ICES: an outsider’s view

Malinda SENEVIRATNE

This is an outsider writing about the ICES (International Centre for Ethnic Studies) and the recent controversy regarding the sacking of Rama Mani from the position of Executive Director, her reinstatement and the cancelling of her visa.

This is an outsider who sees in this drama certain elements that speak to a larger politics, of ideological bent and relevant praxis (‘practice’ doesn’t sound very academic, neda?).

Let me state my bias at the outset. I am not exactly a fan of the ICES, Colombo. It was and still is for the most part an integral part of what Susantha Gunatillake called the ‘Ethnic Studies Industry,’ selective in historical reference and choice of research subject, while its ‘scholarship’ is coloured heavily by political objective.

Ethical standards

There is another bias here so I will get that out of the way as well. I have known Pradeep Jeganathan (positioned in this fracas on the side opposite to Rama Mani, Radhika Coomaraswamy and Bradman Weerakoon and their fan club) for at least 34 years. His mother taught me and now teaches my daughter; my mother was a kind of academic counsellor to him. He was my brother’s classmate and we played on the same chess team.
 

Our friendship is strong. I have the highest regard for him as a scholar and a decent human being. We hold different political views but there is a vast range of subjects that interest us both and on the infrequent occasions we do meet, we have decent and interesting conversations. The last time I met him was in July 2007 when a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Harsha De Silva on the subject of “July ‘83” was recorded at the ICES.

Anyway when some 54 persons who believe they represent ‘civil society’ are perturbed by the recent events at the ICES concerning its Executive Director, Rama Mani say they are ‘dismayed by the complete lack of due process and fair play’ in her being sacked and when they say that her termination ‘indicates a worrying lack of transparency and a retreat from ethical standards,’ I am amused, more than anything else.

I like these terms ‘due process’, ‘transparency’ and ‘ethical standards’ and in this case they are indeed pertinent because the signatories, the allegedly ‘respected’ civil servant Bradman Weerakoon, and ex-Executive Director of ICES, Radhika Coomaraswamy throw them around a lot while spitting on them at every turn. (No, I am not being a tad harsh; I am being mild in the extreme in fact).

Process

Kingsley De Silva fired and later reinstated Rama Mani. The firing was accompanied by accusations regarding violating the above lofty principles.

The reinstating smacked of ‘giving into pressure’. At any rate, the ‘process’ as far as ICES is concerned appears to be pretty messed up, with or without Rama. I don’t care how ICES sorts out its little family feud; it’s their business after all. However, I wish to make this business an opportunity to talk about ‘processes’ with respect to those who are wont to nauseating posturing a la ‘we-are-civil-society-reps’.
 

I will relate four stories by way of illustrating what I believe to be the fundamental larger-than-Mani problem of the ICES and ICES-types. The first concerns Rama, the second Rama and many of the signatories pleading her case, the third involves Rama and one of the signatories, Sunila Abeysekera, and the fourth Radhika.

In February 2006 when the Government of Sri Lanka held talks with the LTTE in Geneva, the National Peace Council organised a trip for a bunch of university students from Sri Lanka. The students, predictably, belonged to the three communities, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. They went to Geneva to have what the NPC called ‘alternative talks’.

Little peace-do

Jehan Perera wore his ‘journalist’ cap to attend the media briefings cum photo ops in Celigny at the beginning at conclusion of the talks. I was there too, and knowing about his little peace-do in Geneva, I asked Jehan if I could attend and he graciously said yes. I went with H.L.D. Mahindapala, Bandula Jayasekera and Jeewantha Jayatissa.

Rama Mani, faculty member of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (where the ‘talks’ were being held) was chairing the session. The students said their piece. The Tamil students took issue with the Security Forces, the Muslims told their tale of woe carefully editing out any mention of the LTTE and the Sinhalese did their we-are-guilty-and-sorry-please-forgive-us number. Rama, responding, said something along these lines:

“This is really very moving and very encouraging. It shows that people can sit together and talk. Let us hope that this kind of spirit is there in the talks between the Government and the LTTE too and they move forward and reach a resolution regarding devolution of power to the extent of federalism and even separation.”

