Iranaitheevu; a year of continuous protests to regain Navy-occupied land

Featured image provided by author

RUKI FERNANDO-04/20/2018

After the election of the new government in 2015, the people of Iranaitheevu, forcibly displaced since 1992, finally thought they would be able to return home. Yet a flurry of letters and high-level meetings with government officials and politicians in 2016 and 2017 didn’t bring any results. In desperation, the community took the difficult decision to begin a continuous roadside protest on 1st May 2017. Almost a year later, they are still fighting.

Iranaitheevu; a year of continuous protests to regain Navy-occupied land.docx by Thavam on Scribd

PHONE RECORDS LEAD CID TO BIG ARREST IN JOURNALIST KEITH NOYAHR ABDUCTION CASE

22/04/2018

All things considered, former Editor of The Nation, Keith Noyahr was one of the lucky few. Abducted and tortured in May 2008 during a time when dissenting journalists were hunted with impunity, at least he made it out alive. Murdered editor of The Sunday Leader Lasantha Wickrematunge and Journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda who disappeared without a trace in 2010 and remains missing to this day, were much less fortunate. But the common factor that binds these deaths, disappearances and assaults together according to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Police is the connection of the country’s Military Intelligence to each of the cases. The assault on former Rivira Editor Upali Tennakoon and the abduction of journalist and activist Poddala Jayantha are also linked to the same shadowy military intelligence networks, run at the time by the country’s powerful former Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Karunsekara’s connection

Last week’s CID breakthrough in the Keith Noyahr abduction case highlights this nexus between the Rajapaksa regime’s crackdown on dissent and the military intelligence networks.

Former Military Intelligence Director and Chief of Staff of the Army, Major General (Retired) Amal Karunasekara was arrested in connection to the Noyahr abduction on April 6, 10 years after the event took place. The arrest which was delayed several times happened on April 5, when Karunasekara was arrested at the Army Hospital for aiding and abetting the abduction of Keith Noyahr. But a question that remained on the minds of many was how this generally well-liked and respected military officer was connected to such a brutal crime.

Phone records

According to the evidence produced by the CID to the Courts in the form of phone use analysis reports, it was revealed that following a call placed by the Former Editor of The Nation newspaper, Lalith Allahakkoon to the Former Secretary of Defence, Gotabaya Rajapaksa on May 22, 2008 to inform him of Noyahr’s abduction, Rajapaksa at 11.36 pm in turn makes a call to the then Inspector General of Police Jayantha Wickramaratne who has also been linked to the incident surrounding the death of Wickrematunge by the CID. According to the CID the Defence Secretary was also found to have called Former Intelligence Chief Retired Major General Kapila Hendawitharana at 11.39 pm on the very day.

CID says according to evidence gathered, a call from Hendawitharana at 11.41 pm was traced to the mobile provided by the Sri Lanka Army to Military Intelligence Director, the then Brigadier Amal Karunasekara. Karunasekara then calls the Military Intelligence Unit at the Tripoli Camp in Colombo.

The location services revealed that at the time the number belonging to Karunasekara was in the Jawatte area while the mobile number he calls belonging to the Tripoli Camp was in Malwana. Yet another call was also traced originating from Karunasekara’s phone to Commanding Officer of the Tripoli Camp intelligence unit, Major Bulathwatta at 11.48 pm on the day. Interestingly as the CID points out the phone location indicates he too was in the Malwana area at the time, where other phone records confirmed, was the location where Noyahr was being held. “It was only after this call that Noyahr was released” a CID officer working on the case told the Sunday Observer, asking not to be named, adding that this proof cannot be refuted.



Delayed arrest

Despite his link to the case however, the arrest of Karunasekara was a long time coming. In fact, even on the day of the arrest, sources say prior to it he had admitted himself to the Army Hospital in order to further delay his arrest, while several weeks ago he had sought court permission to travel abroad.
Major General Karunasekara, currently the Commandant at Defence Services Command and Staff College, on March 29 had requested that the court lifts the ban placed preventing him so that he may travel to New Delhi on an observation visit of a Defence College. He had also claimed that as a result he would not be able to present himself at a CID on April 5.

Amal Karunasekara was in fact to be arrested around the first week of January 2017, but sources say this was prevented at the time, as he was the Acting Army Commander then.
Courts, at the request of the CID imposed a travel ban on him on February 7 and he was to be arrested on February 12. The CID says, this was once again prevented as he was placed in crucial service following the concluded local government elections.

Confirmed connection

However, despite the delay, CID sources say, the elite sleuth unit consider the eventual arrest as a major breakthrough for the case. “The future of this investigation will depend on Karunasekara’s statement to the CID” an officer said adding that however, the evidence presented cannot be denied by him. While the CID will seek an order from court to take a statement from the arrested Major General soon, the officer said, this will depend on his medical reports.

Following the arrest of Karunasekara the CID appears to be now closing in on Former Intelligence Chief Retired Major General Kapila Hendawitharana, who according to them is the next link in the case. While a statement has been obtained from him previously, if implicated by Karunasekara, he too could be arrested in the near future, top CID sources told the Sunday Observer.

But while the CID appears to have nabbed suspects involved in all related cases at the ground level the question remains as to who at senior levels of the Rajapaksa administration ordered these crimes to be perpetrated and to what end.
Sunday Observer 

President prorogues parliament, flies to London. JO signals support for removing Executive Presidency

JRJ takes oaths as Lanka’s first executive president

Rajan Philips-April 21, 2018, 6:10 pm 

Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I have been to London town to see more common MPs.
Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you do?
I frightened them all by talking about NCMs.
- The new SLFP rhyme

One would have thought that the idea to prorogue parliament would have come as a positive idea from the Prime Minister and the UNP, to make a fresh start in parliament after the terrible four months the government has gone through in 2018. Rather, it came from the President as a desperate measure to buy time to stop the bleeding in the SLFP that now has trifurcated body parts in the National Assembly. With parliament prorogued, the President flew to London to attend the Commonwealth Summit. This could be President Sirisena’s last Commonwealth Summit. In the light of ongoing developments, there is no conventionally conceivable way for Maithripala Sirisena to remain as ‘president’ of one kind or another after his current term runs out in January 2020.

