The traitor and the patriot!

February 26, 2015

In 2009, some months after the war ended, media
personnel were offered military tours of Velupillai
Prabhakarans luxury bunker and swimming pool deep
inside his hideout in Mullaitivu by the defeated regime.
Subsequently, the bunker was turned into a special
exhibit on the war tourism trail, for first time visitors
from the islands south to marvel at the slain Tiger
Leaders opulent lifestyle.
Today the regimes own extensions inside the premises
traditionally used as the Prime Ministers official
residence are being opened up to curious journalists
and visitors. Enthusiastic security personnel escort
journalists to the former Presidents private brick-lined,
kidney-shaped pool completely obscured from view by 25
feet of tall aluminium fencing all around it. A small tiled
sauna and massage room still smells of herbal oil and
flowers.
The Rajapaksa Wing of the old colonial residence is
several storeys high and has no windows. Built for a
President who was paranoid about security, the dark and
narrow corridors running through the building have gaps
along the wall, covered with sliding metal gates, to
ensure a quick exit for VIPs if the need arose.
A banquet hall has been constructed on the side of this
building, to hold up to 7000 people, according to officials,
five-foot long chandeliers, thick carpeting and regal
doors. The wings of this banquet hall have walls lined in
brocade and large winged arm chairs along a corridor
that leads to elegant washrooms. Extensions to this
section for the Commonwealth Summit include a new set
of washrooms, many of which are no longer functional,
according to signs hung askew on many of the doors.
The same bunker-style building has three spectacular

cabinet rooms, each of them sporting wall-towall wood panelling, wooden floors and
stunning wood and leather furnishings. Off to
the side, even the bathroom walls are
panelled in wood. Several other sophisticated
meeting rooms also lie inside the building,
with plush sofas, recliners and chairs,
featuring a head table and pictures and wallhangings. Dutugemunu at war and Adams
Peak appear to have been firm favourites of
the previous occupant of Temple Trees. The
famous Elections Ops Room also lies within
this new wing, a long office room filled with
computers in zones demarcated for each
polling division in the country.
Discarded larger-than-life cut-outs of
President Mahinda Rajapaksa face away from
the door, like a child sent to the corner for
punishment. Outside this building is the
permanent marquee the former regime
erected to host their famous campaign
meetings for officials, academics, trade
unions and students. Countless offices for
President Rajapaksas large staff and
advisors, including a special office for former
Economic Development Minister Basil
Rajapaksa, with mirrors lining walls and
ceilings, also occupy sections of the new
wing.
The skeleton of a new building specially for
the ex-Presidents security contingent is
already under construction on the boundary
of the compound. A posse of chefs and
serving stewards have been dismissed by the
new Prime Minister who does not reside on
the premises.

Not much of the Rajapaksa Wing could be called outrageously opulent, but
the extension holds little rationale for so much public spending. President
Rajapaksa occupied two official residences already, including the sprawling
Presidential mansion or former Queens House in Fort.
Deep in the jungles of Mullativu, where he hid for decades, the sight of
Prabhakarans extravagance air conditioning and swimming pools had a
jarring effect because he had sent countless Tamil youngsters to die for him
in a brutal war, while he and his family lived in relative safety and comfort.
The story of Mahinda Rajapaksas extravagance holds a strange resonance.
The previous regimes opulent lifestyle, largely lived on the public dime,
evokes an angry and emotional response from the ordinary citizen because
the President of Sri Lanka and other elected rulers represent a vast majority
of very poor people who are struggling to feed their children. The rejection
of Rajapaksa opulence by the voter on 8 January has kept the new regime
in check, at least for appearances sake, about how it utilises state
resources.
For the moment, 47 days after the new Government took office, the
extension remains unoccupied, eerily silent and plunged into semi
darkness. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe occupies two rooms in the
old colonial building and uses the old cabinet room for meetings with
ministers and officials.
Both the President and the Prime Minister are mulling opening up the two
residences to the public twice a week for guided tours. The massive
banquet hall may be hired out for cultural performances at a nominal fee.
Election anxiety
Of course, what to do with the Rajapaksa modifications to Temple Trees is
the least of Ranil Wickremesinghes problems.
In anticipation of a parliamentary election in just over two months,
hardliners on both sides of the ethnic divide are moving in for the kill,
threatening to derail a fragile process of reconciliation the new Government
has pledged to undertake and bring back an autocratic leader ousted in
January.
The 20,000 strong rally in Nugegoda, organised by smaller parties within
the UPFA coalition famously called The Rising by former diplomat and
political scientist Dayan Jayatilleka. Jayatilleka, who openly campaigned for
the defeated leader in last months election, theatrically read a message

