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Wickremesinghe amongst the Liberals
Secretariat for Coordinating
the Peace Process (SCOPP)
26th May 2008
Last week saw what might be termed the most significant transformation
in political thought in recent years. Under the able guidance of Sagarica
Delgoda, head of the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung in Sri Lanka, Ranil
Wickremesinghe declared himself an adherent of the particularly liberal
doctrine of individual freedom.
He did this at an International Conference in Berlin to mark the 50th
Anniversary of the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung for Freedom, the foundation
associated with the German Liberal Party. The German liberals had financed
his visit to Europe, in the course of which, as the press had it, he
was going to argue the case for GSP+ preferences being extended for
Sri Lanka by the European Union.
This might have seemed incredibly kind, were it not that his speech
in Berlin made it quite clear that his aim was the opposite. The argument,
such as it is, against extending GSP+ for Sri Lanka, is based on inadequacies
in Sri Lanka's human rights record, the belief that its government somehow
does not live up to particular principles. Obviously, if Ranil Wickremesinghe
is going to argue the case for Sri Lanka, he must present himself as
a devoted adherent of those principles, and so throughout his speech
he shows himself an adherent of liberal democracy, quoting at length
from the EU Treaty, the German Constitution and the 1991 Commonwealth
Declaration on Good Governance, doubtless documents that, on Ms Delgoda's
directions, he now keeps by his bedside.
Such devotion is a far cry from his contemptuous assertion, when Chanaka
Amaratunga first brought liberal thinking before the Sri Lankan body
politic, that Liberalism had died out in Sri Lanka with Sir James Pieris.
But if twenty years is a long time in politics, and a man can grow up
and reform in all sincerity, it is less easy to swallow the idea that
there has been a sea change since the authoritarian assertions of five
years ago.
Unsurprisingly - at least for those who are acquainted with chameleons
- five years ago Ranil Wickremesinghe was singing the praises of states
neither liberal nor democratic, states that many might have termed authoritarian.
Having remarked, in a speech in Chennai in 2003, on the Chinese economic
miracle, after years of 'failure', once 'the free market reforms took
place in the late 1980s',
Wickremesinghe remarked how 'South Korea turned its economy into a powerhouse
before granting her people real political freedom. Indonesia was single-minded
in improving its economic performance and has only recently adopted
more genuine democratic processes. Even Vietnam, one of the few remaining
communist countries, has been increasing amounts of foreign investment
and looks set to achieve great economic strides in the near future….the
current widely accepted view is that a functioning democracy is essential
for sustainable economic growth and development. Nevertheless, the evidence
from both our countries (India and Sri Lanka) is that this is not necessarily
the case.'
Only Ranil Wickremesinghe could pretend to have transformed himself
in five short years from Nietzsche to John Stuart Mill. But, just to
make it clear that he is having a ball, and laughing at all and sundry
who remember nothing, he throws in a hint of where his real allegiances
lie. Knowing well that German liberals would probably not remember J
R Jayewardene at all, he begins his speech by saying that 'Popular belief
equates democracy with representative democracy together with the notion
that Parliament is sovereign and can do anything, other than make a
man into a woman or a woman into a man'.
Popular belief entertains no such notion, except in diseased minds.
It was only J R Jayewardene who claimed that, under the Presidential
constitution he had introduced, he could do everything except inflict
gender change. Only someone like Wickremesinghe, a convert after his
marriage to gender equality, could believe that he might even be able
to go further, if endowed with Jayewardene style powers, the type of
power he wanted to give Prabhakaran under the interim authority proposals
for the North and East he sent to the LTTE shortly after this 2003 speech.
It is typical that, before his attack on the current government, he
should tongue in cheek have paid his customary tribute to the uncle
who launched him on his political career, by promoting him into the
Cabinet when he was still under thirty. For the pith of Wickremesinghe's
speech, to an audience that he doubtless hoped would take the message
back to European Union decision makers mulling over GSP+, was that Sri
Lanka was moving 'from an illiberal democracy to an authoritarian state'.
