Gota’s no-frills first year, whines and whiners

 

It was obvious not a year that made for pomp and pageantry, even if that was the desire. All issues have been either framed or impacted by Covid19. In any case, he’s not, for example, a Mahinda Rajapaksa. Covid19 of course was so sobering that the contrast was lost.

No-frills is good but presidents are not elected to be less or more showy than their predecessors. It’s about manifestos, mandates and delivery. Delivery ran into the Covid19 wall, but this doesn’t mean that it should not be assessed.

Since the country, like the world, has been Covid19-driven, the response needs to be evaluated. One would think.

The Opposition says ‘fail’ and that’s laughable. The worthies in the Opposition ruled the country for 5 years. They brought in a constitutional amendment violating all established procedures and even giving the Supreme Court the proverbial finger. They created kangaroo courts to hound political opponents: hundreds of cases, not a single conviction at the end of five years. If special procedures and institutions were required to circumvent flaws in the judicial system then the architects should have addressed systemic flaws. Failed (even as the ‘kangaroo courts’ functioned) to do so. Failed.

Easter Sunday attacks. Need we say more? A clueless duo at the top of the roost who set new standards for incompetence on all counts. Need we say more? Failed. That was a period when the notion of ‘failed state’ would have been an eminently appropriate descriptive. As predictable, once their pals took over governance reins, they dropped that nomenclature, brushing off the dust for re-use only when they realized that their pals were about to be ousted. And now they have to maintain the lie.

They’ve made some short videos, probably to convince funders that they are still relevant. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu has talked of militarization, authoritarianism and majoritarianism. He’s mentioned presidential task forces and the appointment of former military chiefs to key positions (in these and in other institutions). He believes some human rights organizations are practicing self-censorship (maybe they have nothing to say/market these days). He whines that their activities are being scrutinized and are being asked about how they spend their money. Well, should they remain unaccountable? We do know that these NGO lords and ladies insisted that their organizations be left out of RTI purview. For a reason. Obviously.

Saravanamuttu also says that the 20th Amendment took us back to the situation in 1978. He has not uttered one word about all the flaws of the 19th, the tinkering associated with it and the confusion regarding executive power which in part facilitated the Easter Sunday attacks. What the 20th did they must bother these people most is removing the Constitutional Council, in which their brethren were members and therefore had a say in appointments to the so-called independent institutions. The CC facilitated the appointment of regime-loyalists to top posts, even violating basic principles of meritocracy in appointments to the Supreme Court. President Rajapaksa, in contrast, without the ‘plus’ of ‘civil society’ involvement, recommended the six senior most judges for promotion to the SC. The president hasn’t insisted that meritocracy should override all else in all spheres. He should.

Bhavani Fonseka talks about the period when parliament was dissolved and elections had been postponed. She’s upset that during this period the President called the shots. Well, it’s not as if at that time some NGO consortium could have been asked to run the country, surely? The Supreme Court was petitions, remember? The SC didn’t find anything wrong.

Ruki Fernando, just like her, has talked of human rights activists being intimidated. Vague claims. No substantiation except for mentioning a lawyer who is under detention. Neither dare mention the reason for detention: suspicion over involvement in Easter Sunday attacks. If a terrorist is a lawyer, journalist or wears  some ‘ok’ garb, identity is drawn from dress and not the body it covers. That’s par for the course for these people. Hijaz Hisbullah has not been found guilty. The jury is out. However, one cannot blame a government for refusing to take chances. We saw what THAT policy did just 19 months ago. In the name of celebrating diversity (intent being to deliberately confuse 'majority' with 'majoritarianism' and ridicule, harass and put down Sinhala Buddhists) and championing freedoms, the yahapalana years saw the entire security apparatus being effectively dismantled.

They’ve developed a sudden love for vulnerable groups and this is a good thing. They are talking about fishermen, people in low income categories, garment workers etc. They are saying that Covid19 has made them more vulnerable. Yes, this is correct. It is however not a reflection of any pohottuwa-policy regime. They won’t say that though.

Then we have Jayadeva Uyangoda, who (unlike Saravanamuttu) says the 20th has given the president more powers than those vested in the office in 1978. No elaboration on this has been offered. The president has more power than those given by the 18th Amendment he says. Well, the 20th didn’t remove the term-limit imposed by the 19th. The passage of the 20th followed proper procedure. SC was petitioned. The Attorney General informed court that certain clauses would be amended at the committee stage (the 19th saw wholesale changes when even the British tradition, which yahapalanists love to refer to, allow only minor changes by the House of Lords), the SC objected to just one article and said it would require both a special majority in parliament (two-thirds) and a referendum. It was duly dropped.

Burial of Muslims who have died on account of Covid19 has been mentioned. There’s an issue here. Again, the government has erred on the side of caution. And that’s a good thing. As has been the case since February this year, decisions have been informed by health authorities and epidemiologists. State institutions and personnel have been tasked accordingly. They’ve worked 24/7. Politicians bragged about the efforts of containment, but not at any point were people told to drop their guard. They were told to follow protection protocols even after curfew was fully lifted.