from the former President to participants and

forever etched his place in the fringe Sinhala
nationalist movement that is coalescing around
Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Appropriately, the Sinhala hardline Bodu Bala
Sena movement accused of spearheading a
spate of attacks against the Muslim community
including the riots in Aluthgama, urged people
to attend the Nugegoda rally.
The controversial monk Elle Gunewansa Thera,
with his chequered role in the 1983 ethnic riots,
was also in attendance. Over enthusiastic
organisers insist that the Nugegoda rally drew a 500,000-strong crowd. The
figure is ludicrously over-inflated, but 20,000 is no number to scoff at, since
they were gathered to salute a defeated President.
Crowds were brought into the meeting in 212 buses hired for the purpose
and parked on High Level Road for the duration of the rally. The rally proved
to be an important wakeup call for the new Government which appeared to
have got complacent about an opponent in the shadows, as it set about
establishing itself in office.
Deprived of the SLFP leadership, any attempt by President Rajapaksa to
craft a post-January 8 political future will have to include the most rabidly
hardline sections of the southern polity a group that could also include the
BBS and other like-minded groups.
What we are experiencing today is not defeat but the result of a
conspiracy, the ousted President said in a message to his people,
delivered with aplomb by Jayatilleka. Encapsulated in that one sentence is
the Rajapaksa camps perception of the January 8 election.
The conspiracy of Eelam Tamils and other minority groups, a sell-out UNP
and Chandrika Kumaratunga, aided and abetted by the neo-imperialist
West. In a vicious attempt to de-legitimise Prime Minister Wickremesinghe
and the largely UNP Cabinet, the Nugegoda organisers effectively sought to
erode the legitimacy of the Maithripala Sirisena presidency. It was not a
victory. It was the successful fruition of a conspiracy.
In essence then, Mahinda Rajapaksa is the undefeated President of Sri
Lanka. Except that the Rajapaksa backers have no interest in the

presidency any longer. In the post-constitutional reform set up, the current
President (and he alone) will hold some executive power, but primacy will
be afforded to a Prime Minister in a parliamentary system.
Wimal Weera-wansas National Freedom Front, the Mahajana Eksath
Peramuna led by Dinesh Gunewardane, and a host of other small parties
know that in the battle for premiership in a June 2015 election, Mahinda
Rajapaksa will face off against Ranil Wickremesinghe. This is a battle they
believe the ousted President can win.
Obstacles to Rajapaksa renaissance
In the 8 January election, Mahinda Rajapaksa won 90 of 160 polling
divisions, even though he lost the election. In a general election, unlike in
the presidential poll when the entire country polls as a single constituency,
that number will translate to a majority of seats under the proportional
representation system. This is far from an inaccurate calculation. But two
things could stand in the former Presidents way.
Firstly, in order to win the nomination to contest seriously as a prime
minister candidate, Mahinda Rajapaksa would have to wrest back control of
the SLFP. Following Rajapaksas defeat, chairmanship of the party passed to
President Maithripala Sirisena as stipulated in the SLFP constitution,
amended, ironically by the former President himself to prevent Chandrika
Kumaratunga from controlling the party. Assuming SLFP seniors get behind
the Weerawansa-Gunewardane-Nanayakkara bandwagon and call for his
return unlikely in the present context the former President would still
need President Sirisenas nod to win the nomination.
Failing this, Mahinda Rajapaksa will be relegated to being a candidate of a
hodgepodge coalition of tiny political parties with no grassroots
organisation network and no bloc vote. The Rajapaksa candidacy could lend
star power to even such an alliance, but the crucial question remains
whether that power will prove sufficient to rout a newly energised UNP
base.
To make matters worse, any alliance thus forged will lead to the inevitable
split of the SLFP, reducing the partys chances in the general election. Such
a division would only serve to bolster a UNP majority and could even see
the re-forging of the rainbow coalition to ward off the Rajapaksa threat, that
will contest under the swan symbol.
Senior SLFP members are aware of this threat and seek therefore to