There is, however, an outside chance for Mr. Sirisena to continue as ‘President’ in a modified presidency after 2020. That would depend on the JVP’s 20th Amendment passing through parliament and getting the approval of the people in a referendum, and Maithripala Sirisena playing his cards well, being on the winning side, and being acceptable as a consensus-and-compromise choice as the first Head of State in the country’s post-executive-presidency era. That would be just reward Maithripala Sirisena, for playing more than a catalytic role in abolishing or significantly attenuating the executive presidential system.

When the JVP first announced that it would take the initiative to introduce a 20th Amendment bill in parliament to abolish the executive presidency, it looked like a looming David vs Goliath battle. David won the old fight, and the JVP can draw heart from that. But this battle will require more than a shepherd’s slingshot. The executive presidency is more entrenched than the two-legged Biblical behemoth. The good thing about the JVP’s initiative is that its six members are necessarily disinterested about the presidency and utterly sincere about their objective unlike all the election winning promisors since 1994 – from Chandrika Kumaratunga, through Mahinda Rajapaksa, to the current diarchy of Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe. The irony, on the other hand, is that the JVP, with its tarnished legacies of revolutionary romanticism and bloodletting insurrections, is now taking on the more tedious tasks of constitutional politics: listening, persuading, accommodating differences, and amending through consensus building. In fairness to the six JVP MPs, it must be said that while their legacy might be soaked in blood their hands are not at all soiled by corruption.

Enter the JO: Flip, fillip

or trial balloon?

Early last week, the JVP and constitutional watchers received a surprising signal from the Joint Opposition. Apparently speaking on behalf of the Joint Opposition, MP and former Minister Bandula Gunawardane "pledged conditional support for the JVP’s 20th Amendment to abolish the executive presidency." The caveat of course is that the proposed amendment must include a provision for the immediate dissolution of parliament "after the passage of the 20th amendment to the constitution." The JO’s position is that the government has lost its two-thirds majority in parliament after the no confidence motion against the Prime Minister, and, therefore, any amendment to the constitution will require the JO’s support to meet the two-thirds majority requirement for its passage. We do not know if the signal sent by Bandula Gunawardane is based on any consensus within the JO, or if it is the position of JO’s chief Mahinda Rajapaksa, or if it is just a trial balloon to test the political winds. For now, there is no harm in taking the signal at its face value and running with it as far as we can.

On the face of it, this is a very positive development. There are lots of devils that need to be ironed out in the details, but the JVP could not have hoped for a bigger boost for its initiative. It is also consistent with recent speculations about a tacit, if not telepathic, common ground between Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mahinda Rajapaksa about joining forces to end the executive presidency. Most importantly, the JO’s position takes the wind off the sails of the constitutional ideologues, who are not a huge political force but who can make disproportionately huge political noise. Their core belief is that the ending of the executive presidency is nothing less than the end of Sri Lanka. The usual detractors have made public statements decrying the JVP’s initiative as insane and calling the JO’s signalling support as betrayal. But they know there is little they can do if the two major parties are able to occupy the common ground for dismantling the executive presidential system. They may do so for entirely different and self-servingly opportunistic reasons, but the objective merits of the end result can never be in doubt.

There is no overstating the importance of JO’s support for a constitutional amendment to the executive presidency, regardless of whether or not JO’s support is needed to secure the requisite two-thirds majority. There is more than one way to get 150 out of 225 votes in parliament. For starters, if you add the 122 who voted against the no-confidence motion, the 26 who abstained and the six JVPers who will be spearheading the 20th Amendment, you have 154 in total, more than the 150 required to meet the two-thirds requirements. I am not suggesting that all 154 are in the bank for the JVP to draw from, but it is an achievable total. Obviously, without the combined support of the President and the Prime Minister, the JVP’s amendment motion will not take off from the parliament’s Order Paper as a Private Member’s motion. With their blessings, the UNP and the SLFP could muster around 130 votes. The two JHU members including Minister Ranawaka, the former Minister of Justice, and minority MPs who have a love affair with the presidency – will hum and haw, and may not at all be happy about abolishing the presidency. But they are unlikely to ultimately oppose an initiative that has the support of the government and the Joint Opposition. The TNA and its 16 MPs may need some persuasion given their own constitutional agenda. However, given the constitutional connections between the executive presidency and the provincial council system, amending the presidential system will also give the TNA the opportunity to make its pitch for addressing outstanding issues involving devolution and provincial governments.

Dissolution Caveat: Election and Referendum

I would argue that barely meeting the two-thirds majority is not enough for an amendment of this import and more so to ensure convincing approval in the referendum that will follow the passage in parliament. A three-fourths majority, or around 170 votes, would seem more convincing than the prescribed two-thirds majority, or 150 votes. The point, as I have argued many times in this column, is that the requirement of a special (two-thirds) majority, and not a simple majority, to pass a constitutional amendment, implies not so much an electoral mandate for the governing party by virtue of a ‘landslide victory’, but a broad parliamentary consensus involving both the governing and opposition parties. Our own experiences in 1970 and 1977 have shown that landslide victories based solely on first-past-the-post system produce tyrannical majorities and not democratic majorities. The so called ‘mandated’ constitutions of 1972 and 1978 were in fact partisan products and not consensual constitutions. In contrast, the 19th Amendment for all its 19 or so defects is virtually a unanimously adopted amendment. The 18th Amendment, on the other hand, was passed by a notoriously herded majority, with even those opposing it in principle voting for it for reasons of retail politics. The best scenario for the 20th Amendment would be to secure parliamentary passage with the support of both government and opposition parties and not just one-sided two-thirds majority. The support by the Joint Opposition is, therefore, crucial, and the early signs of support by JO, as long as they last, are very encouraging.

What about the JO’s dissolution caveat? Mr. Gunawardane and others in the JO do not seem to have thought through the referendum requirement in indicating as a condition of their support, the immediate dissolution of parliament following the amendment’s passage in parliament. Although the insistence on immediate dissolution is obviously to the advantage of the Joint Opposition, the actual timing of dissolution and a general election may turn out to be quite acceptable to all parties, most of all the UNP. For, just as the support of the JO is necessary for a convincing passage in parliament and assured success in the referendum, the support of the UNP is necessary to make up the basic two-thirds threshold. The UNP may not be agreeable to a general election in 2018, but it cannot object too much to a parliamentary election in 2019, because it will likely count its chances to be better in a parliamentary election in 2019 than in a presidential election. Equally, the UNP cannot insist on the current parliament finishing its full term, because after four and half years the President can exercise his power of dissolution without asking anybody.