What are the criticisms he makes of Sri Lanka at this forum to which
the German Liberals have obligingly flown him? First he claims that
the Government is attempting to use a war against the LTTE to slowly
extinguish democracy.
This is a preposterous claim, particularly coming from someone who
was a leading figure in the Government that introduced the Prevention
of Terrorism Act which, given the ham-fisted manner in which it was
implemented, immeasurably increased the strength of the LTTE - as did
that Government's appallingly illiberal undemocratic acts such as the
referendum to postpone elections, the cajoling over through constitutional
manipulation of Tamil MPs, the banning of political opponents from contesting
elections, the introduction of a constitutional amendment designed to
get rid of Tamil MPs from Parliament, and so on and so on and so on.
It is also outrageous, except that no one would know the facts in Berlin,
in that he is talking about a Government based on a Parliament and a
Presidency elected democratically, that has since held elections on
schedule and won them convincingly at all levels, and that has also
reintroduced democracy to the Eastern Province that he himself was happily
prepared to hand over to the Tigers lock, stock and barrel through the
interim authority he proposed in 2003 (in three different incarnations,
each more authoritarian in scope than the previous one).
He goes on to substantiate his claim by asserting that the Government
has entered into electoral alliances with 'Tamil para military group
accused of human rights violations. Contesting the election, intimidating
voters and ballot stuffing in Tamil areas'. He forgets that his own
UNP was not just accused, but even found guilty, in the Election Commissioner's
Report on the 1982 Referendum, of turning polling into a complete farce.
He also forgets his own reliance on the LTTE in all elections in this
millennium. It was after all Ravi Karunanayake, his line to the German
Liberals, who encouraged him to refuse to compromise with President
Kumaratunga in 2003 on the grounds that the UNP could not lose a General
Election, since together with the TNA they could be sure of a majority.
And even this time round, having tried to turn the Eastern Province
Election into a communal issue, he was then saved by LTTE instructions
to in effect support the UNP alliance, so as to thwart the Government.
Instructively, when even the world has begun to condemn particular acts
of LTTE terrorism, the UNP has sedulously avoided any criticism of the
LTTE, and has instead continuously tried to blame the Government for
the deaths of civilians and soldiers alike.
Wickremesinghe also talks of the Government 'weakening the party system
to replace it with family rule'. This is particularly rich, coming from
a man whose initial preferment was entirely due to his being the nephew
of an all powerful President. Wickremesinghe knows well the resentment
against him in those days of a sizeable section of the UNP, he knows
the names he was called by more intelligent and accomplished politicians
such as Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake, ranging from Young
Fascist to Milksop (in a much more pithy Sinhala version). Still, with
all of them being killed, courtesy of the LTTE, with Gamini Athukorale
and Karu Jayasuriya also gone, after they were stripped of significant
party positions, Wickremesinghe now reigns supreme in his own right.
That he runs his party not as a family fiefdom but through old school
ties, with prominence given primarily to people of the same class and
educational capacity - never outstanding - such as Kapukotuwa and Karunanayake
and Samarawickrema and Charitha Ratwatte (also a member of the family,
but at least competent, and bright enough to want to stay at arm's length
now), may seem a virtue to Wickremesinghe. But it is not what accountability
and transparency and democracy are about.
And in the midst of all this, at international fora where there is
no one to challenge him, he sets himself up to critique insidiously
a popularly elected Member of Parliament who was only made a Cabinet
Minister belatedly; the most effective Secretary of Defense this country
has had in decades; the person responsible for the most efficient resettlement
programme for internally displaced persons in any conflict situation
in the world; and all this whilst retaining a stranglehold on his party
which precludes any challenge, changing its constitution at will, primarily
to get rid of potential rivals such as Athukorale and Jayasuriya from
significant positions. This is surely the height of hypocrisy, which
sadly the few intelligent and able people left in the UNP have to swallow,
because the sycophants will always shout louder. The only hope for the
party is that the jealousy of the unelected incompetents is such that
even those of goodwill will be alienated and before long Wickremesinghe
will be left with just a royal core, incapable of saving him from the
vote of no confidence that, despite it not being possible under the
party constitution, may be mandated by law under a fundamental rights
application.