postpone Parliamentary Elections as long as possible.

Secondly, the Rajapaksa support base within the UNP deludes itself that
Mahinda Rajapaksa will command the support of 5.8 million voters in a fair
parliamentary contest. Without the state power he has always commanded
to win electoral contests at the national level, Mahinda Rajapaksa will be
only another candidate in the fray, with a great amount of money at his
disposal.
Against mounting corruption scandals involving his family members and
closest aides, will campaign funds and a right wing base, now largely
relegated to the fringes of society and without the active support and
patronage of the state, prove sufficient to sway the election and make him
Prime Minister? If that prospect is unlikely, then the fundamental question
remains: Will Mahinda Rajapaksa contest an election in which he could end
up being just another Member of Parliament?
In all likelihood, Mahinda Rajapaksa is pandering to his former alliance
partners because a clamour for his return plays well into the long game for
his eventual political comeback. In essence, Mahinda Rajapaksa could be
offering crumbs to this unwieldy coalition in order to keep hope alive among
the ardent sections of his support base, that he will eventually come back
and restore the status quo.
The opportune moment for his return to active politics, will not be in June or
July this year, when public memory is still alive with the excesses of his
family and the corrupt and authoritarian tenor of his regime. It could be
several years down the line, when memory has faded, when the new rulers
are well past their honeymoon period and making mistakes of their own or
in a time of major national crisis, still unforeseen.

A crisis, precipitated by shadowy forces, may in

fact have hastened the reshuffle in the military
establishment this past week, and the
appointment of the new Army Commander.
Remaining loyalty
The new Government has been aware for several
weeks now that sections of the military remain
fiercely loyal to former Defence Secretary
Gotabaya Rajapaksa. These sections grew
accustomed over nine years of Rajapaksa rule to a
Government policy of viewing every problem
through the lens of security. Militarisation and the
dominance of the security paradigm in all aspects
of the Rajapaksa State has in a sense changed
perspectives within the military establishment
about the primacy of democratic rule.
This is a problem the new Government
encountered early on. The early gaffe by newly
appointed Defence Secretary Basnayake, who
sought to justify irregular financial activity by his
predecessor, was an indication of the seriousness
of the problem.
Within the security establishment, the influence of
the previous powerful regime runs deep. Civil
servants had learned to obey the dictates of
military, even though they were technically higher
in the command chain. In democratic societies,
civilians both political and bureaucratic, take
precedence over military high command. But in
Rajapaksa Sri Lanka the countrys most powerful
civil servant, was in fact a fundamentally military
man.
As these lines blurred, as the security state grew
immense in structure and size, the civil
administration was weakened and its confidence
was seriously eroded.