The timing of the referendum and the parliamentary election poses an interesting question. Can the two be held at the same time? Will all the parties agree to it? Logistically and financially, holding them together makes a great deal of good and common sense. Politically, it will be awkward for the contenders to canvass in unison for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum, while trashing down one another in the competition for parliamentary seats. Holding elections and referendums are not uncommon, as many national governments and state governments in the US routinely hold elections and referendums together. While acknowledging that a referendum on the executive presidency is not a normal referendum, there is nothing impossible about holding it along with the general parliamentary election.

To abolish, or to attenuate

Perhaps the most challenging part of the amendment project would be in the drafting of it, in deciding what is to come after ‘abolishing the presidency’ and agreeing about it.

Clearly, the presidency is not going to be abolished in a vacuum. It would be virtually impossible to revert back, lock, stock and barrel, to the old parliamentary system under the 1972 or 1947 constitutions. No matter what, there will be a Head of State and a Head of Government, and how would a constitutional amendment provide for accommodating the two in a future system. That is the question. There are enough constitutional and legal experts around to technically draft a bill of amendment, but what is the political decision that is to inform their drafting? To my mind, the 1972 Constitution terribly diminished the role of the Head of State in a system at the core of which was the legislature as the supreme instrument of state power. As JR Jayewardene would rhetorically ask later, "… what then is the use of the Head of State … if he is nominated by the Prime Minister and if he must do only what the Prime Minister says?" He went on: "if the President is nominated by the Prime Minister, why cannot the Prime Minister be the President?"

This was accomplished when Prime Minister Jayewardene became President Jayewardene in 1978, and this he did, as he said, "legally, by the authority of the constitution." But the 1978 Constitution went to the other extreme, making the Head of State the paramount fount of state power along with an elaborate string of platitudes about the separation of powers. And President Jayewardene did not bother to ask, rhetorically or otherwise, whatever happened to the Prime Minister under the new dispensation of powers? Dr. NM Perera asked and answered the question. In the context of an already rising succession fight in the UNP, the different factions were placated "by reducing the Prime Ministership to a name board."

All of this was a long time ago, and it took such a long time before the power imbalance was somewhat rectified by the 19th Amendment, which annulled the presidential powers to arbitrarily fire the Prime Minister and to equally arbitrarily dissolve parliament. The now anticipated 20th Amendment provides the opportunity to conclusively establish the relationship between the Head of State and Head of Government. It needs to be an improvement on the 19th Amendment and its final resolution must fall somewhere between the 1972 Constitution and the 1978 Constitution. There is also the third constitutional rail, namely, the provincial council system that has direct and perhaps two-way bearing vis-à-vis the presidency.

Interestingly, the provincial council system has become one of the main arguments against abolishing or attenuating the executive presidency. There is no question the two are tied, but that does not mean that every attribute of the current presidential system must be retained to keep the provincial councils in check. For example, the President does not need to have the power to dissolve parliament or sack the Prime Minister at whim in order to check and balance the system of devolution. Undoubtedly, this will be a contentious issue, but it can also be looked upon as an opportunity to strike two birds with one to stone: i.e. using the opportunity of the 20th Amendment to address the problems of the executive presidency and the expectations of a reasonably devolved polity under a unitary constitution. What should be resisted and avoided, however, are the puritanical temptations to alter contentious terms in the constitution. Learned debates over terms – unitary/federal, religious/secular etc., will generate more heat than light, nothing will change, and the country will be stuck in sweltering darkness.

Our legislators can take a lesson from the evolution of judicial thinking at the Supreme Court. If, as our judges have cogently argued that it is possible to provide for devolution of power within a unitary state, it must be equally possible to have power sharing between the Head of State and the Head of Government. The attenuation of the presidency should also mean eliminating the direct election of the Head of State. The Head of State could be elected through a real electoral college (not the evanescent kind as in the US) comprising the national and provincial legislators and a population-weighted voting system. There is no system drawn up in heaven, as Dr. Colvin R de Silva used to say, to straitjacket how a country’s constitutional and political systems should be designed and operated. Apart from our own experience, there are enough examples of constitutional democracies in the world with a diversity of arrangements for Head of State and Head of Government and for electing them. Sri Lanka is one of them now. It should strive to become a better one. Are our parliamentarians collectively capable of striving to be better? It will not be long before we are able to find out, yet again!

Much criticism on proroguing Parliament

APR 22 2018

Much has been said about President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to prorogue Parliament through a Gazette Extraordinary before undertaking his London tour to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). The next Parliament session would commence on 8 May as per the Gazette Notification. 

Much criticism on proroguing Parliament.docx by Thavam on Scribd

PICKING UP THE PIECES

22 April, 2018

“End and Goal: Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a saying: Everybody is great until you get to know them. Now, we know most of them. More specifically, we know President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
In the next 18 months, we will know how to define these times. We must finish what we started. The danger we have to avert is to make sure that it does not turn out to be something different from what we intended.

On January 8, 2015 a change occurred. It was sudden and surprising. It was sudden, because we did not dare think of a time when we would not feel the weight of the Mahinda Rajapaksa monolith. It was a monolith that nearly perpetuated itself. A monolith is a large, powerful organization that is not willing to change, and that does not seem interested in individual people.

The January 2015 reversal was surprising because entrenched autocrats do not step down that easy. How he stepped down, is another story for another day.

We should stop blaming Mahinda Rajapaksa. In his Theory of Justice John Rawls advises us not to expect politicians to be correct, proper and act with integrity. That is not how it works.

“Historically, one of the main defects of constitutional government has been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty. The necessary corrective steps have not been taken, indeed, they never seem to have been seriously entertained. ... the fault lies in the fact that the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry.

It is unlikely that Mahinda has read John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. But it seems, he had a pretty good idea about regulating political rivalry.

January 8 2015 was not a seismic shift. A thin slice of the urban middle-class literate and learned, deeply resenting the surveillance state and assaults on human rights by a venal brutal security apparatus naively hoped that it would be.

Although the new order, seduced by its own rhetoric, took no notice, within 40 days of his ouster, Mahinda Rajapaksa demonstrated the true state of play at Nugegoda. His Goebbelsian ideologue called it The Rising. He was uncharacteristically modest. He should have called it The Return.
Let us be pragmatic. To this day, Mahinda Rajapaksa, retains a hegemonic leadership of a vast swathe of political territory. He has a firm grip on a sizeable segment of urban and rural poor. The lower middle classes adore him. A sizeable section of organized trade unions is under his spell. A hideously vulgar class of oligarchs who were nursed into positions and wealth by brothers Basil and Gotabaya are patiently waiting to resume interrupted business.

