Personal Perspective: The Value of Dissent - 16 March 2003

The vision...

Answered, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’

'‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so,’ (Leigh Hunt)'

I was grateful for the letter in last week’s Island from Kanthimala Ratnakara, which characterized my articles, as well as Tisaranee Gunasekara’s as ‘nothing else but vitriolic diatribes against one person’. Rather coyly Ms. Ratnakara did not mention the name of the person but I presume she means Ranil, rather than all the other people whose shortcomings I have mentioned.

But in a sense Ms. Ratnakara’s failure to defend all those poor souls, Prabhakaran or Chandrika or Anuruddha or Ranjith Mendis or dear old Bradman Weerakoon, is my own best defence against her charming criticism. Harry Truman used to remind himself constantly that ‘The buck stops here’ and, unfortunate though it be, the Sri Lankan dispensation is even more thorough in bestowing all authority upon a single individual.

I can understand therefore that my critics have forgotten all the rude things I said about Chandrika when she was in sole authority. I am sure there were those then who thought that I compared her to tinned milk because I was upset that she had ‘more experience in governance and got more public accolades’ than I did myself. I trust that in time Ms. Ratnakara will realize that public accolades mean nothing in the long run. Meanwhile it would I think be good, for her immortal soul if nothing else, if she took a hard look at the evidence and arguments I present, instead of attributing motives blindly.

I should however look at some of the advice she so kindly gives me. I agree with her that violence among students is a worry, but she fails to realize that this reflects the violence endemic in our society, that regrettably Ranil encouraged in his youth — though in that respect, I believe, he has now certainly changed for the better. My own awareness of his earlier attitudes however came to me almost painfully, in the early eighties, when I was staying down in Matara with a wonderful old gentleman called Henry Gunasekara. Unlike his revolutionary brother DEW, Henry was a UNP devotee, who had been delighted at JR’s overwhelming victory in 1977. Within a couple of years however he was deeply disillusioned, and informed me that there were only two honest ministers in the UNP.

Ridiculously enough I took this as a compliment, because off the top of my head I could think of only two ministers of what might be termed ‘unchallenged integrity’, and they both happened to be related to me, through my father and my mother respectively. ‘You mean Ranjith and Ranil?’ I said.

Henry Gunasekara sighed. ‘Ranjith Atapattu, yes.’ He said. ‘But I wasn’t talking about Ranil. He may be financially honest. But he uses thugs. That is not honesty. No, I was talking about Gamini Jayasuriya.’

I was na・e then, and the remark upset me. Later I began to realize how true it was, with the referendum, and then the riots of July 1983 which Ranil condoned in that ridiculous interview in which he justified them by propagating the Mathew line about the riots being the reaction of Sinhala entrepreneurs bankrupted by Bandaranaike nationalizations.

That sort of argument was disgusting, and while I am sure Ranil has outgrown such things now, there is increasing evidence that he has neither the desire nor the capacity to impose his own high standards on those who surround him.

And in the university sector in particular, by saddling what seems a thoroughly decent Minister with personnel he knows perfectly well have no moral or financial integrity, he has opened the way for opposing political forces to create mayhem. Confrontation is perhaps what he still relishes, with those who are not obviously strong as Prabhakaran is now. But, as his mentor JR learned, the oppressed, Tamils between 1977 and 1983, the JVP between 1983 and 1988, grow strong and dangerous precisely because of the abuse of state power. Except under Premadasa, who understood the needs of the dispossessed, the UNP has a genius for turning universities into hotbeds of violent opposition, and I am afraid Ranil is going the way of all other previous UNP leaders in this regard. And it is precisely because I fear the consequences of this that I believe that, in its own interests, the UNP should start reining in those whose activities promote dissent.

Ms. Ratnakara’s other point is perhaps even more interesting. Though she ends by advising me not to get involved in other things, and instead teach my students, earlier on she suggested that I should concentrate on getting the Liberal party out of the political wilderness. Again there seems an unfortunate assumption, understandable in the Sri Lankan context, that getting power is what politics is about. For full time professional politicians that may be desirable, but for those of us who think politics is about responding to social change and enhancing understanding and opportunities nationwide, there is much else to do as well. I do not think I would ever have achieved electoral success as a politician. However, if I have failed only, as Ms. Ratnakara generously implies, because I have done much else, I think I should be proud. Reintroducing English medium education, launching degree programmes in English for students not fortunate enough to have done advanced English previously, encouraging Sri Lankan writing in English so that it is now widely prescribed at schools and universities, and providing materials for all this, seems to me a perfectly decent way of having spent my time, while also reading and writing and travelling very widely. All this is certainly more satisfying than having entered a parliament devalued beyond measure by the UNP’s 1978 constitution.

But, less parochially, Ms. Ratnakara seems to think that Ranil’s quest for peace faces obstacles only from those who ‘oppose for the sake of opposing and who do not understand what they are talking about’. In the last 8 years I have been Academic Coordinator and then Consultant for English programmes at the South-Eastern University and also at the Trincomalee University College. I travelled extensively in the North and East, as well as elsewhere in the country, and I know what I am talking about. It was because of my frequent visits to the Oluvil campus between 1999 and 2001 that I wrote, long before it happened, that the incidents at Mawanella could lead to the downfall of Chandrika’s government. And I can say very confidently now that, as the Private Secretary to a Minister admitted to me recently, the ceasefire will last only because the government, having as she put it allowed the Tigers freely into Colombo, cannot let it fail. If Ms. Ratnakara and Ranil think that is an achievement, I wonder what they will say when the Tigers press for more and more concessions, including what seems to be their bottom line, a federal structure that includes the right of secession.

Coincidentally, just the night before Ms. Ratnakara’s letter appeared, I was told by a friend that she believed peace was so important that the Tigers should be given the North and East wholesale. It was this same person who also claimed that the Tamils had had it far too good, in the early years of independence. Such irrationality is similar to Ranil’s many years ago, a failure to accept that the majoritarian hijacking of the state created very understandable grievances amongst minorities. Transforming this now to condoning for convenience the perpetuation of injustices, albeit on the basis of two quasi (or not quasi) separate states, will lead to further disaster over the coming months. At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, and sorry though I am to hurt Ms. Ratnakara and many more like her, I would be failing in my duty as a commentator on public affairs not to point such things out.