Gota’s War 2: Peasantry as collateral damage

Ultranationalist caucuses, one ex-military dominated, the other not, peddled the narcotic that GR and/or BR were the real drivers of MR’s success as a leader; that GR or BR was smarter than MR—and could be the greater figure. With MR shackled by the siblings who thought that his time had gone and shared-out his power and status between them, there is no one with the accumulated respect and constitutional capacity to hold things together, as contradictions and crises grow like weeds without weedicide

What President Gotabaya said amounts to this: if he so wishes, the same Army that went to war to liberate the Sinhala peasantry of Mavilaru from the Tigers who threatened the harvest by shutting-off the sluicegates, can be sent to liberate the same peasantry from chemical fertiliser by temporarily shutting-off their windpipes and inducing them to use organic fertiliser. I can’t say who is luckier that the President has not tested that option (as he has with organic fertiliser) on the peasantry: the vast populace of peasants or the President. I was hoping that similar thoughts of a kinetic kind were not running through the head of President Mahinda Rajapaksa who was watching with unblinking attention while the Rajapaksas’ longstanding peasant base was being disintegrated by his younger brother the President’s verbal ‘humanitarian operation’. With its peasant support subtracted, the Rajapaksa clan and the SLPP would have to rely for rulership on President GR’s support base, the military

As the second anniversary of his assumption of Presidential office nears (19 November), President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has done the citizenry the favour of transparency about what he thinks. He did so in several key speeches starting with his first address in Glasgow and moving up to the Weeraketiya speech on the occasion of the completion of the 1,500 Roads program.    In his first speech in Glasgow, President GR denounced the (Sinhala) peasantry before an international audience; the peasantry that not only voted for him, but had propelled two generations of Rajapaksas to the legislature and then to high office, including the very highest in the country. He said: “…In addition to chemical fertiliser lobby groups, this resistance has come from farmers who have grown accustomed to overusing fertiliser as an easy means of increasing yields…”  (mfa.gov.lk) Having criticised the hardworking Sinhala peasantry in his Glasgow speech, President Gotabaya will surely have fewer objections than he usually does to Sri Lankan citizens who criticise his administration in Geneva and other places. 

Ven. Gnanasara as Guru 

In his Weeraketiya ‘1,500 Roads’ speech, President Gotabaya cleared up any possible confusion regarding his controversial appointment of the even more controversial Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara to the post of Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on One Country, One Law. It was neither the appointment of “the most mischievous boy as the class monitor” nor a purely advisory function. It was, however, decidedly symbolic.

The President said that “it was Ven. Gnanasara who for five years, had been campaigning for One Country, One Law. Therefore, I asked him to head this task force and draw something up which I can give the Minister of Justice who can then present it to Parliament”.

The Minister is the guy to whom the draft will be given by the President. The Minister will then present it to Parliament. The draft will be prepared by Ven. Gnanasara and his Committee. To recap, the draft will be given by Ven. Gnanasara to the President to be given to the Justice Minister to be given to Parliament. Thus, Ven. Gnanasara will be the fount of inspiration, guidance and wisdom on nation-building through the law. The monk is the organ grinder and the Justice Minister—well, let’s change that metaphor—the postman.

The question Ven. Gnanasara has been selected by President Gotabaya to tackle is nothing less basic than whether our diverse, pluralist society, will be governed and allowed to live as a mosaic or a monolith. Given the choice of Ven. Gnanasara, instead of say, Ven. Dr. Galkande Dhammananda, President Gotabaya clearly endorses an extreme variant of Sinhala-Buddhism rather than the application of universalist Buddhism (‘may all living beings be happy’) to Sri Lanka. President Gotabaya and Ven. Gnanasara are on the same ola leaf. 

Zero-casualty gesture 

In his Weeraketiya speech, President Gotabaya complained that those who were afraid that he would do away with democracy, now complain that he does not operate in his military persona, while others who expected him to be a tough military-style autocrat, now complain that he is far too democratic in his style of governance. He seems to have confused two entirely separate categories of people.