The clumsy, contrived coalition that brought about the sudden and surprising change now stands dispersed, unravelled, scattered.

In this backdrop, the tense political climate is understandable. The government has no coherent platform. Instead of presenting a clear political agenda for the next 18 months before the Presidential elections, both sides trade blame and make abstract promises. Promises that neither can keep without the cooperation and consent of the other.

The people who elected President Maithripala Sirisena to office on January 8, 2015 had a singular expectation: He was being elected to abolish the Executive Presidency, an office that had been exploited for 40 years to perpetuate excess, abuse and brutal crackdowns on political opponents. In the hands of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the presidency was weaponized with exceptional skill; the movement for his ouster was anchored to the idea that a single individual must never be permitted to wield such power over the citizenry again.

When he agreed to become the common opposition candidate, taking his life in his hands to quit the Rajapaksa Government in 2014, President Sirisena told the country about the dangers of the presidency and promised to abolish the office upon his election.

The recent brouhaha over the no confidence motion against the Prime Minister made us alive to the other side of politics. It told us a stray fact about the world of insects. Insects are not drawn to candle flames. They are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame. They go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they’re so eager to get to the light on the other side.

To function effectively and deliver, political leaders must possess political capital. Political capital is their capacity to influence political decisions. In simple terms what it means is the capacity of the leader to walk the talk. I mean walk the talk. Walking, not hopping. Talking, not preaching.

The ability, inclination and desire to keep promises and to live up to expectations are what makes a credible leader. Otherwise, disappointment and the inevitable electoral rejection would be fatal. .

The strength of a political leader is credibility. To be credible, the leader should be competent, trustworthy and must be perceived as caring for the people who elected him.

This political primer is a contemporary imperative. It has to be said here and now. The abolition of the Executive Presidency is the single issue that will determine Maithripala Sirisena’s place in history.

He started with great élan and promise. With a vibrancy that was inspiring. Then along the journey something happened. Fantasy and reality got mixed up.

On the day he was sworn in, he promised the nation that he would not seek a second term as Executive President.

On November 12, 2015, President Sirisena reiterated that promise before the funeral pyre of Ven Sobhitha thero, the architect and spiritual leader of the January 8 movement for change.

“Sobitha Thero was determined to abolish the Executive Presidency. My Presidency rests on that determination of the venerable thero and echoed by millions of Sri Lankans. With all my strength I pledge before the remains of Sobitha Thero that I will do everything possible to abolish the Executive Presidency,” President Sirisena promised before hundreds of mourners and dignitaries gathered at the grounds to pay their last respects to the monk.

“I am President and Ranil Wickremesinghe is Prime Minister today, because of the foundation laid by Sobitha Thero. He is the architect of this Presidency and this National Government based on the values of yahapalanaya,” President Sirisena said to a nation mourning the loss of the dynamic priest that day.

Nearly three years later, the barbarians are at the gate once more. The Government’s last best hope for redemption rests on whether it can muster the will – and the numbers in Parliament and a subsequent referendum – to renew its original pledge to abolish the Presidency.

If it achieves nothing else, but completes this one task, the Yahapalanaya Government would have served its purpose. The reformist constituency needs to go back to the drawing board too, downsize its expectations and force the Government to return to the single issue that defined the opposition candidacy in 2015.

In the age of big data, retrieving political promises is much easier than being drawn into polemical gymnastics on the pros and cons of the Executive Presidential system. The past three years hold a lesson. We have been bamboozled for so long with such consistency, that we are part of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us.

Can we set ourselves free, this fractured coalition of dreamers, to pick up the pieces of the change movement before it’s too late? 

The politics of participation

Former President

Sanjana Hattotuwa-April 21, 2018, 6:13 pm 

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2017 report has a particularly revealing quote from Edward Luce, who in his 2017 book ‘The retreat of Western liberalism’ observes that "our societies are split between the will of the people and the rule of the experts—the tyranny of the majority versus the club of self-serving insiders". Luce is focused on the West – Europe, the UK and US in particular – but his central thesis of democratic decline, because of a rise in populism and an authoritarian resurgence, finds resonance in helping explain the situation in Sri Lanka.

The threat to democracy in this reading comes not because of manipulative foreign actors, but the disenchantment with and distrust of democratic dialogue and institutions by constituencies increasing taken in by a toxic recipe. Misinformation, a general decline in trust around media, rising intolerance of difference, increased social and religious clustering around identity markers that are exclusive, a proclivity to the violent resolution of conflict and an increasingly divided electorate on partisan lines are some of the ingredients in this recipe, which in fact, we are co-creators of. As the Economist notes, "The popular reaction to an economic and political system which many voters feel has left them behind is presented as the cause of democracy’s ailments rather than a consequence of them".

The report is helpful to understand risk vectors in Sri Lanka that aren’t adequately discussed. The democracy recession can be seen in, according to the Economist, through declining popular participation in elections and politics, weaknesses in the functioning of government, declining trust in institutions, dwindling appeal of mainstream representative parties, growing influence of unelected, unaccountable institutions and expert bodies, widening gap between political elites and electorates, decline in media freedoms and the erosion of civil liberties, including curbs on free speech. Many of these one finds not just in Western liberal democracies but in Sri Lanka post-2015. We have a country with very high adult literacy losing faith in democratic government. The communication of the government’s failures, coupled with the failure of government to communicate, are two sides of a problem that is leading to the erosion of trust. The electoral implications are not theoretical. The February 10 local elections demonstrated the degree to which the government has lost popular appeal. This is not the same as saying that the Rajapaksas, JO or Pohottuwa have gained any greater appeal. The electorate is faced with a conundrum – on the one hand, a largely liberal and democratic government unable to fulfill its lofty promises and is insensitive and technocratic to boot. On the other, representatives of a more authoritarian form of government who seek a return to power and though essentially corrupt, brutal and violent, gets things done, puts everyone in their place and are masters at generating populist charisma by posing frequently with children with plaits or pottu, infants, the disabled, soldiers, the poor, priests and old people. Embedded in this reading is an asymmetry of generating self-serving spin and positive optics for parochial gain. The current government is horrible at it. The former government wrote the rulebook on it.

