Reconciliation in an ethnically polarized society

The mandate was overwhelming; overwhelmingly Sinhala and Buddhist. So was dissent and rejection; overwhelmingly non-Sinhalese and non-Buddhist. Looking at the Graphics, Charts and the numbers of votes-cast they projected, it seemed more like citizens of two countries, instead of one, were at a break neck race, voting to get their respective candidates elected for Presidency. So striking was the disparity of the result that the two main candidates obtained in the North and the East viz. a viz. the South. In short, this was by far the most polarizing election result in terms of ethnicity and the perennial disunity that has existed between the North and the South. To make matters worse, the happenings that took place immediately after the result, clearly cut deep in to the fault lines that have been existing for so long and heightened by that electoral result. 

A President of the Sinhalese

I was reminded of a speech by Siritunga Jayasuriya, who has contested the most number of times as a Presidential Candidate in Sri Lanka, given at the Election Commissioner’s Office when former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was declared the President in November 2005 by a whisker of a margin as a result of the Northern Tamils not voting. Jayasuriya, while congratulating Rajapaksa, expressed concern that the latter was the first President to have won Presidency with a predominantly Sinhala vote. What Jayasuirya called ‘a President of the Sinhala people’ was fashioned by the absence of Tamil vote in the North and the fact that most of the minority populated areas were won by Ranil Wickremesinghe who came a close second.   

But it was nothing akin to what we saw on November 17, when the North entirely rejected Gotabaya, the sibling of Mahinda and the wartime Defence Secretary. 

The Nat-Sec mantra

On the other hand, the unprecedented lead that Gotabaya obtained in the deep-south, the monolithic Sinhala Buddhist heartland, was simply stupendous. Even Mahinda, when he contested for the second time against Sarath Fonseka, hot on the heels of the military victory over the LTTE, had not commanded that type of support. There is no denying the fact that the ethno-religious factor had dominated the thinking of the South and in fact, the President elect himself, on the occasion of his swearing in, declared in no uncertain terms that although he knew he could win on Sinhala votes alone and yet invited the minorities to participate in the victory, they had refused to do so.   

National security which was the narrative that Gotabaya ushered in to the electoral campaign and which Sajith Premadasa, also embraced with vigour by naming Sarath Fonseka, the war time Army Commander as the Chief of Defence, meant one thing to the Sinhala South. A strict surveillance state; at the expense of civil liberties or the right to dissent; where stringent measures were to be taken to curb any kind of extremism or rebellion. This was an area, they felt, the Ranil-Maithri government had failed miserably and which allowed Zaharan et al to wreak havoc on Easter Sunday this year. They wanted this tendency curbed.   

Of course, it was the extremism of the ethnic ‘others’, not of groups such as BBS, or Ravana Balaya etc. that the majority wanted curbed. It was against minority rebellion that the heroism and the might of the military was hailed.   

It has always been like that. For example, nobody hailed the security forces when they crushed the second rebellion of the JVP, whose membership was almost entirely rural Sinhala Buddhist. The military was loathed at that time, despite the fact they ensured that the elected government was not toppled by armed uprising. 

Surveillance State

The point is that the term national security is a tag that could mean a very different thing to the minorities, the Tamils, from a long time back and for Muslims after the Easter attacks. It means restrictions, searches, questions, barricades, suspicion etc.; things they had known for a long time. That is exactly how the south perceives national security, too; a threat from the North and now, the Islam fundamentalism and thus requiring iron fist measures, for which they themselves would have to sacrifice their liberties. But they have no issue with that. They are used to that and have emerged victorious; everything else is secondary.   

Mahinda did not fare well with the task forewarned of, by Siritunge Jayasuriya, in ensuring that the President won the trust of the ethnic minorities. He failed not because he waged a war which saw hundreds of thousands of Tamils displaced and as alleged a few thousand perished; he failed due to his inability or unwillingness to realize that each ethno-religious minority had their own aspirations. He failed in his inability to look in to their grievances that emanated from them being Tamils and not from the socio- economic factors such as poverty and underdevelopment that afflicts the south as well. That is why a rapid and aggressive economic and infrastructure development drive failed to secure a win for the Rajapaksa regime at the Provincial Council elections held after the end of the war. The Northern Tamils expressed their ethno-national aspirations to be treated with dignity and to have a hand in how they were governed. 

National aspirations

There was little doubt that the LTTE had to be militarily defeated. There is no argument that civilian casualties are the inevitable collateral damage of such engagements. Yet there is disappointment as to how the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime went about rebuilding the North and the East after the conclusion of that civil war. Continuous occupation of civilian land by the military, absolute non accountability with regard to those dead and disappeared, attempts to consolidate Sinhala Buddhist influence by way of building temples etc. went diametrically opposite to what was expected from the majority after they emerged the conqueror and the minority , the vanquished. We lacked the magnanimity and benevolence that should have been the case in our relationship with the Tamil minority.   

How did Sajith manage close to 90% of the Northern Tamil vote, being a leading member of the yahapalana government that promised much to them but abandoned all such efforts by the way side? Fear was a stronger instinct than the sentiment of disappointment. They feared Rajapaksa. Just as the Sinhala South feared a resurgence of Tamil or Muslim terrorism, they feared reprisals in case of a Rajapaksa victory. To his credit the Gotabaya regime, still feeling their way in to the fearful power of the state now at their disposal, has managed to keep those racist elements, attempting to raise their ugly heads, in check, other than for barrages of anti- minority rhetoric on social media and incidents such as removal of Tamil name boards of streets etc. Yet the ethno-racial-religious unrest simmering underneath the election result should not escape the dire attention of the new President.   

As he admitted, he is the President of all citizens and he is mandated to act on behalf of all of them. The unprecedented polarization of the body politic along those ethnic lines, magnified by an unprecedented vote pattern, makes such a task all the more difficult. Yet ensuring national reconciliation is the most urgent need of the hour. It has to take precedence over cleaning roads or curbing corruption.   

Any achievement on any other sphere would turn out futile, if our land is so deeply and incisively divided.