She was ill-informed and clearly out of her depth. I observed that for there to be peace there should be ‘process’ and the outcome/resolution should include parallel processes of de-escalation and democratization, and that I didn’t think it was correct to pre-determine ‘solution’ and then design process to suit the preferred end. Mahindapala and Jayasekera also spoke on these issues.

Rama gave me her visiting card and although we couldn’t meet again, we spoke on the phone. I told her then that she was ill-informed and warned her that just because someone uses ‘peace’ as a label it does not necessary mean that he/she is above board, without blemish and incapable of mischief.

Knew nothing

She told me not to be so dismissive of peace activists. She knew nothing of what these ‘peace activists’ have been doing in Sri Lanka. We agreed to meet up someday and talk about it.

I met Rama briefly in Geneva that April (when the LTTE decided not to show up for talks scheduled as per the agreement signed in Celigny in February).

She mentioned that she had been offered the ICES job but had not been happy with the terms. We talked about other things, in particular the poetry of Hafiz of Shiraz. I told her my honest opinion: ‘This academic/scholarly stuff you are doing is rubbish; you would be more effective if you went off somewhere far away and wrote a novel’.

‘I must do that,’ she said. ‘Soon,’ she added after a pause. ‘Soon is now,’ I responded. We laughed. That was it.

After Rama Mani finally took up the ICES job last year, I met her in Colombo on several occasions. She invited me for dinner once. There were lots of people, some of whom I knew and most of whom I knew of. Among them, was a woman who I had known from Peradeniya.

She told me: ‘Malinda, aren’t you amazed by the diversity here?’ Yes, it was a diverse gathering. There were Sinhalese, Tamils and lots of foreigners from various countries. My response: ‘Yes, diversity in terms of country of origin, ethnic identity, religion etc., but not in terms of political position, they all hold the same view; except me.’ She reflected for a moment and agreed.

Not sincere

I had told Rama earlier by way of both warning and the need to give her the benefit of the doubt something along these lines:

“When foreigners come to Sri Lanka, especially foreigners in some way associated with the ‘ethnic conflict’ or are held to be influential, they are typically ‘befriended’ by a small, English-speaking, Anglicized and articulate band of men and women who tout federalism.

They are ‘nice people’ in that they make intelligent conversation, are interesting hang-out buddies and extremely friendly. Of course they will not tell you what really motivates them nor educate you about the fact that their arguments stand on flawed and incomplete premises nor tell you that they are in fact a tiny minority in a larger intellectual milieu.

They will make out that they make up the entire intellectual community in the island and will dismiss those who take issue with them as ‘chauvinists’, ‘extremists’, ‘majoritarian’ etc.

They are smart. They will disarm you of critical appraisal. You become one of them.”

Rama clearly had not been listening.

A few months later I attended a seminar at the ICES. I forget the topic, but Rama was presiding with Sunila Abeyesekra and Shirani Gunatillake making presentations. Sunila spoke about her work in Latin America and painted a rosy, romantic picture of ‘civil society’.

I asked her if she is saying that NGOs and civil society activists are necessarily pure, value-free and without political agenda. Sunila said, ‘No, of course not; we all have our political agendas. We are not sincere.’

Rama immediately interjected, ‘What she is saying is not that they are insincere but that they do have agendas and political objectives; and (laughing) you are not to write about this in the newspaper!’ I said I would not, choosing to send her an email, ‘I noticed that you covered Sunila’s butt, but the funny thing is that Sunila didn’t notice that her butt required covering!’ Rama has not communicated with me since. I have broken my promise because the stakes are higher now and country most definitely comes before such niceties.

Rama, obviously, was smart enough to know or at least suspect that her great buddies were small-minded, anti-intellectual operators and not scholars with integrity or activists pure of heart and soul. She covered up for whatever reason.

Rewind to March 18, 2006. Daily Mirror. “This way to civil society, ladies and gentlemen,” followed by “‘Peace’ NGOs in Colombo and their phobias” the following week. Author: self. The nimiththa was a position paper written by Charan Rainford and Bernadette Mahendira titled ‘Aiding peace in Sri Lanka - Opening a dialogue between NGOs and donors’ and circulated by Radhika among a select group of NGO personalities as prelude to a closed-door seminar on the same subject.