The President indicated that he didn’t know whether the “peasant gentlemen” demonstrating were actually peasants. He said that he could, if he so wished, address the current issue of fertiliser by “seizing the peasants by the throat in a military manner”—at this point he really leaned into it, making the choking gesture of a fist rapidly seizing something—and ordering them to “use this” i.e., organic fertiliser. He repeated, “I can if I want to!”

What President Gotabaya said amounts to this: if he so wishes, the same Army that went to war to liberate the Sinhala peasantry of Mavilaru from the Tigers who threatened the harvest by shutting-off the sluicegates, can be sent to liberate the same peasantry from chemical fertiliser by temporarily shutting-off their windpipes and inducing them to use organic fertiliser.

I can’t say who is luckier that the President has not tested that option (as he has with organic fertiliser) on the peasantry: the vast populace of peasants or the President. 

I was hoping that similar thoughts of a kinetic kind were not running through the head of President Mahinda Rajapaksa who was watching with unblinking attention while the Rajapaksas’ longstanding peasant base was being disintegrated by his younger brother the President’s verbal ‘humanitarian operation’.

With its peasant support subtracted, the Rajapaksa clan and the SLPP would have to rely for rulership on President GR’s support base, the military. 

Revolution or evolution? 

President GR complained that he faced two categories of critics. One acted as if the COVID-19 crisis was just like normal times. The other comprised those who had wanted him to make “a revolution” but felt “pain” at the revolution due to “hardship and difficulty” when he was making that revolution.  

Both arguments are cop-outs. Everybody knows about COVID-19, but many also know that there were countries which managed the COVID crisis sooner and better than we did (e.g., New Zealand) and countries whose economies performed much better than ours in the same period (e.g., the ASEAN nations and Bangladesh that we had to borrow money from).

Moreover, everybody knows that the decision that has triggered ceaseless waves of protest had nothing to do with COVID-19: the overnight, island-wide banning of chemical fertiliser, weedicides and pesticides.

The President classifies that decision under the category of the “revolution” he thinks his voters mandated but are now chickening out of because they lack true (Gajaba?) grit. In truth the protesting peasants may or may not have wanted a revolution but they and everyone who voted for him expected him to stick to the promises he made in his manifesto and was elected to implement. He promised, in print, a 10-year transition to organic agriculture but did entirely otherwise. Neither in Glasgow nor Weeraketiya has he acknowledged that (wild) elephant roaming the room, still less explained it and apologised for it.

What President Gotabaya promised in his manifesto was not an overnight ‘revolution’ in fertiliser policy and agriculture, but precisely the opposite of a revolution. He pledged a reform, an evolution; a gradualist, incremental policy spread over a whole decade.  

Why does President Gotabaya think that having explicitly pledged a decade-long transition, he can shockingly violate the mandate he obtained and not face (and indeed merit) massive rural retaliation?  

Whatever ‘revolution’ he thinks the voters wanted from him, it was to make things better, to alleviate their pain, not to inflict more pain—which they say they have never experienced under any government from 1948. Are the peasants justified in complaining about the unexpected pain caused, or is the President more justified in protesting that the peasants are protesting against their needless pain? What did he expect: masochism on a mass scale? 

President GR was stridently testy towards the academic community of experts on agriculture and soil science. “Food security is not feeding people poison!” he declaimed shrilly. He seemed to be responding to the argumentative scalpel (wielded on Sirasa’s Mawatha) of Prof. Metthika Vithanage of the Department of Applied Sciences, Sri Jayewardenepura University, who has been listed in the top 2% of the world’s scientific researchers. 

