Sri Lanka: Government organizes protests to distract from economic crisis

Colombo -- 7 March 2012

Tens of thousands took to the streets of Colombo and other cities and towns, in the last week of February and into the following week.

There were two oddities about these demonstrations of “peoples’ power” – as some government politicians described them.

First, no-one was shot dead, no-one was tear-gassed, no court orders were taken to ban public protests, the state media did not demonize the demonstrators, and  nor did cabinet ministers blame “western-funded NGOs” for stirring up the people. Quite unlike the repression and intimidation unleashed in other recent demonstrations.

Second, the issue at stake in far-away Geneva, appeared not to be known or understood by the protestors.

They came waving the Sri Lankan flag, or carrying printed posters of president Mahinda Rajapakse or defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, or holding banners and placards (printed of course at state expense and distributed in state vehicles).

The messages were in favor of the unity and integrity of the country, denying human rights violations and war crimes, denouncing the US for supporting the LTTE (!), blaming the opposition UNP and NGOs for supporting international intervention in Sri Lanka, and similar vein.

Some protestors were faithful supporters of the government bused by local politicians from their electorates; others were public officials who have long forgotten the difference between serving the state and serving the government; or who were mobilized by government trade unions they dare not offend; and some came simply for the ride and the goodies on offer; or worse as in parts of the North and East through fear and coercion. 

Ruling politicians including former UNPers, former JVPers and former Leftists like Vasudeva Nanayakkara, along with the clergy from all religions, joined the main protest outside Fort railway station on 27 February.

These government-organized and backed protests were apparently a show of popular sovereignty in defiance of a draft US-sponsored resolution to be debated at the current session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

What is this resolution about? Does it recognize the right of the Tamil nation to self-determination? Does it demand an independent and impartial investigation of allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka? Does it propose to station international human rights observers on Sri Lankan soil? No.

The US resolution is titled “promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka”. Basically, the US government calls upon the Sri Lankan government to (1) “implement the constructive recommendations” in the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) report; (2) to present an action plan on steps taken and that will be taken to implement the LLRC recommendations; and (3) to accept advice from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in undertaking the above. A time-frame of one year is given for a progress report.

There is no direct reference to accountability for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law that were identified by the UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki-Moon’s, Panel of Experts report in 2011, in its investigation into the conclusion of the war in 2009.

However, where the draft resolution also urges the Sri Lankan government to “initiate credible and independent actions to ensure justice, equity, accountability and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans”, there is a hint of the unmentionable report.

Let us remember that the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation commission was a process that was designed by the government to reduce the international pressure on it concerning accountability for human rights issues after the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009.

The mandate of the commission was decided by the government, the members of the commission were selected by the government, the time and resources available for its investigation was determined by the government, and the testimonies in Colombo were heavily influenced by government, pro-government and ex-government personalities, including Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Sinhala nationalists.

Yet, to the surprise of its supporters and critics alike, the LLRC presented a series of important recommendations including on release of Tamil detainees, demilitarization of the north and east, land dispute resolution mechanism, right to information law, independent public institutions, respect for ‘rule of law’, and most controversially in supporting political and constitutional reforms for power-sharing with minorities.

The LLRC’s weak point is that it played down gross violations of human rights in the last stage of the war. Hence, the careful reference to the need for accountability in the US resolution.

Since May 2009, the government regularly informed the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that it would conduct its own investigation into the conduct of the war. After the LLRC was created, member-states of the UNHRC were told to be patient and wait for its recommendations, and even briefed on its 2010 interim recommendations which remain unimplemented.

Now that the LLRC recommendations have been released, suddenly the same government that was trumpeting this mechanism – and that even called on the opposition to support its recommendations when the LLRC report was presented in parliament last year – suddenly takes offence to the request that the recommendations of its own commission be followed in full, and that asks the same question being asked by many within the island: as to how and when these recommendations will take effect.

In fact, the present US resolution is milder and more favorable to the government than the one it feared would be on the agenda of the Human Rights Council this month.

For many months, international human rights organizations, the pro-LTTE diaspora organizations, as well as some political and human rights activists within Sri Lanka, have been lobbying for a stronger resolution calling for an “international monitoring mechanism on accountability”.

Such close international interest with the threat of intervention in the internal political system would certainly be most unwanted by the regime. However, in the present post-war euphoria and enormous popularity of the president among the Sinhala masses, it could ironically strengthen his hand by unifying the majority nation against an external enemy.

In fact, the mobilization against the current US resolution is precisely for the purpose of regaining popular support that has been slowly falling through anti-people policies such as pension reforms, privatization of higher education, land-grabbing, and fuel price increases.

A more sophisticated diplomacy would have been for the government to co-sponsor the US resolution, winning some allies and buying itself more time through the “constructive engagement” of the so-called ‘international community’.

