Professor
Kumar David in an article titled “Centenary of the February Revolution in
Russia” tries to draw parallels between the Leninist coup and Maithripala
Sirisena’s election. His point of comparison itself is flawed, but for now
let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. What compels my attention isn’t his
handling of history, but his handling of the caveats that flow from it.
He
claims that the Revolution (in Russia, not here) could have almost ended in
capitulation, with the forces of reaction gaining over the revolutionists, if
those chosen to head the latter were not realistic enough. “He was no petty
bourgeois romantic” is an apt summing up of Lenin by Professor Kumar. Such a
revolutionist would compromise on nothing, nothing at all, in his quest to
erase away the Opposition and institutionalise those structures of power which
are essential to sustaining ideological coups. Who could have, after all,
inferred that a country which was feudal and was run by a king who had no clue
about the existence or suffering of his people would be the first to send man
to space 40 years later? That needed force.
After
indulging much in history, Professor Kumar reveals his objective: “There will
no new constitution, no useful amendments, no economic programme, ‘no peace, no
rest’ until the counterrevolution in full swing under the leadership of the
Joint Opposition is confronted and crushed.” The focus, as always, is on the
Joint Opposition, on Mahinda Rajapaksa and the forces of reaction he
(allegedly) represents. The Professor may or may not know that the Left/Right
dichotomy in this globalised world of ours has dissolved, but again, I am
willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I am not, however, willing to be
so lenient when it comes to his blatant acts of cherry-picking when confronting
the shortcomings of (t)his government.
I am
aware of the pitfalls involved in letting the opponent(s) of any revolution
into the democratic process. I am also aware, however, that such opponents can
serve a useful function in a modern liberal democracy, opening up dialogue,
debate, and if necessary conflict. We are not, of course, a liberal democracy,
but we are a democracy and being one empowers us to question, critique, and by
all means DEMOCRATICALLY eliminate those forces antithetical to communal amity.
Professor Kumar, however, has empowered the government to attack the JO. Not
democratically, but forcefully. What are the problems that flow from this?
There
are two issues that unearth the rifts of any government: ambiguity from itself
and ambiguity from the Opposition. I see the latter with the debate over SAITM
and private (medical) education. I see the former with this regime’s stance on
war crimes and the economy. Ambiguity, particularly policy ambiguity, is
reckonable as long as it’s not sustained for long. Unfortunately for this
government and for us, policy statement after policy statement flow in, only to
be contradicted, refined, added to, and subtracted from by whoever is spouting
them. We have a Cabinet Spokesman, I believe, but not even that Cabinet
Spokesman has been enough to wade away the flaws that have beset Maithripala
Sirisena’s regime in this respect. I am not complaining, but nor am I celebrating.
It
is the State’s responsibility to set things right. Not the Opposition’s. By the
latter, I am referring to the official Opposition as well, but then as last
week proved yet again, the likes of R. Sampanthan and his cohorts in the Tamil
National Alliance (TNA) are more concerned about indicting our armed forces
than questioning the regime over its handling of the economy, a more pertinent
issue (it must be added) that spills over to the entire polity. But then, when
did the TNA ever get out of its communalist mindset, even as it alleged that
other mainstream parties were caved in the same?
As
for the JO, it’s doing a rather efficient job of worsening the ambiguity of
both the Opposition and the government. With the ruckus over private education,
certain elements of the JO have come out in favour of abolishing SAITM. As I
pointed out in my column two weeks ago, what brings the nationalist movement
and the anti-SAITM bandwagon together is the fact that the former is opposed to
the position the SLMC and GMOA have been led to by this regime. How does this
make the problem even more ambiguous? By the glaring fact that these same
elements were behind the previous regime as it green-lit the establishment of
the campus AND the private teaching hospital.
As
of now, the likes of Mahinda Rajapaksa, Bandula Gunawardena, and Dinesh
Gunawardena are more concerned with indicting the government and judiciary for
questioning the authority of the “national body”, the SLMC. Being the political
creatures they are, they do not attack SAITM directly (they leave that task to
the student movement), but rather highlight the government’s complicity in
aggravating an already problematic issue. What the government can do in this
regard is not to crush the JO, but to address the burden the JO handed over to
it after January 8, 2015. Not fair, yes. But then politics rarely is.
The
ruckus over war crimes allegations, however, is a different ball-game
altogether. There the government has itself to blame, over both the handling of
the issue by Chandrika Kumaratunga and the contradictory statements given by
the President, the Prime Minister’s party, and the Foreign Minister. Of these, the President is trying to pacify the Sinhala
Buddhists by saying, “No foreign
judges!” The UNP is trying to pacify its electorate by saying, “The SLFP and JO are crying over hot air!” The Foreign Minister is trying to pacify the
international community by saying,
“Give us time, we will implement what even you do not insist!” I personally
believe Dayan Jayatilleka’s criticism of the latter is valid, which is why I am worried about the
doublethink being perpetuated here: “We will not create a war crimes tribunal
with foreign intervention, unless
we want to.”