Incidentally, Wickremesinghe's last exercise in this respect, of publicly
badmouthing the government, was in Bulgaria, a year or two back, in
a speech not to the Liberals but to the Conservative Union, when he
specifically included Nivard Cabraal in his allegation of family- bandyism.
The statement was based on misconception, Wickremesinghe not really
understanding that, though Mrs Cabraal comes from the same District
as the President, any family connection lies four or five generations
back, and is nothing like as close as Mrs Cabraal's connection to Wickremesinghe
himself (which is doubtless why Mr Cabraal was a favoured UNP candidate
until his undoubted abilities proved too much for the royal inner circle).
The FNS indeed used to recognize Cabraal as an expert to use for training
programmes, until it decided to put all its eggs into the Karunanayake/Wickremesinghe
basket in Sri Lanka, despite the latter having taken the UNP into the
Conservative Union.
A couple of months ago it was announced that Wickremesinghe was going
to a meeting of the Conservative Union, of which he was a Vice-President,
and it was hoped that he would be made its President. Nothing more has
been heard of this, which may explain his sudden conversion to liberal
values. Certainly Chanaka Amaratunga would have been proud of him, for
the first section of his speech strangely echoes what Chanaka wrote
in the second chapter of 'Liberal Values for South Asia', that 'Liberalism
is not about material things or even ultimately about constitutional
relationships but about the real freedom of real individuals.'
It is to be hoped that Mrs Delgoda made sure Wickremesinghe read that
chapter, for it also asserts 'One does not have to believe in the primacy
of positive liberty to recognize that a society in which more people
can truly exercise individual liberty is a more liberal society than
one in which the exercise of liberty is inhibited by restraints arising
from social deprivation…..The Liberal may want a free market but
his priority is individual liberty in the widest sense.'
A chameleon however can read without understanding, can understand
without committing, can assert without believing. The evidence of the
last thirty years suggests that maturity may have led Wickremesinghe
to conceal some convictions - except in Chennai - and to eschew direct
dealings with individuals such as Gonawala Sunil and Kalu Lucky, but
whether the West should see him as its standard bearer for liberal democracy
is a moot point.
This however presupposes that the West is both sincere and competent.
Count Otto Graf van Lambsdorff, who the FNS in South Asia claims is
convinced Wickremesinghe is a true Liberal, is certainly a decent and
even idealistic man, but the circumstances under which he had to resign
his Ministry suggest that even decent men can be misled. His successor
as Chairman of the FNS is subject to the advice he receives from the
ground, and unfortunately the FNS in Colombo is gridlocked into the
Karunanayake approach to political activism. With no one else left in
the UNP parliamentary group who can even pretend to engage productively
in foreign relations, Wickremesinghe may see the wisdom of learning
at least a little about Liberalism.
And if in the process he attacks the Government from a liberal standpoint,
so much the better for those who wish to undermine the Government, its
efforts to bring back democracy to the East and then the North, its
Non-Aligned Foreign Policy, its excellent relations with powerful countries
in Asia, its commitment to economic growth with equity. Wickremesinghe
is an odd companion for the German Socialist Minister for Development
Cooperation who was so critical recently of Sri Lanka with regard to
GSP+, or for Hillary Clinton, who was acting as an apologist for Tiger
terrorism after the concerted efforts of Tigers to fund her campaign
- but the strangest alliances have emerged in a world in which it is
no longer clear who is pulling the strings. It would certainly be tragic
though, if those who believe in democratic pluralism and the rights
of minorities allowed themselves to be diverted by Wickremesinghe's
attacks into undermining the first positive efforts at peaceful reintegration
and regional empowerment in Sri Lanka, since the Tigers disrupted the
1987 Peace Accord. On that occasion they found willing allies in the
then Government, which included Wickremesinghe as Leader of the House,
to promote their cause. Sadly history repeats itself, even if the guises
under which strange bedfellows come together changes as convenient.
Professor Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary-General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
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