Embracing politics of bluff

It must be a really big bluff on the part of Mahinda Rajapaksa, to be able to achieve very substantially, although not yet in full measure, the target of resettling nearly 200,000 of the 280,000 plus Internally Displaced Tamils from the North, who were being held hostage and as human shields by the LTTE, in the final weeks of the operation to liberate the North and all of Sri Lanka from the clutches of terror

The Independent of UK showed a good understanding of the reality behind the TNA decision to support Retired General Sarath Fonseka in the current Presidential Contest, when it headlined its story on it on January 7, as Tigers throw weight behind General who crushed them.

The article by Andrew Buncombe began stating: Seven months after Sri Lanka long and bitter civil war was brought to an end by a withering assault, the political coalition that supported the Tigers has thrown its support behind the former Army Chief who crushed them.

In an ironic twist to the presidential election campaign being fought on the island, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) announced yesterday that it was supporting General Sarath Fonseka in his bid to defeat President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The TNA’s decision announced at a media briefing last Wednesday is the topic of much discussion today. But in fact there is very little to be surprised by it. There was hardly anything secret in this choice, which was a foregone conclusion to those who had been studying the politics of the former proxies of the LTTE, from the time the LTTE was defeated last May. It has been a blow-hot blow-cold relationship with the Government and President Mahinda Rajapaksa; always paving the way for a TNA alliance with those who followed policies favourable to the LTTE.

Reality check

What is more significant is to make a proper assessment of how much the TNA is really representative of the Tamil people, of both the North an East, and how much the Tamil people who were pushed into such suffering by the LTTE policies of terror would be ready to fall in line with the thinking of Sampanthan & Co.

There are new realities in Tamil politics, which are different from the time in November 2005, when the LTTE ordered the Tamils of the North and East, who were under its thrall to boycott the polls.

History never repeats itself, although failure to learn from it can be to one folly. This is no different with electoral patterns, too. The belief that with no LTTE to order another boycott, all Tamils in the North and East would automatically switch their alliance to the TNA is not the reality today.

There are different political forces among the Tamils in the East, with new leadership too. The Tamils in the North are still suffering from the harsh treatment meted out to them by the LTTE, during which time the TNA, led by Sampanthan then too, kept silent, in an attempt to make the world believe that the LTTE was the liberator of the Tamils and their so-called sole-representative.

Bloody deceit

Much blood, Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim has been spilt since then, and a great deal of water has flowed even under the new bridges that have been built, especially in the East, to make a significant difference today.

Sampanthan says Mahinda Rajapaksa has been bluffing the Tamil people for the past four years, and prefers Fonseka as the instrument to prevent President Rajapaksa getting a second mandate. The question that immediately arises is who has been bluffing whom, and more who still continues to be in a state carrying on a bluff of the Tamils.

Even conceding that Sampanthan is the master of bluff and bloody deceit, as his political record would show; it is difficult to point out where Mahinda Rajapaksa has been bluffing the Tamils as against Fonseka.

It was not Mahinda Rajapaksa who said that the Tamils and Muslims must learn to live as minorities in a land owned by the majority Sinhalese. It was none other the same Fonseka who wanted to recruit at least 200,000 more troops to the Sri Lanka Army, after the hostilities with the LTTE ended.

Rajapaksa did not act against dismantling the High Security Zones in the North and East without consulting the Service Commanders, especially the Army Commander Fonseka, who was all in favour of keeping them intact.

It is obvious that for Sampanthan & Co., who are living in a world of bluff, in which they would like the Tamils of Sri Lanka to also live, the sufferings of the Tamil people had nothing to do with the policies of the LTTE, which some perceptive Tamil political analysts have been courageous enough to admit was suicidal for the Tamil people.

For Sampanthan, the glory was in the suicide killer, including the woman suicide bomber who was able to get into Army Headquarters and carry out that blast on Sarath Fonseka himself. (There are questions even today as to how she was able to enter the Army HQ so easily, which deserve investigation). Of course, Fonseka is now ready to forget all such suicidal traits and tendencies of the LTTE, which was part of the strategy of Prabhakaran.

