Mahinda’s Mephistophelian Contract

-Kumar David

 

The melodrama

The central issue, principal contradiction if you are inclined to Maoist shibboleths, of the November 17^th presidential elections in Sri Lanka is the national question. The manner in which the build-up to the election campaign has evolved has pushed aside every other issue of significance, such as the trade-off between dirigisme and free-market economic strategies, and broad issues of governance, parliamentary representation and executive presidency. The event that catalysed this narrowing, and harrowing, of the electoral focus is the Faustian bargain that Prime Minister and presidential candidate Mr Mahinda Rajapakse entered into with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU). The former is a left party contaminated by a chauvinist virus and the latter, the “monks party”, an unabashedly chauvinist and obscurantist Sinhala-Buddhist (S-B) outfit.

            Those on the political left who know Rajapakse well testify to his progressive stance on issues such as workers rights, democratic and pluralistic inclinations and his nationalistic (in the good sense) credentials, and to use a clichéd short-hand, his anti-imperialist sentiments. Nevertheless, political opportunism has become to Rajapakse what the promise of earthly fulfilment was to Faust, programmatic abdication to chauvinism his version of Faust’s internment of the soul to Mephistopheles in eternity. But personal drama aside, as with all great tragedy it is the broader consequences of this Mephistophelian Contract that has to be assessed.

            There has been gradual conciliation in the outlooks that steer the behaviour of the two largest communities in Sri Lanka since 1987 when the Indian Air Force over-flew Jaffna with scant regard for Sri Lankan sovereignty - the first act in the dethronement of Sinhala chauvinism as the nation’s hegemonic ideology. With shock and awe it dawned on the South that racism could not run amok as it wished in this little island unless it was prepared to countenance the Indian State – and that was not a feasible option. From 1994 to 2002, despite gains and losses on the battlefield and the follies and failures of political leaders, on the whole there has been limping progress, sometimes even a spurt, in the peace process and ideological accommodation. The crucial element is not this or that military event, accord or round of talks, not even the cease-fire agreement, important as it is; what is truly important is the shift in outlook and attitude that has slowly come to permeate the two communities. This has compelled the SLFP, the UNP and the LTTE to come to terms with each other and to imagine solutions that in previous decades they dared not vision.

Should a signal now go out that this process is in reverse, should the Tamils be justifiably led to conclude that there is no point in searching for a negotiated settlement, should it be signalled that autonomy and a new constitutional dispensation are illusions, then the gates of hell will reopen. And a victory of the JHU-JVP-Mahinda axis, committed as it is to a unitary-state and other negations of the peace process, will be just such a signal; a signal that the S-B majority has grown weary of the post-1994 experience and relapsed into a new chauvinist phase and stance.

            President Kumaratunga, despite the foibles for which she is frequently and justifiably berated, did attempt to puncture the Mephistophelian Contract and made sustained efforts abroad and at campaign meetings at home. However, she failed to persuade the SLFP to spurn the egregious JVP and JHU contracts, hence the central issue in the election remains undiluted, the national question. She now battles to rescue the SLFP from succumbing to JVP ascendancy via Rajapakse’s fractious consortium.

 

 

The real drama

 

            In this context the developing UNP-SLFP serenade places some real questions pertaining to a potential right-wing option, issues of class and ideology, and the prospect of a national government, on the agenda. The programme of the UNP is after all not very different from that of the Kumaratunga wing of the SLFP both on the national question and on economic policy. Differences emerge only when either party indulges in opportunist antics and flirts with chauvinism simply to discredit the other, as for example Kumaratunga did when she cried wolf to justify dissolving parliament in 2003, or the UNP’s shameless misconduct on constitutional reform proposals from 1994 to 2000. These pretences aside, the basic convergence between the parties raises a set of questions of some substantive significance in class terms, questions that go beyond the conduct of individual leaders and even beyond the programmes of individual parties. Questions that can be framed in three dimensions -

