The Real Geneva Diversion & A Game Changer
By Dayan Jayatilleka -March 24, 2014
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
There is more than one Geneva diversion. The obvious one is that perpetrated by the regime, but it is not the only Geneva diversion and is not even the bigger one. True, a Minister of External Affairs whose diplomatic practice, is no match for the arrogantly aggressive effort of his UK counterpart against the country, and who spends his time playacting as an unlikely Aristotle to an unlikelier Alexander, exemplifies a regime that regards the Geneva challenge primarily as a helpful electoral diversion. Certainly an ex-Minister of Human Rights who brags moronically about a division in the UNHRC votes, forgetting that there is no election which doesn’t have such a split in votes; a regime which projects a ‘Gangnam-cum-gangsta’ style diplomacy in the choice of its most influential presidential advisor; a power elite which does not mind losing votes at the UNHRC by an ill-timed imposition of a heavy security blanket in the North and a petulant justification of it, all point to an outlook in which Geneva is more a vote gathering slogan than anything else.
And well it might be, given that the Rajapaksa administration will owe a significant slice of its election victory this time around, to the ill-targeted Geneva resolution. That resolution in its present shape and form could also help the regime make it over the top at the all-important presidential and Parliamentary elections in (more or less) a year’s time. Thus the multiple ‘R’s (the Rajapaksa’s) will owe their collective political continuity in office, to the dual ‘R’s: the Resolution and Ranil, the hardy perennial.
It is not any resolution that would have this effect; it is this resolution as it has been shaped. Differently put, another UNHRC resolution, equally tough, could have either had a neutral domestic-electoral effect or acted as a catalyst or lever of positive transformation. This one doesn’t. The Americans have a phrase: “how does it play in Peoria?” This means that every political move has to be tested against its effect at the grassroots, in the boondocks. So how will the UNHRC resolution play in Sri Lanka’s equivalent of Peoria?
Not even the best strategist of a regime with a populist-patriotic profile and posture (critics may say a pseudo-populist/pseudo-patriotic regime) could have thought of a better means of ratcheting up a siege mentality and extending the ‘insurance cover’ of patriotism as a political factor, than to have a former colonial occupier arrogantly push an investigation by a strident personality of the same ethnic origin as the island’s disaffected minority, into the conduct of a much loved soldiery during a national resistance war against fascist separatism.