This all feeds into what is a systemic problem of politics in the way it is negotiated, conducted and perceived. In 2014, the Economist gave Sri Lanka a score of 4.44 for political participation, a metric that measures the degree to which the population engages in electoral processes and more generally, is involved with governance mechanisms between elections. By 2016 this had increased to 5.00. It remains the same in 2017. There is also a metric for political culture. The Economist flags this as "crucial for the legitimacy, smooth functioning and ultimately the sustainability of democracy. A culture of passivity and apathy, an obedient and docile citizenry, are not consistent with democracy. The electoral process periodically divides the population into winners and losers. A successful democratic political culture implies that the losing parties and their supporters accept the judgment of the voters and allow for the peaceful transfer of power".

In 2014 and 2016, Sri Lanka scores 6.88. Intuitively, especially if one supports the current government, you would expect this score to be stable or rise. Instead, in 2017, the score goes down, to 6.25. What we see in these figures is a risk vector that ironically is pertinent precisely because of the numbers that turned out to vote in 2015’s Presidential and General elections. In both instances, a youth bulge in the electorate – first time voters as well as second to fourth time voters, all between 18 to 34 – supported the elections of those currently in power. The social engineering to get this demographic go out and vote was conducted over social media almost exclusively for the Presidential Election. By August 2015, the apathy and disappointment with the new government had already taken seed, which is why another concerted effort to get young people engaged in political communications was needed.

Most if not all of this content generation and strategizing was done by civil society – some admittedly with partisan bias and intent, others more involved and interested in generating interest amongst the youth in our electoral processes and the value of democratic institutions. Either way, what is evident today is that the heightened interest and participation in political conversations, just three years ago, has now led to deep disappointment and disgruntled disengagement. This fits very well with those who want to regain power, mirroring how in the US, Republicans in 2016 used against Democrats technologies and strategies first imagined, seeded and set in motion as part of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The revolt of authoritarians or as the Economist called it in 2016, the revenge of the deplorables ironically happens on the very social, media and technological foundations put in place by more democratic forces to gain power. This is playing out in Sri Lanka.

To understand this is to grasp the increasing appeal of the JO. Sadly, it is a political reality that was given life to by those in power. What I’ve flagged in recent weeks – the weaponization of social media, the gamification of elections – all stem from the inability to capture the spirit of participation in January and August 2015 and animate it over the longer term. This is a failure of political vision, just as much as it is a failure in political communication. The danger is now reflected in the data – electoral contests ahead of us are going to be perceived as much more divisive, with losers unable to countenance those who gain power, and those unable to regain power unwilling to countenance those in government. 2015 was as moment to rewrite the grammar of our mainstream politics, where the conjugation of divergent political opinion was normalized so that violence wasn’t the intended or immediate result of partisan difference.

Through true, it is easy to say the government has failed us. Truth is we have failed ourselves, no matter which party we vote for, and who we want to see in power come 2020.

Bigger ISN’T Better – The Unholy Pursuit Of Grandiose Schemes

By Emil van der Poorten –APRIL 22, 2018

Emil van der Poorten

In everything from “mega city” projects through high-speed highways to wresting land from the Indian Ocean in order that the Chinese build some gleaming, high-rise-covered new enclave for themselves, this nation is caught up in a national inferiority complex that is predicated on, no matter what we are dealing with, the belief that “bigger is better.”

This is ironical because the “developed world,” at least the thinking elements in it, are re-examining the whole business of “economies of scale” because the problems that have arisen from trying to construct everything on the basis of a simplistic application of that philosophy are beginning to prove insurmountable.

Take the rape of the land in the south-west quarter of Sri Lanka: the attempt to add to the dry land west of the city of Colombo. The stories of sea erosion farther south on the coast of that city directly attributable to this ill-conceived effort are only now beginning to seep out despite the attempts of the current government and its predecessor to hush up such bad news. In fact that consistency in concealing facts of enormous importance is the commonality shared by the Rajapaksa horde and the Yahapalanaya bunch.

Insofar as the port project is concerned our neighbourhood has been directly affected because of the removal of massive quantities of granite and the emergence of sand mining as a major problem in one of the two primary source streams of the Deduru Oya.

Below where we live are five separate granite quarries which have been in operation since the flurry of highway building and dry land expansion began in the ocean adjacent to Colombo. To this number has now been added what seems like, far and away, a much larger operation. Local gossip has it that, while this operation is marginally outside the province in which all of us reside, the Central Province, and is on the edge of North Western province, it seems to be seriously affecting water sources on our slope of that particular mountain range. The most dramatic evidence of this is the fact that spring water sources that had diminished to the point of near-disappearance during the extended drought experienced here recently had not picked up with the recent showers and, in fact, the flow of water in the few springs still showing signs of life had diminished! We were informed that there had been massive protests at the time this particular quarry began operations, supplying aggregate for the construction of the “Kandy highway.” However, it seems like the situation was defused by the subterfuge of moving the crushing element of the operation to another location in the Central Province. The fact that the owner(s) of the quarrying operation are either politicos or attached to them does not hurt their efforts to avoid prosecution for one of the most serious crimes against humanity there is – depriving people of a potable water supply (or water of any description for that matter.) 

The explosions that emanate from this Gommunawa/Ambatale mountain range quarry are massive, several times louder than those we hear from any of the quarries below us. Word of mouth has it that the regulations restricting the size of a charge to break up the huge granite masses are observed in the breach and are, in fact, several times the permissible size. Certainly, the explosions are reminiscent of large bombs dropped by military aircraft.

For some time now, the residents of the neighbouring “colony,” in fact a squatter settlement, have used water from storage constructed by us on my land in anticipation of the droughts that threatened our water supply. However, while this storage helped tide everyone over the worst water shortage ever experienced here, the reduction in flow after the recent rains, has created something close to panic. Bad enough running out of water during a drought but losing even a much-reduced supply AFTER the rains began?!