Which
is where I come to Professor Kumar. Professor Kumar has always stood for what’s
right (for him, at least). We may not agree with what he writes, but we agree
with his cause (lost though it may be). That is why I was almost completely
sure that he would, in his latest piece, not single out the JO and instead
condemn the government’s inaction. I am frustrated that he has not. Not because
I expected much from his pen, but because he has conveniently highlighted and
ballooned the largely absent (or absented) Left/Right dichotomy. For if he
charges that the JO represents the forces of reaction, it goes without saying
then that the government represents the forces of revolution. In other words,
he compares or rather equalises February 1917 to January 2015 on the basis that
the government is more amenable to a leftist/liberal revolution.
This
interests me. Not because his reasoning is flawed, but because he gives the
impression that he believes his own flawed reasoning. If the UNP and even the
SLFP were so “revolutionary” as he thinks they are, then why have they not
addressed the issues being aggravated by their silence? Should a government be
more worried about its own inaction or about the actions of the Opposition?
Given that the likes of Professor Kumar were empowering the UNP, the JVP, and
the LSSP (that party still exists, yes) to question, critique, and bring down
the Mahinda Rajapaksa plutocracy then, he is being logically inconsistent now.
That doesn’t interest me. That upsets me. So much, in fact, that I want to
revisit history.
If
Professor Kumar visits the archives, he will hear of something called the
Workers’ Charter. He will know that Sri Lanka does not possess such a document,
just as much as it runs on a free education system without having a right
thereto in its Constitution.
If
he digs even deeper, he will know that the workers of this country, the people
he theoretically should be in support of and writing about, were denied
security and patronage by BOTH the UNP and SLFP regimes. He will also realise
that the only attempt to bring such a Charter to the government was made by the
man he vilifies, condemns, and attacks to the point of logical inconsistency,
Mahinda Rajapaksa. If he digs even more, he will face the fact that the only
document which could have statutorily empowered and protected the workers of
this country was done away with in parliament by the SAME PARTY he covertly
praises and condones, courtesy of the man who would become the Minister for
Finance, Ravi Karunanayake.
For
the record, this is what Karunanayake had to say: “We don't need this Charter to protect the workers.
We ourselves will protect them.” That was what even Mahinda Rajapaksa implied
after he clinched the presidency, but for the time being my question is this:
if the workers of this country were belittled by both parties, why should we
bother about doing away with the Joint Opposition? Such a radical move needs
justification. Not hot air. Professor Kumar has given us the latter. Not the
former. Again, upsetting.
The
Old Left of this country forgot the working class after the eighties. They were
not worried about the poor. They were not worried about class discrepancies
(which cut across every political and racial divide). They were bedding with
the class enemies while harping on about the 13th Amendment. When Rajapaksa
became president, they bedded with the SLFP, while a section thereof distanced
itself from him even before Maithripala Sirisena announced his candidacy. That
particular section, Professor Kumar speaks for and defends. That is what has
led him and the constitutionalist de-legitimisers elsewhere to a rather
unfortunate crevice: defend a government that is economically at odds with
their interests against an Opposition that is dismantling the hypocrisy and the
doublespeak being perpetuated by it.
He
ends on this note: “The real issue right now is not the words in the Draft
Constitution, or economic ideology, or the national question.” I agree. The
real issue is none of these, because the people are tired. The Constitution
will not feed them, ideology will not feed them, and the resolution of the
national question will not pacify even the poor, common Tamil man, woman, and
child. I am sure Lenin would have agreed, which is why he went ahead with an
economic program to empower his base, the proletariat.
So
if we insist on an analogy here, as Professor Kumar does, then all I can say is
that state inaction on the part of the government will not sustain its base. It
will only help the JO erode it even more. For the suffering of the people is
INDEPENDENT (to a considerable extent) of the JO’s protests. I am surprised
that the Professor still has not realised this.
That
article compelled a reply days later. The title of that reply itself was
alluring: “February 1917 & January 2015: Fake Similarities.” It was not
written by a Mahinda Rajapaksa stooge, moreover. It was written by the General
Secretary of the United General Employee Union, Neil Wijethilaka. Given the
good professor’s affirmation of the current government, Wijethilaka ended his
reply with an apt comment: that his take on history was “part of the Ranil
Wickremesinghe project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Russian
Revolution.” For the record, I love the oxymoron there. Who wouldn’t?
One
more point. A political commentator known for his heated exchanges with the
Professor summed up what he had written in just two words: “Saw. Crap.” Made me
grin, I swear.
Written for: Ceylon Today, March 7 2017
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