President GR’s Weeraketiya speech displayed his continued commitment to the proposition of Dr. Anuruddha Padeniya (and in fairness, it should be added, Asoka Abeygunawardena, Ven. Rathana’s ideologue) on the nexus between chemical fertiliser and kidney disease. The only problem was that a national TV audience witnessed Dr. Padeniya’s ignorance being sliced and diced by senior professors of soil science (on Derana’s Aluth Parlimenthuwa).

President GR knows that no country devotes more than a small percentage of its farming to organic agriculture. He knows we can only aim for a production niche domestically, for a market niche globally. At best way may achieve what we do with tea, but we don’t eat tea as we do rice. So why does he fly in the face of all evidence and experience globally and aim for total conversion, and overnight at that? Where’s the knowledge, science, rationality and logic in this?

Has anyone convinced him that Sri Lanka can make a killing in the global market, suctioning vast amounts of foreign currency, off organic food? 

‘The Great Organic-Food Fraud’ is the title of the main story in The New Yorker, 8 November. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/15/the-great-organic-food-fraud) Just sayin’, is all. 

Proliferating battlefronts 

Gen. David Petraeus, PhD, was in Paris wearing his military uniform for the last time because he was going back to the USA to take over as the Director of the CIA. We were at the famous think-tank IFRI where he had just delivered his remarks. In answer to a question posed by me on the US foreign policy architecture, he said: “Ambassador, I was trained as a second lieutenant never to charge headlong into a minefield, so I shall respectfully avoid answering your question.”

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, decorated officer and war-veteran, is making a habit of charging into minefields. His fertiliser policy charged headlong into the peasant heartland which until that time was solidly supportive home territory. His release of more than one convicted murderer charged right into the UNHRC Geneva. His negativity about the 13th Amendment charges into a bilateral accord and the globalised Tamil Question. His appointment of Ven. Gnanasara Thero charged frontally into the minorities and the international media. He then charged into the Catholic Church.

The move against Fr. Cyril Gamini has been followed up with the perceived land-grab by the Urban Development Authority (UDA) in Muthurajawela and the Port City-to-Modera stretch (via Kochchikade). President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has now made news in the Vatican News, published in 20 languages. (Sri Lankan Church opposes Government’s ‘One Country, One Law’ plan – https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2021-11/sri-lanka-bishops-oppose-government-one-law-one-law-plan.html)  

The Rajapaksas and the military took out the Tigers. The Catholic Church took down two empires, the Roman and the Soviet-Communist (Poland 1989). 

If an alienated Tamil minority with a potential support-base of 90 million was so difficult to manage, what of an alienated Catholic minority with a potential rear-base of 1.4 billion?

Real minority

The President’s hawkish inner-circle may think that taking on the minorities yet again could serve as a useful provocation which could polarise things along ethno-religious lines, thereby cutting across the ‘masses vs. regime’ (‘the 99% vs the 1%’) polarisation currently underway. It is way past the point that could have worked. 

Ultranationalist majoritarianism works most successfully from the outside and below, as a backlash against an elite, pro-Western, cosmopolitan-minoritarian, globalist establishment. It works as a rallying cry for a plebeian majority on the outside looking in. It doesn’t work when the ultranationalist-autocrats are the establishment, on the inside looking out. And it certainly doesn’t work when that ultranationalist power-elite, in this case the Gotabaya administration, is globalising in the most perverse way possible by selling everything that doesn’t move, to any foreigner who does.

Ultranationalist majoritarianism works only if there is an adversary with a certain profile: elitist, pro-foreign and minoritarian. This administration might have been able to pull it off had Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP been its main adversary and principal alternative, but it isn’t. Premadasaist patriotic-populism has displaced what was the Rajapaksas’ (and earlier, Chandrika’s) indispensable political asset: the minoritarian-elitist UNP of Ranil Wickremesinghe as permanent, ideologically-impaired adversary. 

Now the provocative targeting of minorities doesn’t divert the Sinhala-Buddhist masses from their anti-regime sentiments. The minorities just join the queue (pun intended) of the socioeconomically disaffected majority, forming a vast ‘national-popular’ bloc. Today, the real minority is the Rajapaksa regime.    