 

a) Does the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie, and in particular the rising investor capitalist class, find it in its interests, and have the political will, to lead the nation to a democratic resolution of the ethnic conflict?

b) Is global capitalism, on which this bourgeoisie is dependent – specifically certain European powers such as Norway and the UK, the United States and Japan – playing a progressive role and sponsoring a democratic settlement of the national question and genuine devolution?

c) In class terms then, as a corollary, is the urban and rural petty-bourgeoisie, and concomitantly nationalist ideology, congenitally or pathologically reactionary, chauvinist and incapable of overcoming such limitations?  (I refer here to the Sinhalese petty-bourgeoisie; the pathology of their Tamil counterparts lies outside the scope of this brief article).

 

  The answer to the first question appears to be partially affirmative with several cautionary caveats, the answer to the second rather more firmly affirmative. For those of us who call ourselves marxists this carries certain implications, but it is of interest to others as well. If the answer is affirmative, then it is so only because it is in the economic and business interests of local and global capital to promote peace and facilitate a stable new constitutional dispensation. In that case, it follows that capitalist development and a progressive constitutional rearrangement are compatible, or to use leftist lingo, it means that at the current stage of world development the bourgeoisie, in alliance with world capitalism, is capable of solving an unfinished task of the bourgeois democratic revolution, the national question – at least in Sri Lanka.

There are, however, three caveats to this optimistic prognosis, and if experience is to be a guide, the obstacles could triumph, reducing the exercise to nought. The first is simply the pessimism born of past experiences with the UNP and the SLFP – 1983, the March to Kandy, Sinhala Only, standardisation, military atrocities and a thousand such infamies. Is there reason to believe that this time will be different? Well, the significant difference from every previous occasion is that even before the elections sections of the political leadership (Rajapakse excepted) are standing up to chauvinism, rather than succumbing. This is a reversal of invariable previous behaviour.

The second reason for concern is that the bourgeoisie will be able to deliver on this assignment only if it forms a national government incorporating the UNP and the Kumaratunga wing of the SLFP. The huge downside here is that neo-liberal economic policies and genuflection before global capitalism will thereby win a carte blanche – a topic outside the scope of this little article.

And finally, the well-laid schemes of mice, men and even responsible bourgeois governments, will fall asunder if the LTTE does not agree to tango. Whether the Tamils will be able to close a deal incorporating reasonable devolution while the hegemonic power of the LTTE, with its separate agenda persists, remains to be seen. And how will the Tamil people assert themselves, over time, if the LTTE spurns a reasonable deal, instead seeking war, secession and authoritarianism rule in the Tamil areas? Time will tell; that is if the LTTE chooses this route, but it would be an error to presuppose that it necessarily will.

There is also substance to the argument that a “solution” conceived along the lines of UNP thinking is actually an abandonment of the Tamils to LTTE dictatorship. Nevertheless, those who refuse to contemplate peace unless democracy for the Tamils, that is to say democracy from the tyranny of the LTTE, is simultaneously guaranteed are simply turning their backs on reality. The statement ‘Peace first, then democracy’ sounds banal but it is a reminder that it is not possible to impose prearranged schema on history. The fact is that the experiences of half a century are such that the Tamil people will not settle their accounts with the LTTE until they have first settled accounts with the Sinhala State.

 

Whither S-B petty-bourgeois consciousness?

 

            We are left with question (c) of the triumvirate and an answer to some degree will be provided by the outcome of the elections. Bear with me for a moment as I put down a few rough and ready numbers – I will not trouble with the methodology of calculation. The minorities (Tamils, Upcountry Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese Christians), in round figures, account for about 30% of the population and electorate. Projections based on the statements made by parties (TNA, CWC, SLMC and so on) and realistic expectations of minority voting have enabled this writer to forecast that this vote will split 23% to Wickremesinghe and 7% to Rajapakse. The battle for the Rajapakse camp, therefore, is all about the 70% S-B vote; were Wickremesinghe to secure 40% of this vote, that is 28% (70x0.4) nationally, he scrapes through.