The second wave was not unanticipated. We still don’t know enough about the behavior of the virus. However, there was a plan and it was executed. Quarantine centers were transformed into intermediate hospitals for asymptomatic patients (tested positive) and symptomatic parties were moved to hospitals. First contacts were asked to self-quarantine. Limited resources have been and are being used efficiently.

There have been complaints about privacy and about people being forcibly taken to quarantine centers. Privacy or death, that’s the issue. Angela Merkel said as much and Germany, as private a country as there is, went along. Those living in bubbles can complain. And it’s not as though anyone can be ‘private’ in the year 2021; certainly not most of the whiners who’ve willingly given enough ‘private data’ when they use credit cards, apple phones, use PickMe or Uber, order food, do their keyboard-‘warrioring’ on social media etc.

Were people herded into quarantine centers? They were certainly not allowed to say ‘no’. The relevant authorities moved and moved fast. Had they not, then containment would have been a problem hundreds of times worse. Again, it’s good that an NGO consortium wasn’t mandated to handle the situation.

So. Gota after a year. No frills. Has he turned Sri Lanka into a country that has reached its full potential? No. Close to it? No. On the road to it? No. There’s a lot to be done. Right now, there’s a need to control the Covid19 situation without compromising the economy. There’s a need to protect the most vulnerable sections of the population. There’s a need to move from aid-dependency to domestic production. There’s a need for development banks to be set up. There’s a need to set up a cooperative bank (which the People’s Bank was supposed to be!). There’s a need for a new constitution which resolves once and for all the big question of what kind of governance structure suits us best: presidential or parliament-driven.

There’s a lot being done without fanfare. Perhaps there’s a big communications-gap. No-frills is nice. No communication is not. Are the people happy? I don’t think so. The Covid-19 situation and all the restrictions have not made for roaring laughter. Does it mean they want the yahapalana failures back in the saddle. Highly unlikely.  

It’s too early to say ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ but that day will come. Right now it is absolutely laughable to say ‘fail,’ and hilarious when rank failures make this claim.

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Reconciliation does not grow in the Valley of Lies

Negombo. May 5, 2019. Two weeks after the Jihadist attacks. Who attacked Muslims, who boycotted Muslim shops?   

Half a truth here, half a truth there

armed with half-truths onward

all in the Valley of Lies

rode the six hundred.

‘Forward the Lie Brigade!

Charge for the monks!’ he said.

Into the Valley of Lies

rode the six hundred.

Sorry, Alfie. Couldn’t resist. These are tense times and a half-chuckle here and there you would pardon, I am sure. I was reminded of the verse by a number: 300. Half, yes, but this is only half the story. Read on.

In June 2014, 300 Sri Lankans petitioned the then Government to ‘take urgent action to stop attacks on Muslims’. This was in the aftermath of incidents in Aluthgama, Beruwala, Welipenna and Dharga Town, and pointed out to inflammatory speech by the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS).

Aluthgama, Beruwala, Welipenna etc was followed a few years later by Theldeniya and Digana as names associated with violence. Anti-Muslim violence. Violence perpetrated by those who affirmed the Buddhist faith, as per their convictions and understanding. 

In both instances, the Buddhists are made out to have clapped with a single hand, the statements would have us believe. We could quibble about who cast the first stone or who cast more stones, but there are few who are blameless. Well, no one need cast stones and even if ‘the other’ did so, it does not justify retaliation (if indeed that was what it was) of the kind we saw. That said, the popular narrative among the English twitterati is that stone-throwing or rather the casting of the first stone is a Sinhala Buddhist preserve, a ‘fact’ that even  absolves suicide bombers. 

Today, however, it seems that stones have been gathered a long time before ‘Aluthgama’ with or without the knowledge of people living in these areas. ‘Without’ let’s assume. No, let’s say ‘Without!’ with conviction, for grand generalization is a curse.   

What happened to the ‘300’  worthies (and their ilk, numbering well over 600) after the Easter Sunday attack by Muslims who claim to be affirming to the letter their faith? Not all such petitioners are in the practice of issuing statements at every turn, although the Easter Sunday attack was not exactly something trivial. Still, typically, there are signature-solicitors in such exercises. What happened to them? Why was Aluthgama, Theldeniya etc., ‘hot’ and ‘Easter Sunday’ cold? How did the anti-Muslim violence in Negombo following the attack and the boycotting of Muslim business  establishments go unnoticed? Was it noticed but ignored because the perpetrators did not belong to the community such people love to hate, namely the Sinhala Buddhists? Only D.B.S. Jeyaraj talked of what happened in Poruthota, Periyamulla and Dalupotha on May 5, 2019. Is it that our anti-Buddhist anti-Sinhala mobs didn’t find a mouth-watering story to tell? 