I have, perhaps, the unfortunate distinction compared to my neighbours, of having spent a significant part of my life in a jurisdiction where a particular segment of big business called the shots.  Alberta, the Canadian province known as the “Land of the Blue-eyed Sheikhs” because of the abundance of fossil fuels under it – oil, gas, the oil sands and huge coal deposits – was, basically, controlled by the energy sector who did whatever they chose with complete impunity for several decades. Among their exploration activities was “fracking” a process of sending a charge of explosive deep into the bowels of the earth, exploding it and determining from the measurements of the explosion, the nature of the soil strata and, from that determination, whether there was fossil fuel below the surface.  In vast swathes of prairie and Rocky Mountain foothills, the energy exploration companies were entitled, by law, to enter any land on which they had a surface lease from the government and, literally, do what they pleased there.  I have a clear recollection of a rancher who had reached the end of his tether in the matter of these trespassers and used his game-hunting rifle to put one six feet under! Unacceptable frontier justice, perhaps, but understandable in the circumstances. 

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THE SLFP IN 2018: VICISSITUDES AND RISKS

22 April, 2018

The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) has been at a crucial turning point in its political career for some time. Its unending crisis has consequences for Sri Lankan democracy as well. As a political party, and with all its shortcomings and failures, the SLFP has contributed to institutionalizing Sri Lanka’s parliamentary democracy and consolidating the country’s political party system. But, it is now facing an existential crisis.

If the outcome of the recent No Confidence Motion (NCM) against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe enabled the United National Party (UNP) to temporarily ride over the party’s internal crisis, the SLFP has not been so lucky. President Sirisena and his SLFP team of Ministers in the Government appeared to have acted out a script written for them by the two Rajapaksa brothers, Mahinda and Basil. The Rajapaksas are leading a rival faction of the SLFP and Basil is organizing a breakaway party, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). They are the primary beneficiaries of the SLFP’s unresolved crisis.

Simmering split

In the immediate aftermath of the NCM, the SLFP began to show signs of a new split. There are two groups within President Sirisena’s camp of the SLFP with competing political agendas. One group consists of MPs and ex-Ministers who seem to be more comfortable with the option of joining the Rajapaksas. The other group consists of Ministers who want to continue with the coalition government with the UNP. The former voted against the Prime Minister, who is the UNP leader, at the no-confidence motion. The latter chose to be absent from the voting and ensured indirectly and tactically that the NCM was defeated.

Meanwhile, most of the pro-Rajapaksa SLFP MPs are very likely to join, when the appropriate time comes, the SLPP, the unofficial leader of which is Mahinda Rajapaksa. Judging by the way the things are developing now, the SLPP is most likely to marginalize the Sirisena-led SLFP as an electoral force at the next Provincial Council, Presidential and Parliamentary elections. The Provincial elections are to be held before the end of this year.

The past few months also saw the failure of President Sirisena’s attempts to unify the SLFP’s two rival camps. After the SLPP’s strong showing at the local government election in January, there is no real basis for President Sirisena to bargain with the Rajapaksas to reunite the SLFP under his tutelage. Besides, the Rajapaksas now have two relatively easy options before them, either to merge the SLPP with the SLFP and throw Sirisena out of the party leadership, or continue to build and consolidate the SLPP as the ‘Rajapaksa party’ in Sri Lankan politics.

Thus, President Sirisena’s chances of uniting the SLFP, or sustaining the SLFP as a credible electoral force, are slim at the moment. In case the new SLPP under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership becomes the next ruling party, the SLFP will suffer an irreversible setback.

Party system

The emerging scenario, as sketched above, raises an interesting point about Sri Lanka’s political party system. Since the mid 1950s – the SLFP was officially formed in 1951 – the SLFP and the UNP have constituted a unique party system model in the world. It is a dominant two party system with a multiplicity of small parties. This model of political party system came into being under the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) electoral system and continued under the system of Proportional Representation (PR) as well. Will this model of dominant two - party system be changed as a result of the SLFP’s split and the SLPP emerging as an alternative ruling party? The answer to this question will largely tell us the future fate of the SLFP.

In the event of the SLPP winning the next presidential and parliamentary elections, the UNP will occupy second place in terms of electoral strength, pushing the SLFP to a third or fourth place. If, on the other hand, the UNP emerges the winner, SLPP will come a strong runner-up, again with inevitable outcome of the SLFP being pushed into third or fourth place. There is one option for the SLFP to avoid this fate. It should enter into a coalition with either the UNP or the SLPP.
For a UNP-SLFP electoral coalition to emerge, their current coalition Government needs to be firmly rebuilt with the next presidential and parliamentary elections in sight. There are no signs as yet of President Sirisena being inclined towards the continuation of the UNP-SLFP coalition beyond 2019 -2020. In contrast, the UNP is more likely to consider the renewal of the coalition with the SLFP for the next Presidential and Parliamentary elections, but on its own terms. That will entail the proviso that the SLFP under President Sirisena agrees to be a junior partner to the UNP, in a substantive sense of the term ‘junior.’ That seems to be a key lesson that the UNPers seem to have so far learned from their coalition experience with President Sirisena.

Systemic explanation

Why is this a scenario in which the SLFP is slated to lose its position as a major political party in Sri Lanka? We can think of what may be called a ‘systematic’ explanation, in the sense that the explanatory variables are embedded in the structure of the party system in Sri Lanka. This is where the relevance of the concept of the dominant two - party system becomes salient. The explanation has two components and they can be formulated as follows: In a rigid dominant two-party system, as is in Sri Lanka,(a) political space for a third party to emerge is either limited, or (b) the space for a third party has to be created by displacing one of the existing dominant parties. When we bring the experiences of the JVP and SLPP vis-a-vis the SLFP, the working of these two explanatory components becomes clearer.

Since the late 1970s, and during its second phase of evolution, the JVP was projecting itself as a ‘third force’ of Sri Lanka’s politics. By the third force, the JVP did not mean ‘third place’ in party politics after the UNP and SLFP. Rather, the JVP wanted to rapidly evolve itself into the status of being a credible new force in Sri Lanka’s politics that could also become (a) first, a new alternative ruling party, and then, (b) the dominant single party. In the first stage, the JVP was to achieve parity of electoral strength with the two main parties, the UNP and the SLFP. In the next phase, the JVP thought it could graduate itself to be the ruling party by winning the Presidency as well as a majority of seats in Parliament, eventually paving the way for its emerging as a dominant single party. Thus, as articulated in the late 1970s, the JVP’s projection was to first enter into a ‘semi-final’ fight with the SLFP and then the final fight with the UNP, and finally establish itself as the sole ruling party.