However, for this regime, domestic goals are paramount while street-fighting talk and public brawls are its signature; and this latest attempt in reviving patriotic fervor has, at least for now, succeeded in distracting attention from the unbearable increase in the cost of living and economic insecurity.

This transparent maneuver to hoodwink the Sinhala masses is being aided and abetted by the Left parties within the coalition, who rail against the US resolution in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’, while meekly appealing to their own government to implement the LLRC recommendations in full.

Unfortunately for the Communist Party, whose Matara parliamentarian and cabinet member Chandrasiri Gajadeera sees antharjathika kumanthranaya (‘international conspiracies’) abroad in Geneva, the Communist Party of India – pandering to its own electoral alliances with South Indian Tamil nationalism – has supported the US resolution.

Imperialism is the main enemy the governmental Left cries, avoiding any mention of their government’s adoption of International Monetary Fund conditionalities in return for loans; its neoliberal monetary and development policy veiled in populist rhetoric; and its headlong rush into financialization of the economy, including through heavy borrowing from international money markets and western banks.

The real issue, irrespective of the US resolution, is whether or not the LLRC recommendations will be implemented in full. The drama that has been enacted in our streets and on our television screens conveys that there will only be half-hearted and token actions falling short of full implementation.

What this rotten regime will not and cannot do, is to execute even modest reforms that restrict in any way its corrupt, nepotistic and authoritarian capitalist rule, and counter the Sinhala nationalism that is its ideological base.

USA: Obama for Change?

(First published in Sinhala and dated 18 January 2008)

Everyone, or so it seems, is willing Barack Obama to be the Democratic Party’s candidate in the US Presidential elections in November.

He appears to be everything Hillary Clinton -- the current favourite to win the Democratic nomination -- is not. From his relative youth; easy way with ordinary people; ‘outsider’ status in the political establishment (though he represents the state of Illinois in the Senate); criticism of US foreign policy in Iraq; and of course his race, he symbolises his own message of “change”.

In one of the most unequal societies in the world: where for every one dollar a white person is paid, a black person earns 62 cents; where a black person is 2.3 times more likely to be unemployed than a white person; where there are more black people in prisons than in higher education, it is remarkable that an African-American is being talked about as the 44^th President of the United States of America.

However, if it is real change in US domestic and foreign policy that one is after, the difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is as paper-thin as the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.

Obama has flipped-flopped on the US occupation of Iraq and supports US military intervention in Afghanistan. In August last year he even threatened to bomb Pakistan if General (sorry “President”) Musharaf doesn’t root out Islamic terrorism in the form of Al-Qaida.

Obama is a safe choice for US corporate interests, which is why investment firms and corporate banks such as Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars each to his campaign.

Obama supports nuclear energy as his solution to the problem of US addiction to petro-carbons (oil and gas).

On every other issue, what Obama stands for, other than change, is unclear as he is purposely vague on specifics.

In fact, the real candidate for change on the Democratic ticket, is surprise, surprise, the one you don’t hear about in the media. 

Dennis Kucinich, a Congressman in the House of Representatives from Ohio, has always opposed the US war in Iraq, he prevented the privatisation of Cleveland’s publicly owned electricity supply as Mayor of that city, he supports same-sex (gay) marriage, he supports not-for-profit universal health care in a country where 44 million citizens are too poor to afford health insurance; he is against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the neo-liberal North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Even Kucinich though believes in saving capitalism from itself through correcting its flaws, abuses and injustices.

Unfortunately, those who have most to gain from Kucinich’s policies are those who are excluded from the political system and who will never know of Kucinich because he has been excluded by the mainstream media which refuses to let him debate on air with other candidates.

US trade unions have overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to a lesser extent, associating themselves with candidates acceptable to employers who have kept the level of real wages for blue-collar workers at the same level as 1979!

The same candidates who can only shed crocodile tears for the hundreds of thousands of families whose homes are being repossessed as they bear the brunt of the banking crisis in the mortgage market because they will not intervene in the economy to protect them.

The unwillingness of organised labour to break from the Democratic Party prevented the US Labor Party in the 1990s from taking off, while the weaknesses of the Green Party make it a marginal force in US politics.

A third party that is also a social movement, capable of bringing down the corrupt electoral system and democratising US politics, remains the challenge.

Until then the twin parties of Corporate America guarantee government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

Barack Obama in the White House can not and will not change that.

South African Workers Lose Patience with ANC

(First published in Sinhala and dated 20 June 2007)

South Africa has been rocked by one of the biggest post-apartheid general strikes.

More than 500 000 thousand public sector workers were called out on June 04 by the country’s largest trade union centre, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is also a partner in the present African National Congress (ANC) dominated government.

Health, education and municipal workers have not reported to work, causing major disruption, including closure of schools, hospitals, public transport, interruption of power supply, non-collection of rubbish and the like. Tens of thousands have demonstrated on the streets of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town.