Re-negotiate

The way they conceptualized it, they merely wanted to ‘explore NGO-Donor relations in the context of the current crises (that of a Parliamentary Select Committee on NGOs having been set up), explore the history of NGO-Donor relations and (find out) whether there is a need to re-negotiate the framework for the partnership, both in terms of process and substantive issues’.

The ‘closed-door’ nature betrays, as I argued then, a hemmed-in mentality but we could forgive that if it was merely a first (in-house) step in a larger journey. ‘More problematic was that the ICES sought to examine only the NGO-donor part of the processual equation while footnoting the other and more crucial necessity, an NGO-people dialogue,’ I argued.

Pradeep called me at around 8 am the day the first article appeared. He acknowledged the point I made and said Radhika also concurred and had wanted him to invite me and others who have similar issues for this workshop. I told Pradeep that that would be a separate discussion altogether but that it would be a welcome move should the ICES actually decided to ‘talk’ to the ‘un-civil us’.

The ICES has not made any moves in that direction since, unfortunately. Quite apart from the fundamentally anti-democratic and elitist character of ICES operations as revealed here, the real problem lies in Radhika’s hypocrisy as shall be demonstrated presently.

Language use

Let’s get to language use now. How can someone like Radhika, who stakes so much on transparency, due process and what not and champions NGOs, the participatory ethic etc., be so close-minded in the first place ? How can she reference ‘due process’ with respect to Rama’s removal and not object to the violation of the same principle with respect to Rama tying up ICES with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) ?

Bradman Weerakoon has only said that the Board of the ICES was ‘interested’ in Rama’s proposal to have ICES ‘provide input from South Asia by affiliating with the GCR2P’.

Rama must have aligned ICES with the GCR2P, for the ICES found mention in the GCR2P website as an Associate Centre. There is no record of the ICES Board deciding on such a move. Why hasn’t our Due-Process-Is-My-Watchword Radhika Coomaraswamy rapped Rama on her knuckles for this? Sounds fishy to me. It gets better. The Canadian High Commissioner, Angela Bogdan, had written directly to the Board of ICES (the letter has been reproduced in The Nation of January 27, 2008) intimating that funding would be frozen if Rama was not reinstated.

Radhika herself is reported to have issued a veiled threat of having Ford Foundation funding for the ICES endowment withdrawn. She has not denied this in a response to Kingsley, Pradeep and others where she blurts out some ‘factual information’.

What Radhika does or does not do with regard to whatever sway she holds over the Ford Foundation is not my business, but can she not take issue with Bogdan after expressing concern regarding the donor-driven political economy of funding ? Some would call it shooting oneself in the foot, I believe.

Or was that all hogwash from an ardent neo-colonial sycophant to mislead fellow-natives regarding her true and servile commitments? Her uncritical cheering of R2P (Right to Protect) juxtaposed with her ‘concerns’ about the donor-driven character of NGO activity, clearly shows that she’s playing a double game.

Radhika unashamedly brags about being on the advisory panel of the GCR2P.

Rama shows embarrassingly teenage-like oomph for Gareth Evans who she invited for the Neelan Thiruchelvam Memorial Lecture last year. Mind you, Evans, to be brutally frank, didn’t know his marbles about Sri Lanka and what he did know was the usual nonsense dished out by the ‘we-are-the-civil-society’ intellectual frauds referred to above. Radhika is not some wet-behind-the-ears research assistant. She is supposed to be a scholar. Rama too, of course. That both these people do not see the reincarnated colonial that is R2P is scandalous and this fact alone should be sufficient to summarily deny them office in any institute with academic pretensions.

Bradman on the other hand is but a retired civil servant and by all account hardly an adornment to that service, his ‘highly-respected’ tag obtained more through carefully cultivated association with high profile politicians and regular affirmation by journalists loyal to the UNP (he’s one of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s advisors) than to demonstrated skill. His defence of Rama is emotional and of the she’s-a-decent-kid kind. The due-process issue, the stink of neo-colonial framings and the clear complicity of his pals in a patently anti-intellectual exercise is way too much for him to handle.

