Friends, enemies and countrymen
Dayan JAYATILLEKA
POLITICS: Post war Italy's most respected political and legal
philosopher was Norberto Bobbio, who died a few years ago. A liberal
leftist in orientation, he nonetheless endorsed and considered
foundational, the work of a thinker of very different ideological
persuasion, Carl Schmitt.
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Anti - war Front at the demonstration |
The political theorising of Carl Schmitt, a conservative Catholic who
initially opposed and then supported the Nazi state, was so brilliantly
pioneering, that he is acknowledged (and taught) as a seminal political
theorist, just as his contemporary Martin Heidegger, who had a similar
political past, is widely respected as one of the most important
philosophers of the 20th century.
Many contemporary Leftist - Marxists and post Marxists such as those
around the journal TELOS and political theorist Chantal Mouffe- have
rediscovered and appropriated Carl Schmitt's insights.
Schmitt's best known conceptualisation is that the defining
characteristic of politics and warfare is the distinction between friend
and enemy.
This definition is independently echoed by Mao Zedong around the same
time, when he identified the key question as 'who are our friends, who
are our enemies?'
Norberto Bobbio refers to Schmitt and develops this definition in his
1997 work Left and Right. According to Bobbio, there are only four basic
positions which are possible in serious politics, deriving from
Schmitt's duality: friend/enemy. Bobbio's fourfold categorisation is:
* Enemy's enemy
* Enemy's friend
* Friend's enemy
* Friend's friend
What then is the picture that emerges when this matrix is applied to
the contemporary Sri Lankan conflict?
Enemy
The enemy is the LTTE which seeks to dismember Sri Lanka as a country
and a state (and expand beyond what could reasonably be claimed as an
ethnic homeland).
The LTTE engages in terrorism of the worst sort, entailing
assassination of democratic political leaders, suicide bombings and the
witting targeting of civilians. The LTTE is also a formation which bears
at least a family resemblance to fascism. It is therefore the enemy.
Friend
The country is kept together by the State. This would be so whatever
its character. We are afforded a defence from anarchy, some form of
representation and a minimum of civilised life by the state, which is a
democratic state, a democratic republic.
At the heart of the state, any state, are the armed forces.
At the apex of the state is the executive. When the state is at war
and society stands threatened, the rights and freedom that obtain in
peacetime may temporarily be circumscribed or suspended.
This is in a situation other than of normalcy; it is that situation
described by Carl Schmitt as 'the exception'.
Who decides on which situation is exceptional? "Sovereign is he who
decides on the exception" says Schmitt, referring to the Executive.
In Sri Lanka the executive is directly elected by the people. It is
the most unmediated expression of popular sovereignty, unlike even the
American executive in the election of which the Electoral College plays
a crucial part.
Furthermore in Sri Lanka the executive can be elected only by a
plurality i.e. 50.1 per cent, unlike in many countries (say, Nicaragua)
where one may be elected president with less than 40 per cent of the
vote.
In a distortion, President Jayewardene initially elevated himself to
the presidency without an election (1978) and was re-elected while his
main opponent had been disenfranchised.
However, this was not so in the case of his successors Ranasinghe
Premadasa, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and now Mahinda Rajapaksa,
whose wielding of executive power was not lacking in legitimacy.
No democrat can therefore fail to classify the elected president of
Sri Lanka as friend and by the same logic, no one who classifies,
regards or treats him (or earlier, her) as enemy, could in turn be
classified as democrat or 'friend', and may indeed have to be regarded
as objectively serving as 'friend's enemy' or worse still, 'enemy's
friend'.
The main duality that structures the Sri Lankan reality then, is the
opposition - and it is an armed opposition- between the LTTE and the
State.
Enemy's Enemy
The enemy, the LTTE's main enemy is the Sri Lankan State. Its
secondary enemies are the anti-Tiger Tamil organisations, chiefly the
Karuna Faction (TMVP) and the EPDP, because these are the most
consequential military and political opponents of the Tigers.