Third force

The JVP’s third-force project did not succeed during the 1980s and the 1990s, or even afterwards. Having failed to achieve even the first stage of its third force strategy, the party has generally remained one among several small parties in Sri Lanka’s system of a multiplicity of small parties. Its electoral strength has been dismally limited, hovering around 6% of total votes at most elections.
Meanwhile, the JVP’s coalition tactic with the SLFP in 2004 – an event that paid the JVP some significant political dividends and also incurred political costs,-- did not ensure its goal of becoming a third force. The JVP’s electoral statist is due largely to the fact that it failed to win over the SLFP’s peasant and middle class electoral constituencies.

As a political party, the SLFP has traditionally had a strong electoral base among the Sinhalese peasantry and urban middle classes. Despite its mild communalism, it has had a significant voter base among the Muslims too, because the poor Muslim masses benefitted from the SLFP’s statisteducational and economic policies. These are solid support bases for any political party. Thus, the SLFP electoral constituencies have not been vulnerable to the JVP’s intrusions. Only the UNP could successfully erode the SLFP’s electoral bases during the late 1970s and 1980s. The JVP’s attempt to challenge the SLFP only perpetuated the dominant two-party system at the expense of the JVP.

In the JVP’s strategy of becoming a third force on Sri Lanka’s electoral politics, the strategic path mapped out during the late 1970s and continued thereafter was to replace and then displace the centrist SLFP as an alternative to the right-wing UNP. But the SLFP easily survived the JVP’s electoral challenge.

Crisis within

What is happening now is a wholly fascinating development in which the SLFP is challenged not from outside, as the JVP did in the past, but from within. It is the rapid disintegration of the SLFP as a political party due to its internal crisis that is creating conditions for the reconstitution of Sri Lanka’s dominant two-party system. That is also the secret of the SLPP’s success over President Sirisena’s camp of the SLFP.

The SLPP is a dissident – not yet a break-away -- group of the SLFP which identifies itself with a leader, Mahinda Rajapaksa – who was not only a former party leader, but also an ideological heir to the Sinhalese-Buddhist communalist legacy of the old SLFP. During the past few months, the SLPP has been carefully and cleverly playing its communalist card with the electorate at a time when President Sirisena – the official leader of the SLFP – has been struggling, with no particular success, to chart out an ideological identity for himself and the SLFP.

It is also a huge irony that President Sirisena’s personal political success in 2015 as a dissident of the SLFP marked the beginning of the SLFP’s disintegration as a political party.

The fact that the SLFP has always been an ideological party – mixing a thin version of social democracy with Sinhalese nationalism and Left-liberalism – has not found much resonance in the reckoning of the party’s new leader, Maithripala Sirisena. If President Sirisena wants to experiment with the ideology of Sinhalese nationalism for the party, he has a formidable competitor in the person of SLPP’s unofficial leader, Mahinda Rajapaksa, If he wants the SLFP to embrace a mixture of social democracy and Left liberalism, he needs to take a few ideological classes from Chandrika Kumaratunga, the former SLFP leader. That is most unlikely to happen given the ideological proclivities of individuals and forces that surround President Sirisena at present, despite the fact that his heart is in the correct place.

Meanwhile, President Sirisena is yet to demonstrate that he provides a resolute and effective leadership to a party under threat, with an unambiguous strategic foresight.

Thus, the SLFP under President Sirisena might soon find itself caught up in a multiple crisis. Its key dimensions would be at the levels of leadership, its class identity, ideological orientation, organizational networks, and material and strategic resources.

The management of the SLFP’s multiple crisis would be made hard by several other negative factors. Chief among them are (a) the lack of a clearly identifiable class foundation for the party as well as linkages with a clearly defined elite, (b) inexperience of the party’s top leadership and the immaturity of the second level leadership, (c) desertion of the party’s traditional electoral constituencies, (d) the absence of a political ideology distinct from both the SLPP and the UNP, and (e) the lack of access to the party’s erstwhile organizational and patronage networks as well as funding sources.

Meanwhile, the SLFPers can breathe a sigh of relief by noting the fact that their party is not alone, when it comes to the syndrome of party crisis. The UNP is embroiled in its own crisis. The SLPP is too new to develop a crisis as such. The JVP, the TNA, and SLMC also have their own mini-crises. However, the SLFPers also have a risk which the others do not encounter: the SLFP is truly facing the threat of reducing itself to the status of a small party.

[This essay is Part II of Parties in Transition, by Dr Jayadeva Uyangoda. Part I was published on April 8, 2018 under the headline: UNP and SLFP: Transition Blues]

Lenin: The incarnation of Kant’s categorical imperative

Lenin and Rosa: Conflicting imperatives on the National Question

apodictic » morally and indisputably true

Personification of the Categorical Imperative

Kumar David-April 21, 2018, 6:24 pm 

They were both born today (22 April); Kant in 1724, Lenin in 1870. Kant lived 80 productive years, Lenin died at the comparatively young age of 54. There are interesting themes relating Kant to Lenin, and to Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) of Polish nationality and in the judgement of most the true intellectual heir of Marx. Lenin and Rosa had enormous regard for each other but were conflicted on some issues; the one most relevant to Lanka’s misery is the national question. The latter part of this essay will turn to this.

Since Kant is a birthday boy a simplified account of the highlights of what he was up to is appropriate. It has been said: "You can philosophise with Kant or you can philosophise against him, but you can’t philosophise without Kant". This is an exaggeration, which is true only of Aristotle, but shows the regard in which he is held. The big deal is that Kant rescued philosophy from the battering inflicted by the British Empiricists whose savage assaults came to the brink of emptying classical philosophy of all content. I don’t know why they are called empiricists because their thinking was absolutely opposed to what we scientists call empirical. Locke was a reasonable chap and did not go all the way to solipsism (nothing exists except me and my mind; knowledge is no more than my own consciousness; the external world is unknowable), but Bishop Berkeley and David Hume denounced materialism and advocated ‘myself and me alone’ philosophies which brought Western Philosophy to a standstill and seemed to vanquish materialism and the external world.

