; but 2) let’s keep up our guard till be have assurance that we can safely lower our guard in case Gota, his government and his loyalists turn out to be a bad. Allegations about Gota’s human rights violation record can be ignored only at peril.
The economic programme, constitutional intentions and approach to minority fears are all crucial to how the government will evolve. This short column comments on only the third topic. An old leftist university friend, now an ardent Gota admirer, emailed me as follows: “I hope you see is that a separate state for Tamils (more correctly N&E Tamils not estate Tamils who never joined the Elam demand) or a form of devolution that gives police and land powers is not a solution. The latter would be a first step to future wars and a Kashmir or Palestine situation. Let us spare future generations the horrors of another Ethnic war. Today, with the clear mandate given to Gota there is an opportunity for a solution. It takes two to tango; it works in both ways. What we need is some programme of conflict resolution and healing of past animosities”.
The sticking point here is police and land powers. After large scale civilian deaths it is unlikely Tamils will surrender the option of monitoring the police in their areas. Excluding Tamils and Muslims from land powers in their areas of domicile is also likely to be no-go. If these views reflect Gota’s, there will no settlement of minority concerns by his regime. This is the result of Gota’s obligations to his Sinhala Buddhist constituency.