These were the problems within the security apparatus that President
Sirisena, as Minister of Defence and Ruwan Wijewardene, his State Minister
for the subject, inherited, when they took office in January. An expose last
week by our sister publication, The Sunday Times, revealed the extent of
the concern when it said the Government had been warned about an
assassination plot against President Sirisena during the Independence Day
ceremony earlier this month.
Contd on page 20
The traitor..
Needless to say, the question of whom to trust within the security
establishment became a major issue for the new Government. The dilemma
was compounded by the new administrations decision to actively
discourage the creation of a paranoid state, by slashing security
contingents and escorts for Ministers and opening up former high security
zones in the capital.
Reports that certain military officials were training junior officers to create
the illusion of problems in the Northern Province presumably under
shadow orders may have hastened the decision-making with regard to the
military.
The Government took the most cautious course. There were no summary
removals or swift shuffles that could be perceived as reprisals or witchhunts. Chief of Defence Staff, Jagath Jayasuriya, under whose hand dubious
standby orders were signed on 24 December 2014, and troop movements
were allegedly made two days ahead of the presidential election, remains in
place.
While the military dismissed the orders as routine at election time, a
position Jayasuriya has repeatedly noted in private, nevertheless they
perturbed the Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya enough to
mention that he was investigating the complaint at a press briefing on the
eve of the election. Deshapriya said that no troops could be mobilised
without the express knowledge of the Elections Commissioner and the IGP,
and he said he was in the dark regarding the movement.
Uneasy military relations
In late January, Jayasuriya was to pay a call on the Prime Minister and other
senior members of the Government, to deny his involvement in the coup

story of election night last month. Wickremesinghe is reported to have

played the issue down during the meeting.
But with questions persisting as to why Jayasuriya continues to be CDS,
given his intense loyalties to the former regime (Jayasuriya was appointed
Army Commander, after the Rajapaksa regime began to suspect that Sarath
Fonseka was wielding too much control over the military after the war
ended in 2009), it remains unclear whether his retention is part of the
Governments strategy to ensure they do not rock the boat and provoke a
potentially devastating response from the security establishment.
Insiders say there remains a degree of tension and suspicion between the
new Government and the security establishment. This was evidenced by an
incident a few weeks after the election, political observers say.
It was an open election promise of this Government that they would return
land to former owners in the formerly embattled regions of the North and
East. There were two key phrases they kept using on the campaign trail.
The campaign leaders for the Opposition said the army was building
swimming pools and golf courses on private lands.
But on 29 January, former Army Chief now General Daya Ratnayake,
travelled to Jaffna to ceremonially open a swimming pool inside the armyrun Thalsevana resort. He was hosted by Maj. Gen. Jagath Alwis, who had
controversially been appointed Security Forces Commander of the Northern
Province by the previous regime just ahead of the presidential election.
The question of whether the Army Commander, who the new Government
was treating with kid gloves following his alleged refusal to participate in
the attempt to hold power by force on election night, had engaged in an act
of defiance or whether it was a mere coincidence remains a question.
But finally last week, Army Commander Ratnayake retired without
extension and was promoted to the rank of General.
The Government is aware however, that parts of the military could still be
uneasy with the new setup and any seeming erosion of its strength or
capacity, especially in response to TNA demands, would be viewed with
significant hostility.
Naturally, this puts the new administration in a supremely awkward
position, as it attempts to balance security concerns with pledges made to
promote reconciliation with the Tamil people during the election.
Hardline sections of the TNA are breathing fire against the new Prime

Minister for the Government delays in releasing lands seized by the military
in war time back to its original owners in the North and East.
The two major regions being contested are Valikamam North in the Jaffna
District and Sampur in the Trincomalee District. In Valikamam North, the
army holds 6000 acres of land, originally belonging to private citizens. The
Government announced two weeks ago that it would release 1000 acres
back to the original owners. Since the announcement there is little
progress. It appears the 1000 acres is the present compromise the
Government has been able to exact from the military.
The frustration over the delays has resulted in a spate of protests by
families of the disappeared, student activists and land owners, against both
the new Government and the more moderate leaders of the TNA.
Last Thursday, a stormy meeting ensued when Prime Minister
Wickremesinghe met with a TNA delegation for talks about the release of
land and detainees held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Several TNA MPs, including EPRLF Leader Suresh Premachandra, were harsh
with the Prime Minister. Wickremesinghe reacted by urging calm. Cant we
have a civilised discussion dont shout at me. I understand your issues,
he said, after which the meeting proceeded calmly.
One TNA MP from Jaffna said even the usually civil TNA Leader R.
Sampanthan had been palpably angry at the meeting. The return of land
and the release of political prisoners held under PTA were major verbal
promises made by President Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremesinghe before the election.
At the TNAs first meeting with the new President, they raised two key
issues, says MP M.A. Sumanthiran: the disappeared people and the release
of land.
At Thursdays meeting, Wickremesinghe asked the TNA to give him two
more weeks to allow the new Army Commander to settle into office.
The new Government has also annoyed the TNA by refusing to discuss the
UNHRC process and strategies with them. The reaction came in the form of
the infamous Genocide resolution passed by the Northern Provincial
Council, with a green light from Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, widely
believed to be a moderate and rational Tamil politician.
The resolution has not been well-received in the South of the island. In light
of what are seen as the Governments genuine efforts to advance