Kant’s great breakthrough was to substantiate the thesis that matter and mind both existed and interleaved in certain ways. Mind was not a tabula rasa (a blank sheet) on which experience and the outside world wrote. Mind was a creative and independent agent which organised and ordered the stuff of experience into knowledge. Certain things belonged exclusively to mind – Kant called them a priori – the concept of number, the rules of pure mathematics, geometry, logical ordering. He even said that space and time, through which we ordered experiences, belonged to mind but this claim has been controversial. He postulated ‘categories’ which belong exclusively to mind and play a role in collating knowledge. Examples of categories are Quantity, Quality, Relation (e.g. the concept of cause and effect) and Modality (e.g. possibility, necessity). These were the processes through which mind ordered experience and built knowledge. Kant never doubted the importance of the material world and to that extent he was a materialist, despite which, he is called the founder of German idealism.

(Young people familiar with computers can think of it like this. The interface Inputs data to the Processor, which runs the Algorithms, and Outputs the findings. Now compare Input to human experience, Processor and Algorithm to brain and mind, and Output to knowledge).

Kant abolished Cartesian Dualism: ‘Which comes first, mind or matter?’ He also deflated Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) which asserts the primacy of mind over matter. A modern materialist neuroscientist would, of course, respond to Descartes "You have a gangly blob of soft tissue in your skull, that’s why you can think". Book-learned philosophers will be hopping mad at the way I am simplifying things; forget these coots; what have they done for you all these years?

Categorical Imperative

All this is in Kant’s hugely influential Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft – 1781). He wrote a second boring book (he wrote many) which was not as influential. This was about morals not philosophy, but it is my tongue in cheek transition to Lenin. In Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft – 1788), he developed the concept Categorical Imperative (CI). He said there are two types of motivation that may make us do good things; the lesser motivation he confusingly called Hypothetical Imperative (HI). This is when you do something good because it makes you feel good or it makes someone else happy.

On a dark night you find a satchel with lots of money and return it to the owner whose phone number you find in the satchel because it makes the owner happy and pleases you to be a fine chap – that’s HI. On the other hand, CI is if you return it because it is morally right to do so; maybe you don’t even meet the owner, or just leave it at the police station for collection. The reason for your action is moral law, your inner character, righteousness. It depends on your inner metal, your upbringing, the values you learnt at your mother’s knee, etc. For Kant CI is morally superior to HI.

On a hike though the nature trails and hills of Hong Kong an environmentalist explained why we should preserve the ecosystem and endangered species. Forests and species may contain plants and creatures which may one day be found to have medicinal or useful properties he explained. I objected: "So if useful properties were absent, is it ok to destroy the environment? No, we must protect nature because we have to do so; we are driven by something inside us". The chap said, approvingly, that I was influenced by a categorical, not a hypothetical imperative. I got the point very well that day.

Lenin’s imperative

If you caught Lenin off guard and asked: "Comrade why do you want to make revolution?" I bet he would blurt out, "But I have to!" On reflection he will add practical reasons to this categorical imperative – peace, bread, land to the peasants, ending oppression and tyranny, and all that. That’s fine but the cat is out of the bag; the categorical imperative defines Lenin’s psychology. His "iron will" about the revolutionary party and about political power are two examples of what one might call his categorical imperative. The physiognomy of the Bolsheviks was organisation, discipline, ideology, democratic-centralism and a no-free-lunch commitment to action.

This was validated in the maelstrom of 1917, however the post-script is that it is no longer relevant in most of the world; autocratic and repressive police states are found only in Middle Eastern monarchies and a few African and other dictatorships. The Leninist party was a perfect model – but for its day.

Lenin’s obsession with power has been the subject of libraries of books, but I intend to touch only on the national question and his dispute with Rosa. The kernel of ‘The Right of Nations to Self-Determination’ (RSD) is that minorities, if they are of size and geographic focus to be able to survive as a state, have the right to choose. Lenin does not offer blanket advice for or against separation; that depends case by case, one size does not fit all. Ceylon Tamils, Catalans, the Scots and the Taiwanese, need to be discussed individually. But RSD does say: "In the end, let them choose themselves".

Rosa wrote off all this as tosh. For heaven’s sake the party of world socialism, the beacon of the future, could not hark back to a pre-capitalist cave! We have to look forward to a world in which humanity pools its social and productive abilities (cultural and linguistic identities must be protected); socialism means global accord. She would have campaigned against Brexit and stood for a Socialist United States of Europe to replace the EU.

Lenin was a strategist, Rosa a visionary. Though the difference seems philosophical there was a tactical side. In vast Russia the proletariat was a minority, the huge peasant mass plus small nations a majority. For revolution – ending Tsarist oppression of workers, peasants and minorities - an alliance with the peasantry and the small nations (national minorities) was imperative. Hence land to the peasant, RSD for the nations. It worked; unsurprisingly not a single minority nation (Finland was a special case) chose to leave the union; all joined the USSR.

Tactical imperatives in Germany and occupied Poland were opposite to Russia. National unification, especially in Germany, was long complete. The task in the eyes of the German and Polish Social Democratic Parties and their famed leaders, Bebel, William Liebknecht and Rosa, was to go forward to a socialist order. Rosa in particular was adamant that Germany and her Poland are better off united. This crystal-clear vision was half a century before the European Union.

Political circumstances in Lanka pose both issues; national unification, that is reconciling all communities, and the challenges of development in a modern world. However, Lanka is at the stage where economic advancement to meet the needs of all peoples cannot advance without national unification – that is the lesson of a 30-year civil war. "Solving the national question" (to put in formula terms), the Leninist ring of fire, is what we must of necessity pass through before we can sight Rosa’s promised land.

We have an obstacle to surmount; the racism and atavism of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s bid for power; frontally, or from behind a facade. Feb 10 showed that about 60% of Sinhala-Buddhists (SB) identified electorally with MR and his double-agent Sirisena; the minorities rejected them tout court. On the other side were, say 35% of SB voters (more if you count UNPers who abstained ‘to teach Ranil a lesson’) and nearly 100% of all minority peoples. To cobble together an alliance to defeat an MR front-man at a presidential poll and secure an (at least) hung parliament is doable as all political actors are now alert. But this entails a conundrum; all the minorities plus a minority of the majority, defeating a majority of the majority. There is time enough to change this and secure a more even split of the majority community, but even otherwise the resulting state will be constitutionally lawful. It will also be politically stable if the government of the day is determined, committed to the categorical imperative of a plural nation and does not shrink. It will not work if it lacks an iron-will and pussy-foots, as it did in the last three years, trapping itself in the double-bind of playing both sides. Wonder whether Ranil, rid of the Sirisena pestilence, can show nerve on this last chance?