A State of – and in – denial

The people who bore the brunt of the carnage do not want constitutional amendments

When logic of the most warped, intellectualised variety comes out of a national catastrophe, the reaction can only be one of anger

Even an idyllic democracy can falter in the wrong hands. The only alternative we have to the EP today is Westminster

The only reason I can think of why activists fail to come to terms with this is that they know, as we do, that they were in part responsible for the dismantling of the security apparatus that led to the carnage

“We didn’t know, or we didn’t know enough.” – Pretty much every parliamentarian  

A series of articles penned by civil society outfits and activists try to shift the blame from the Prime Minister, who wasn’t informed and can’t resign, to the President, who was but has decided not to resign. The Friday Forum has called for the abolition of the presidential system, since the Easter bombings show that it has “always encouraged personal ambition” over “the wellbeing of the nation.” Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda seems to believe the Sunday tragedy followed, not preceded, the emergence of “a discourse on national security.” And an article in Groundviews argues that the Niqab ban was enforced by the State to make up for its massive intelligence failure.  

The minister in charge of defence is, theoretically, the President. He is elected as an Executive President. The Executive Presidency has been with us since 1978 and we’ve been through a 30-year war with it. Surely, an alternative should be better? And surely, if we’re looking for alternatives, the best we can think of, at a time when we are trying to make sense of the slaughter of 253 people, and arrests are being made in the country, must be to hand over power to – the 225 who clearly, by their ineptitude, have shown that they are no better than the man who heads them?  

When logic of the most warped, intellectualised variety comes out of a national catastrophe, the reaction can only be one of anger and weariness. The people who bore the brunt of the carnage do not want constitutional amendments, electoral reforms and administrative changes. In fact, apart from a snap election, they probably don’t want anything to do with politics. What they want is action, and more importantly, peace. If you’re going to attack administrative structures, the base on which politicians who are to blame were elected to power, you logically would have to do so on the grounds that these were not strong enough to prevent the rise of fanaticism.  

Unfortunately, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. The framework we have now is a watered-down version of the same Executive Presidency that civil society used to bemoan. The 19th Amendment shifted power from an elected presidential figure to a selected, unelected prime ministerial figure. Swiftness of action, which is a hallmark of the EP, no longer exists at present. Moreover, the reality with which the President had to work with hindered him from working for “the wellbeing of the nation” – a sad conundrum we saw back in 2003, when the UNP, under Ranil, had to be sacked by a President by resorting to powers that the incumbent lacks.  

What we have now, to the best of my knowledge, and based on what has transpired until now, is a quasi-Executive Prime Minister and a quasi-Executive President who have been at loggerheads with each other since mid-2017. The Western media is being very generous when it rationalises this as a disagreement between the two heads of the country, when it is more, much more: the President wasn’t informed properly, and the Prime Minister was kept out of the dark. In other words, the problem is not with the system stricto sensu, but with the two people heading it.  

The only difference between the two is this: the President has, so far, tried to retain sobriety in the public, while the Prime Minister has exhibited what can only be called a casual disregard for what happened. Piers Morgan’s description of this is only too accurate, if not charitable – “weird and inappropriate.” The image-building exercises the PM has put into motion through his despatches to the public (highlighting the need for national security, coming up a quick recovery plan for tourism, offering a bullet-proof vehicle to the Cardinal) are therefore last-minute attempts at saving face, and except for the Kolombians, I do not see anyone falling for these tactics.  

In other words, what Ranil Wickremesinghe and his sycophants are doing is the same thing they did in the aftermath of the sacking of the UNP in 2003 and the end of the war in 2009: attempt to present an alternate reality in which they are not to blame for a particular political debacle. According to this narrative, ‘Athurugiriya’ was a mistake and the war was won because of, and not despite, the Ceasefire Agreement. Back then, they pointed at one man to vindicate this rather fantastic claim: Karuna Amman, who, according to the supporters of the theory, was able to escape the LTTE and contribute to the weakening of that outfit because of the thaw opened up between the North and South by peace talks – talks masterminded, of course, by yours truly.  

The tactics they use today are similar; the claim now is that the tragedy we’re seeing is the fault of the President. The Prime Minister could have done no wrong, since he was kept out of the loop, and as one commentator pointed out he’s displayed “a mastery of control” throughout the crisis. I do not know what is meant by “mastery of control” but I’m guessing that whatever it means, it does not, and will not, apply to the man who cracked jokes over the carnage to foreign media.  

Even an idyllic democracy can falter in the wrong hands. The only alternative we have to the EP today is Westminster. The problem there is that if two people sharing power with each other under an amended EP system, which skewed the President’s authority, couldn’t get along, thereby contributing to the awful mess we’re in, what more can we expect from 225 MPs who, as the past has shown us, can’t agree on one thing without throwing various unmentionables at each other?  

Just what is the need of the hour? A State that has been weakened by the foibles of parliamentarians, or a State that is not devoid of self-respect, knows what, when, and where to attack, and can contain extremism as and when it arises? An awful lot of people, I feel, would want the latter. But that is precisely what we are not getting from this skewed system and the infantalised schoolboys in power.  

The dominant discourse we’ve been hearing all this time, therefore, is not that of national security, but that of dismantling it under that skewed system. The only reason I can think of why activists fail to come to terms with this is that they know, as we do, that they were in part responsible for the dismantling of the security apparatus that led to the carnage. This is, after all, a government that didn’t bat an eyelid when disabled war veterans were tear-gassed in broad daylight, and this is a government that drew up a reconciliation process that dwelt on vaguely-defined universal ideals over a concrete action plan. Reconciliation, in other words, was seen as the antithesis of national security, when history has shown that this needn’t be the case.  
There also was a tendency, though we didn’t discern it then, to treat all manifestations of extremism on equal terms. The logic was this: if the country’s ethnic groups could all be brought under one umbrella, then ethno-religious extremism could be brought under one umbrella as well. As was pointed out last week, this was perhaps the most fallacious attitude to project when it came to security.  

Buddhist radicalism, heinous in itself, was equated with Islamic radicalism: both were denounced as two faces of the same coin, and any attempt at critiquing practices like the wearing of the Niqab was seen as majoritarian excess. That ended up drowning the voices of moderates, be it non-political leaders like those of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka or, for that matter, sections of the community that demonstrated against radical priests PRIOR to the Easter bombings.  

All these lapses are interlinked: the discourse on reducing presidential powers, the enactment of the 19th Amendment which did just that, the drafting of a reconciliation process which promoted an amorphous Sri Lankan identity without a specific plan AND looked the other way when intelligence forces and soldiers were being hounded, and the treatment of all forms of radicalism, Buddhist or Islamist, as alike. In the end there was, sadly, nothing that could prevent what happened from happening.  

What’s even sadder is that the narrative spouted by civil society, which contributed to the weakening of the centre to the benefit of an unelected Prime Minister and his inept Cabinet, continues. What can we say in response to them, then?  

Simply, this. The need of the hour is not a weaker State. The need of the hour is also not an authoritarian, right-wing figurehead. There is an intermediate position we can all aspire to: a stronger State that is, at the same time, more receptive to all.  
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