reconciliation and build bridges even though progress might be slow the
NPC reaction appeared to be over the top and needlessly aggressive.
Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera believes the NPC resolution
indicates the continuing lack of trust between the northern council and the
Centre. It was a surprising statement, Samaraweera acknowledged to the
Daily FT. It shows the trust deficit between the North and the Centre and
shows that building trust is of paramount importance, he said.
Minister Samaraweera insists that requesting the deferral of the UN report
was not a time-buying measure. The Government would explore the
possibility of setting up a truth commission with the aid of South Africa,
while also establishing a domestic accountability mechanism with technical
assistance from the UN, its international partners and even human rights
groups.
While the hardening positions in the North could also be put down to
electoral compulsions, the trend is a dangerous one and could easily derail
any real moves to build trust between the communities in the long term. In
order to keep the moderates relevant within the TNA, the Government must
ensure a consensus driven, consultative process on issues pertaining to the
Tamil minority.
Ranil Wickremesinghe, the new Prime Minister certainly faces a unique
dilemma. Unpopular with nationalist sections of the south, who view him as
having sold out to the LTTE with his Ceasefire Agreement and Peace Talks
in 2001-2004, he faces an uphill task winning large chunks of the Sinhala
Buddhist majority.
But hardliners on the other side of the ethnic divide continue to perceive
him as the Sinhala leader who heralded the defeat of the LTTE by effecting
the defection of Karuna after the peace talks broke down. Now hardline
sections of the TNA are convinced Wickremesinghe is engaged in a similar
game to end the partys political future.
Five days before the presidential elections in 2005, several members of the
TNA visited Wickremesinghe at his Fifth Lane residence. It was close to
midnight and the then Opposition Leader had been campaigning in
Ratnapura. The alleged pre-election pact between his opponents campaign
and the LTTE had already been made. But the Tigers had been convinced by
certain Tamil politicians to bring their conditions to Wickremesinghe.
In April 2003, peace talks with the Wickremesinghe Government had broken

down after the Prime Minister refused to give into LTTE demands to create
an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) in areas of the North and East
which were under their control.
In November 2005, the TNA carried the message to Wickremesinghe from
the Tigers that they would allow the Tamil people to vote in the election on
17 November 2005, if he agreed to give into the ISGA condition.
Wickremesinghe, whose presidency was effectively stolen from him only
five days later, refused.
With that election, the man who had paid the LTTE Rs. 500 million to effect
a polls boycott, became the supra-patriot in an end-justifies-the-means
argument. Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had refused to give into the Tigers
political demands, became a traitor. And so the status quo has remained,
largely as a result of the UNPs own communication failures and
Wickremesinghes own refusal to engage in public discussions about the
matter.
If Wickremesinghe must in a June election, face off again against Mahinda
Rajapaksa, the question of patriot and traitor will be front and centre again.
The Sinhala nationalists will rally against the Prime Minister and the
hardliners in the North will spew nationalistic rhetoric against him to keep
any UNP attempt to secure seats in the region at bay and hold on to large
majorities in the province.
To overcome the challenge, Wickremesinghe will need to carry the
moderates with him, ward off any attempts to communalise the political
debate surrounding the election and act swiftly to clip the wings of the
former regime waiting in the shadows, by indicting them for misdeeds and
corruption.