The other anti-Tiger groups, PLOTE and EPRLF are but residual and the
TULF is unarmed. Thus the enemy's enemies are the Sri Lankan State -
with the Armed Forces and the executive at its core - and the TMVP and
EPDP.
Enemy's Friend
Those who regard or refer to the LTTE uncritically: the TNA, some
prominent elements of the UNP, the so-called peace lobby, one newspaper
and perhaps an electronic media organisation or two; externally some
parties in Tamil Nadu.
Friend's Friend
According to all opinion polls, this would embrace the clear majority
of the country's citizens. Also the SLFP, many UNP MPs and most UNP
voters (who probably identify with that party's Deputy leader Karu
Jayasuriya, a former volunteer Army officer who served in Jaffna), the
JVP, the JHU, the bulk of the Buddhist clergy, most journalists in print
and electronic media.
Friend's Enemy
The LTTE and those who, in this situation in which Prabhakaran
prepares for his grand slam, treat the Armed Forces and/or the elected
executive as the main enemy or the enemy or co-equal to the LTTE: the
TNA, a stratum of the UNP, the so-called peace lobby, extremist Tamil
Nadu politicians, some journalists local and foreign.
In this exceptional and extreme historical situation of existential
threat it is incumbent upon all who are participants,
observer-participants or simply commentators on the conflict to be aware
that there are only these four standpoints or roles that can be played -
deriving from the two main positions - whatever their subjective views
and self-perceptions.
There are no intermediate, neutral, or above- the-fray positions that
can objectively, historically and concretely be occupied.
Four Thousand Traitors
Throughout this island's recorded history, the recurrent and crucial
factor in all defeats suffered, has been the presence of internal
fissures and factionalism and the role of traitors.
Therefore, it is of critical importance to estimate the extent of
this factor, as Prabhakaran sets the stage for his all-out offensive.
There are only 3,500-4,000 traitors in Southern Sri Lanka. The upper
figure was the most generous estimate in the international media of
Monday's demonstration in Colombo.
We should be thankful to the organisers of the march, ostensibly to
protest the killing of parliamentarian Nadaraja Raviraj, but in
actuality a demonstration marked by the most grotesque, lurid charges
against the Sri Lankan State and society: "stop killing Tamils! Open the
A-9!"
These demonstrators, a conglomeration of the Tamil National Alliance
(TNA), the Trotskyist Left, the so-called Anti-war Front, an MP each
from the UNP and SLFP, and the Free Media Movement (FMM), represent the
sum total of treachery, behind our lines.
The Trotskyist banner (which reminded me why Stalin chose to bury the
hatchet so to speak with old Leon, just before he had to deal with the
Nazi threat) characterised Mr Raviraj as one who "built an alliance with
the Left and fought for Tamil liberation".
Now that would be an accurate description of many non-Tiger and
anti-Tiger Tamils, ranging from K Pathmanabha right up to Kethesh
Loganathan, all of whom were killed by the Tigers! Except for those who
died in combat, all those Tamils who "fought for Tamil liberation in
alliance with the Left" were assassinated by the LTTE and none by the
'terrorist' State! However, I did not see these Trotskyists such as Dr
Wickremebahu (bootha) Karunaratne carrying this banner at their
funerals!
The 'National' Antiwar Front, or more accurately the Anti National
Anti War Front, or even more accurately the Anti National Pro (Prabhakaran's)
War Front carried a banner which hailed Mr Raviraj as "one who would be
vindicated as a patriot by History".
While that is debatable to say the least, I did not see photographs
of these worthy citizens unfurling this same banner at Kethesh
Loganathan's funeral.
Jehan Perera is quoted by Somini Sengupta of the New York Times as
describing Kethesh's style as 'adversarial', but I have yet to read a
line from him which describes Raviraj's TV performances as being the
same or even more so!
As we face Prabhakaran's decisive 'Final War' over the coming weeks
and months, we now know how large the Fifth Column is, how many
collaborators with Tiger fascism we have amongst us and who they are.
Luckily, they aren't that many. |