The government has reacted aggressively by sacking more than 600 health service workers and deploying the armed forces in hospitals and outside schools.

The strike was triggered by the government’s refusal to negotiate with unions for a fair wage increase: COSATU demanded 12 percent later lowered to 9 percent, while the government has improved its initial offer of 6 percent to 7.5 percent, which unions point out is well below the cost of inflation.

However there are deeper and bitter underlying causes that pushed the 1.8 million strong COSATU and its affiliates to publicly demonstrate against the ANC government it brought to power.

There is widespread anger that post-apartheid South Africa has not addressed the socio-economic inequalities of the majority black population.

As COSATU general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, noted: “for too many of our people, apartheid remains in the form of mass unemployment and poverty plus poor services from the government”.

The South African economy has only created 500 000 jobs each year for the past three years despite its growth rate and inward investment when 40 percent of the labour force is unemployed.

 The socialist rhetoric of the ANC has now been replaced by the language of business as it focuses on building a back capitalist class largely composed of its own leaders.

Increasingly, COSATU and the Communist Party (SACP) have complained of exclusion by the ANC from macro-economic policy and there has been public discussion in their ranks of remaining partners in the triple alliance that formally governs South Africa.

This strike is also an attempt by some within COSATU and the SACP who remain committed to the alliance to pressure the ANC to focus on poverty instead of its ‘black empowerment’ strategy that favours the elite, and to build support for a left challenge to the ANC leadership when its current leader and South African president, Thabo Mbeki, steps down next year.

Such a strategy is of limited value when the ANC is a firm supporter of neo-liberalism and taking the same path of accommodation to capitalism and imperialism as post-colonial regimes historically.

It is only through independent organisation in a workers party that the popular majority will find a political vehicle for the ‘New South Africa’ whose birth is long-delayed.

Stop Fratricidal Violence in Palestine! Unite against Israeli Occupation!

(First published in Sinhala and dated 20 June 2007)

 

Caged like rats, starved, deprived of medicines, unable to work across the ‘border’ in Israel, denied freedom of movement, bombarded from the skies such that 700 civilians including 141 children were murdered last year, the Palestinian ordeal has worsened in recent weeks.

Palestinian fighting Palestinian, the separation of Hamas dominated Gaza strip from the Fatah dominated West Bank, and the hijacking of the liberation struggle by a corrupt and authoritarian regime unable or unwilling to resist Israeli Occupation, there is no end in sight to the tragedy.

The Zionist state of Israel and its patron the United States of America cannot be happier after its stunning defeat in Lebanon last year. The fruits of the Oslo Accord are being reaped today.

Former United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, has only admitted what was plain to see in a confidential report to the UN Secretary-General promptly disowned by Ban Ki-moon: the freezing of tax revenues owed to the Palestinians and aid pledged to them has had devastating consequences including creating the conditions for the present fratricidal violence.  

The report slammed the UN for taking positions based upon what the US and Israeli administrations would think rather than on the basis of political principle.

The dissolution of the Hamas-Fatah coalition government by Palestinian Authority president and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has been hailed by the US, European Union and Israel.

A state of emergency has been imposed and Abbas rules by presidential decree.

Those who collaborated in the destitution and suffering of Palestinians now promise to lift the economic blockade, imposed following Hamas’ January 2006 electoral victory, that has been strangling them.

Democracy is only favoured by the west when the outcome is to its liking.  Meanwhile western powers ignore Israel’s illegal settlement of colonists in the West Bank and the obnoxious wall that it builds to divide Palestinian peoples from their land.

The popular mandate for Hamas is rejected because that was not imperialism’s choice.

Of course Hamas is not remotely supported by socialists who stand for secularism, democracy and feminism, for peace and equality between Jews and Arabs, within a federation of peoples of the Middle East.

However Hamas became the focus for popular resistance to the discredited Fatah faction and was seen as incorruptible and uncompromising in defending Palestinian rights against Israeli aggression and competent in public administration and delivery of public services.

Hamas compromised by forming a coalition government with Fatah and implicitly recognising Israel’s right to exist.

In contrast, its opponents in Tel Aviv and Washington DC neither recognise Hamas right to be part of the political landscape nor the right of Palestinians to statehood.

The Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan was among those opposed to coalition government with Hamas and most militaristic in challenging its domination of the Gaza strip.

Dahlan, an aspirant for Fatah’s supreme leadership, has long been cultivated by US intelligence agencies and recently armed by Israel.

A Dahlan-led Fatah administration submissive to western power would extinguish political radicalism and create another US client state in the Middle East unlike his rival Marwan Barghouti who rots under life imprisonment in an Israeli prison.

Having divided the Palestinians, in all manner of ways possible, the Israelis will intensify aerial bombing of Gaza, once again inflicting collective punishment on its 1.4 million people who had the audacity to choose a government for themselves.