            The strategic option adopted by the Rajapakse camp, which has done its arithmetic, is stark and palpable from its campaign tactics. Rajapakse must aim for two-thirds of the S-B vote even if it requires consorting with the chauvinist devil itself.  One often hears it said that Rajapakse, personally, is no chauvinist and indeed this is true, but this is specious and beside the point. The campaign will acquire its complexion from political necessity; the JVP and JHU will do the dirty work, each in its own different way at the grass roots level; and Kumaratunga will bespeak reasonableness on the big platform.

            Hence, the outcome of the elections, important for its own sake, will answer a sociological question that is more significant in the long-term. A handsome Wickremesinghe victory will announce that close to, if not more than half (depending on the actual votes) of the S-B petty-bourgeoisie shunned a relapse into chauvinism and expressed preparedness to move forward from cease-fire to settlement. A Rajapakse victory would herald that perhaps as much as two-thirds did otherwise. The significance of this basic indicator is paramount; regional voting patterns in the deep south and the Kandyan areas will shed light on other parameters.

            Oddball assortments of two kinds of naysayers contradict this assertion. This reality embarrasses the opportunist left which has sleepwalked into the Rajapakse cheer-squad and become an irrelevant footnote in the campaign, unwelcome on every platform, its incoherent statements, or more precisely its deafening silences, ignored by the public.

The second kind of naysayer is a brand of Tamil nationalism which is afraid that a Rajapakse defeat will be interpreted as a defeat for chauvinism and a signal that the Sinhalese people are ready to do business about a new constitutional arrangement. To these LTTE epiphytes this interpretation is foreclosed by definition and it is from this quarter that the thesis of ‘entrenched UNP and SLFP voters’ emanates. The thesis goes as follows: “Both the UNP and the SLFP have a traditional vote-bank among Sinhala Buddhist loyalists which will not be swayed by the issues on the national question now being raised by the two candidates. Neither candidate would be seen by their party faithful to be proposing anything radical. Therefore the outcome of the elections is irrelevant as a measure of Sinhala Buddhist political consciousness.”  For people who bet ‘Heads I win, tails you loose’, history can teach no lessons nor events provide signposts.

 

Elections as spring cleaning exercises

 

            Whoever said that bourgeois-democratic elections are always an exercise in futility at which the people decide which section of the ruling class will misrepresent them for the next term, was quite wrong, at least about the “always” if the word did appear in the original quotation. This presidential election in Sri Lanka is going to set the stage for some very important future developments. If Rajapakse wins, given his platform, the Tamil people must draw the conclusion that a negotiated constitutional settlement is not possible. “Must” is used here advisedly as a logical imperative, a conclusion that is logically proper to draw from the event, in the context of the foregoing analysis; not to be confused with the usual “may” which is used to signal a warning. There is no purpose in Rajapakse, nice guy that he is, plodding that extra mile to Kilinochchi with ‘unitary’ trinkets in his knapsack; a jaded opportunist trekking in search of a faded mirage.

            A decisive Rajapakse defeat will be a good think in one sense - it will signal a public willingness to search for a solution of the national question within a bourgeois democratic framework. Given the sterility of the prevalent realm of possibilities this option has earned the right to be given a try. The socio-economic programme of this rightwing, or preferably national, government will indeed pose grave challenges for the socialist left, which without any doubt must stand outside such a government. And unfortunately recent experience in India is not particularly relevant because the Congress led government has a different character from a prospective UNP or UNP led national government.

There are hard times ahead for the left movement; it must cross its bridges, one by one, as it reaches them, but there is no avoiding painful decisions. Voting for one of the three left candidates on the ballot paper is, of course, the only choice. But there is no denying that depicting a Rajapakse victory as a chauvinist footfall amounts to countenancing an unpalatable UNP victory. That’s not the fault of the left, that’s were the people of Sri Lanka have landed themselves.

 

 

 

27 October 2005.