Political expediency - danger to Democracy!

S L Gunasekara giving evidence before the LLRC quite categorically identified ‘party politics’ as being the cause of Tiger terrorism in Sri Lanka. What he really meant was that the two main parties in the country have at times chartered politically expedient courses even at the risk of endangering national security.

It is a fact that during the past 30 years the country’s political Opposition never appreciated the difficulties of the Government of the day in facing the most ruthless terror outfit in the world and instead blamed even the difficult situations enacted by the LTTE on the Government in power.

Without stopping at that, the two main parties blamed each other as being responsible for the ‘Tamil issue’ just to score political points over one another. The UNP said that the cause of the issue is the 1958 Language Bill forgetting that the UNP too voted for the Language Bill while the SLFP (specially during Chandrika regime) tried to project July ‘83 as the cause of the conflict.

Political opponents

Well they were both wrong and in their haste to score political points they both expediently glossed over the fact that it was in 1949 that Chelvanayagam floated the Party for a Tamil State (IATK) and fraudulently called it the ‘Federal Party’. This was nine years before 1958 and 24 years before 1983.

Although the two main parties continued to blame one another they often lured this Federal Party when it suited them politically, conceding to their rabid racial demands thereby strengthening and nurturing the separatist agenda. Then when Prabhakaran came on the scene he too was able to exploit this political rivalry to make LTTE the most organized terror outfit in the world.

During the Premadasa era the LTTE had no compunctions in dispensing with prominent politicians because President Premadasa’s political opponents made sure that all those killings got credited to Premadasa’s ‘power hungry’ account.

Finally when the LTTE killed President Premadasa himself his political opponents could not explain why President Premadasa should kill himself for his own power hunger.

This is what is called political expediency and that not only helped Tamil terrorism but also nurtured it during the past 30 years. President Rajapaksa, having observed all this national degradation, was finally able to put a full stop to this political chicanery by eliminating terrorism.

But the irony is that President Rajapaksa’s political opponent Wickremesinghe is increasingly showing signs of his inability to do politics without a ‘machismo figure in politics’ that he had been used to all these years.

Thus since the Prabhakaran factor is no more in Sri Lankan politics Wickremesinghe has now adopted a Fonseka issue into his politics.

National degradation

The other day in Parliament the Leader of the Opposition made a plea for Fonseka’s protection and quite sarcastically remarked that he should be given ‘at least the same protection that is being afforded to KP’. Now this is interesting.

For a good part of his political career Ranil said that the Government was wrong in fighting Prabhakaran without giving him a ‘political solution’ and now that this Prabhakaran factor is no more he is espousing Fonseka, the man who helped to eliminate Prabhakaran.

How could a politician, Leader of the Opposition at that, become such a ‘political turn a coat’ so short a time? Aren’t these ‘leaders’ expected to have principles in their politics or do they expect the people in this country to be imbeciles, so that they could survive by their political expediencies alone? How did this Fonseka factor come to replace the Prabhakaran factor in Sri Lankan politics?

Ranil Wickremesinghe, since he assumed the leadership of the UNP, followed a certain course of action in keeping with his political principles, to solve the country’s main problem; the LTTE.

He called it a ‘ethnic conflict’ and believed that the only way to solve that was by giving all what they demanded. Thus he gave all what they demanded, acting even beyond his powers, but the problem only became worse.

Yet Ranil was steadfastly loyal to his political ideology and pursued it even to the point of risking the country’s sovereignty and national security. Subsequent events have now proved him wrong and that his strategy was a monumental mistake that cost the country billions in terms of life and collateral.

Now what Ranil should have done, if he is the ‘gentleman’ he was said to be, is to admit that his political vision was wrong and step down from Party leadership so that a person with a better vision could take over the party. But instead, Ranil implying that the politician in him is larger than the ‘gentleman’ in him, has chosen to cling to Fonseka stating that the country’s democracy is at stake.

The paradox here again is that it was Ranil himself who said that Fonseka was ‘a law on to himself’ and that he was the biggest threat to the country’s democracy when Fonseka was a part of the Government.

Defence forces

The UNP even held him responsible for the death of Lasantha Wickremetunge and for the attack on Keith Noyar, the editor. Fonseka became a hero to Ranil not because he helped the country out of terror but because he crossed the political Rubicon to oppose President Rajapaksa. If this is not political expediency then it at least has to be ‘chronic dementia’.

What matters to Ranil is his political survival and not whether you espouse Prabhakaran and undermine the country’s national security or espouse Fonseka and run the risk of politicizing the country’s defence forces.

It is certainly time that the people in this country realize that the biggest threat to the country’s democracy come from political leaders who have made political survival their only principle in politics. [email protected]