Acting

So we have Radhika with her agenda, Rama out of her depth, acting the perfect proxy, Bradman the naive and 54 signatories who question the integrity, due-process or lack thereof and adherence to ‘founding principles’ of the ICES with respect to Rama’s removal and of course talk of ‘a worrying lack of transparency and retreat from ethical standards’ but will not dare question the bona fides of these very people and indeed their guilt in the same violations that prompted them to sign the document.

As I said at the outset, I find all this amusing. The ‘54’ believe that the process behind Rama’s ouster ‘gravely risks and undermines the organisation’s rich contribution to polity and society in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the past 25 years’. That’s a matter of opinion of course.

Whether it was Kingsley (and Pradeep, Jeevan, Sam, Jani and Dushante going by Radhika’s list of villains - all unknown to me apart from Pradeep) perpetrating sabotage or Rama going overboard, believing herself to be Viceroy, or Radhika getting paranoid and defensive is not going to cost me any sleep.

It is up to the ICES to figure out what’s best for its operations. The issue is that what’s good enough for ICES does not necessarily have to be good for Sri Lanka. Rama, all things considered, is not the purohitha here. She’s but an instrument of forces that are most definitely anti Sri Lankan.

However, this does not mean that she can play the larger-than-ICES activist and expect to be spared criticism. As for Radhika, she’s been around long enough to know the Golden Rule, ‘He who has the gold makes the rule’. She should not be clamouring to register the ICES as an affiliate of GCR2P, but give it another name.

I am dying to know how Radhika (and Rama) would conceptualize the status of states that inflict human-made catastrophes on the people of other states and the R2P-like prerogatives therein in a globalised world. The issue of sovereignty does not apply here of course, but pray, what principles do apply, say, to the USA with respect to Guantanamo Bay, or the United Kingdom with respect to the atrocities perpetrated in post-Saddam Iraq or Canadian companies’ complicity in horrendous rights violations in Ecuador and elsewhere ?

Or do they believe that violations done in the name of the glorious ‘free market’ are somehow ok ? Should not these bleeding-heart human rights advocates stretch the idea of R2P to include corporate crime and cross-border ‘human-made catastrophes’ ?

Should they not be perturbed enough by the human-made catastrophes of mining companies such as Freeport-McMoran to advocate military force (as a last resort) against them ? Will Radhika (and Rama) ‘(not continue but begin to) interfere’ in such activities as per their conscience-fuelled mandate?

Visa

Rest assured, they will do nothing of the kind. Radhika let it slip when she said she will ‘continue to interfere’. Freud would have smiled. This is the subtext of R2P. It is not about a right to protect but a right to interfere.

Would anyone fault me for proposing the term “Busybodies” to describe these people?

Did I forget the cancellation of Rama’s visa ? I am not sure if she canvassed the Canadian High Commissioner to make representations on her behalf but if she didn’t and also had any sense of the integrity of her organisation she would have responded immediately, ‘Thanks, but no,’ the moment she heard about Bogdan’s letter.

There may have been better ways of sorting things out but unfortunately Rama has allowed things to get out of hand and this has not helped.

All I know is that Pradeep does an excellent job with Domains, that he entertained legitimate hopes of succeeding to Radhika’s post and that he was naturally peeved when Radhika shooed in Rama.

I did ask in a newspaper article what he was doing at an organization that insults its founder’s name by bringing down a clown like Evans to wax eloquent about being Good Samaritans (read, International Thugs). Anyway, let him defend himself, he’s able enough.

As for the rest of us, those who are un-civil but not necessarily stupid, we must make sure that the footnote begins to talk. We must make sure that the Radhikas and Bradmans realize that their elitism does not go unnoticed and that neither does their intellectual paucity. The same for the pathetic 54, who, more than Radhika, Rama and Bradman, appear to be the most ridiculous in this drama. It is simple. The ICES has a problem, a human-made problem.

It is not a catastrophe, but then should human beings look the other way at non-catastrophic problems? No, we should rush in and do the do-gooding. We have the Right to Protect, no?