He must also be forgiving and ready to forget the assassinations of President Ranasinghe Premadasa, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Opposition Presidential Candidate Gamini Dissanayake, and so may others, which was the most frightening aspect of the LTTE TNA approved terror. It is such ready amnesia of the tactics of terror that has made the TNA give their support to Fonseka today. It is obvious there is no bluff in his appeal to them to get him elected.

Coward blood

The Tamil people of this country have gone through enough trials and tribulations as a result of the policies followed by the LTTE, so readily supported by the TNA aka Sampanthan & Co. The bluff that Sampanthan refers to must mean the opportunity now given to the Tamil people to send their children to school, carrying books for study, instead of being forcibly taken from their families to carry arms form the terror of the LTTE.

Another big bluff of Rajapaksa must be the absence anymore of the need for elderly Tamils to undergo training in the carrying and use of arms, to be the first wave of armed defence of the LTTE cadres.

It must be another huge Rajapaksa bluff that has made Tamil mothers now not force their teenage daughters into early marriage and rapid pregnancies to prevent them being conscripted to carry arms or even be suicide killers for the LTTE.

While on Sampanthan trail of bluff on the Tamil people it is necessary to recall the cowardice of the politician, who gives pretence of being a tough champion of the Tamil people.

Although he must have easily forgotten the tragic and gruesome incident, many a Tamil will not forget how Sampanthan shifted to extend support to the LTTE, soon after one of its suicide killers so brutally took the life of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, one of the most erudite and forward looking Tamils of Sri Lanka, who had a genuine dream of liberated equality in a democratic Sri Lanka. The blood of Neelan Tiruchelvam and so many other leaders of the Tamil people, from Amirthalingam to the Yogeswarans, Casinader. genuinely elected politicians (unlike Sampanthan over whose election in 2004 there are many questions still hanging), teachers, trade unionists, academics and so many others whose only fault was to differ with the LTTE.

That is the real bluff before the Tamil people today. How far can they trust these people who were happy to keep their seats in Parliament, and not oppose any of the harsh steps the LTTE was taking against them, in the alleged name of liberation?

Political solution

Yes we need a politic solution for the problems of the Tamil people, as well as, those of the Muslims. There are major issues of governance and constitutional change to be resolved.

None of these can be achieved by the mere abolition of the Executive Presidency, even if that were possible as Fonseka claims to dream of and Ranil pretends to want; the new bluff in today politics.

There are much larger issues involved that require consensual politics to achieve genuine pluralism in the country, and bring about the real change that matters to all of our people. Achieving that requires understanding the reality of politics today, and not living in a dream world, where one thinks of re-kindling the separatist dream of the LTTE, or harking back to the days of the Ceasefire Agreement, when the LTTE, and through it the TNA, had its writ apply all over the North and East.

If there is anything that Mahinda Rajapaksa has not given to the TNA, it is the pledge that he would enable such a situation to emerge in Sri Lanka again.

And whatever Fonseka and his rival and motley supporters may hope for, it is also a great bluff to think that this country can be pushed back to the days of the Norwegian brokered ceasefire scenario, when a huge part of the country was controlled by the LTTE, and the UNP turned traitor and betrayed the hideout of the crack troops such as the Long Range Reconnaissance Platoon with its safe house at Aturugiriya.

As much as Sampanthan & Co., cannot anymore bluff the Tamil people, or issue them fiats to obey as the LTTE did, the Sinhalese and others can also not be bluffed by Fonseka into taking this country back into the destructive days of treachery and despair as a nation.

It is time to call the combined bluff of Fonseka, Sampanthan, Wickremesinghe, Anura Kumara Dissanayake et al.

The bluff days are over in Tamil politics, with a once frightened people seeing new horizons of freedom. It is the same in southern politics, too.

The A9 has opened new vistas and opportunities as the many bridges in the East, and the highways elsewhere. The bluff of opportunist politics cannot hide the new horizons of progress ahead.