Rift’s reasons

In the aftermath of the January 2015 defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, there were three personalities most often held responsible by the MR camp planning his comeback. 

One was Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara. MR himself was bitter that the Muslim support base he inherited from Sirimavo Bandaranaike and further enhanced by his pro-Palestine policy, had been destroyed. 

The second was Basil Rajapaksa who was criticised for his ill-organised election campaign and de-camping the day after the defeat. 

The third was Gotabaya Rajapaksa, for the patronage of Duminda Silva (‘Monitoring MP’ of the Defence Ministry) whose involvement in the Bharatha Lakshman killing triggered the subterranean SLFP split (and the outreach to CBK), as well as the deployment of armed troops who opened fire at Rathupaswela, killing MR’s Sinhala Catholic vote. 

The criticism of Basil Rajapaksa was renewed when he rudely relegated the Joint Opposition (JO) to political second-class citizenship after the founding of the SLPP, and treated the SLFP still worse after 2019-2020. 

Mahinda Rajapaksa was deprived of any constitutional power by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s 20th Amendment, blasting the hopes of the voters who had been promised that MR would be a powerful Prime Minister and guiding figure under the 19th Amendment, whatever changes were made to that excessively centrifugal amendment. 

It was January 2011 and I was at Katunayake airport awaiting the flight to Paris to take up my ambassadorial appointment when Ven. Athuraliye Rathana walked over to pitch the argument that President MR’s time had come and gone, and GR was the answer. He was only the first of many who made the same pitch over the next several years. All joined Viyath Maga/Eliya.

Ultranationalist caucuses, one ex-military dominated, the other not, peddled the narcotic that GR and/or BR were the real drivers of MR’s success as a leader; that GR or BR was smarter than MR—and could be the greater figure. 

This was quite different from the pragmatic argument that given the constitutional ban on running for even a non-consecutive third term, either GR or BR should be the candidate.  

With MR shackled by the siblings who thought that his time had gone and shared-out his power and status between them, there is no one with the accumulated respect and constitutional capacity to hold things together, as contradictions and crises grow like weeds without weedicide.

The draft will be given by Ven. Gnanasara to the President to be given to the Justice Minister to be given to Parliament. Thus, Ven. Gnanasara will be the fount of inspiration, guidance and wisdom on nation-building through the law. The monk is the organ grinder and the Justice Minister—well, let’s change that metaphor—the postman. The question Ven. Gnanasara has been selected by President Gotabaya to tackle is nothing less basic than whether our diverse, pluralist society, will be governed and allowed to live as a mosaic or a monolith. Given the choice of Ven. Gnanasara, instead of say, Ven. Dr. Galkande Dhammananda, President Gotabaya clearly endorses an extreme variant of Sinhala-Buddhism rather than the application of universalist Buddhism (‘may all living beings be happy’) to Sri Lanka. President Gotabaya and Ven. Gnanasara are on the same ola leaf

Free lunch 

If the JVP’s AKD wants to be President he should be Opposition Leader in 2025. Few citizens waste their vote on a third-party candidate at a Presidential Election.

The main Opposition’s aspirant Shadow Cabinet must abandon shopworn rightwing clichés such as “hard choices,” “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. With the north and east deleted from the country’s production structure and market by intense war, and the South scorched by urban terrorism, wildcat strikes and attacks on infrastructure by the JVP, President Premadasa implemented the Free Mid-Day Meals and Free School Uniforms programs for schoolchildren on a universal basis (rejecting the discriminatory divisiveness of limiting it to poor kids). 

Premadasa also insisted that as a condition for loans from State banks, the 300 garment factories program includes free meals (including buns at teatime). 

With the unprecedentedly awakened social movements of today and a probable parliamentary Left Opposition in 2025, a newly-elected administration should serve that free lunch starting 2024 (Premadasa centenary year).