Anyway, all of a sudden, in the name of inter-communal amity, we are told to desist from naming the religion of the terrorists, the religion in whose name they killed. So we have a nameless commentator in the state media talking about ‘the hidden hands behind the anti-Muslim riots’. This print warrior will hopefully, even belatedly, tell us about all the hidden hands behind the terrorists affirming their Islamic faith, i.e. the terrorist-spawning educational institutions, mosques and most importantly the teachings, which sadly amount to a perversion of Islam (according to Islamic scholars) but nevertheless taken to be that doctrine in its purest form.  

Jehan Perera, writing in late April believes that Sri Lanka was dragged into a global conflict with Islamic extremism. His biggest worry was that the present government would lost the Catholic vote!  As has always been the case, and evidenced by subsequent missives, Perera is upset by the inconvenience of security measures. Happily he is not in charge of the subject. Again, in a piece about engagement being the price of reconciliation, he expresses his greatest worry — the ouster of this regime. More pertinent is the this human rights warrior’s marked reluctance to engage with the reality of religion-based extremism, how religious freedom was and is being abused to churn out terrorists, and how the problem is deeper than a bunch of people itching to blow themselves up. 

Thisaranee Gunasekara, who loves to chew out Sinhala Buddhists, writing in April unequivocally lays the blame on that community for anti-Muslim violence. It was the BBS that gave birth to Wahhabism, the ISIS and the NTJ, doctrines and outfits that pre-date ‘Aluthgama,’ she would have us believe. Sinhala Buddhists created the hell that is Syria, she might even conclude one day. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is a bit cuter than Gunasekara: ‘The violence, the animosity, Sinhala Buddhist versus Muslim, certainly could have led to these people becoming much more radicalized.’ 

They haven’t gone as far as Taylor Dibbert of www.foreignpolicy.com to say ‘Buddhist anger could tear Sri Lanka apart’, but that’s exactly where they are heading.  Susan Ormiston of CBC news who interviewed Saravanamuttu and others interjects, casually, ‘Buddhism is the majority religion and has seen the rise of ultra-nationalist groups.’  Interestingly and tellingly, the CBC news item covering an inter-faith event following the terrorist attack huffs and puffs before mentioning the ISIS and even then only in relation to some uniforms being found. Until then it’s about ‘bombings’ and ‘the Easter Sunday attack’. However, CBC is determined to ‘explain how this network of homegrown terrorism grew’. 

There you have it — homegrown. Home. Sri Lankan, exclusively. So it has to be something here. And then we have ‘the experts’ who are either non-Buddhists, anti-Buddhists or feel compelled to be on the bahu jaathika - bahu aagamika (multi religious, multi ethnic) bandwagon, never mind percentages. They relate the ‘Buddhists are to blame’ story.  Terrorists have no religion, we are told, but those who attack Muslims are Buddhist extremists (if they are not Buddhists, as mentioned above, such stories are killed). 

A more sophisticated (but as pernicious) analysis has been offered by Anuk Arudpragasam (‘A state of disorientation: dispatch from Sri Lanka after the Easter Bombings’), who mentions the ‘global factors’ but insists that it is all about ‘the country’s unwillingness to see how it has inflicted wounds on minorities.’ He speaks of deeply engrained racism and unexamined history of violence. All of a sudden, we have the old, tired and pernicious text, ‘the Sinhala Buddhist are to blame!’ And the unsaid but racist, ostrich-like  corollary, ‘minorities are blameless’.  He is right, however, when he says, ‘it is easier sometimes to follow a script, after all, even when it comes at the cost of peace.’ He’s a proponent, and he’s not alone.

All this makes it impossible to address ALL THE FACTORS because few in this drama are blameless.  ‘We are all guilty therefore we are all innocent’ is also a cover, we must insist. However, a preference for half-truths or downright lies (for laudable or vile reasons) takes us to the Vale of Deceit and that is where mistrust, anxiety and hatred are spawned. Looking for root-causes is one thing, but to say, for example, that the LTTE, BBS or NTJ (and no, they are not equals for multiple reasons) gave birth to the other two (or different ‘others’) or, alternatively, they all fell from the sky, is to pass the buck (that was always with all of us) to one another.  

So we get to a point where we cannot entertain any doubts whatsoever about any non-Sinhala non-Buddhist doing wrong. That would be racist. That would be intolerant. That’s what we are being told about Dr Shafi Shihabdeen, the man accused of performing forced sterilization following Caesarian surgery.

One must wonder what happened to the women’s rights outfits that are constantly looking for a protest-op. We all know that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has not stopped them before. 

Are Sinhala Buddhist women ‘untouchables’ if they suspect someone from another community abusing professional trust (to put it mildly)? Why can’t they ask all women ‘Caesared’ by Shihabdeen and who gave birth subsequently as well to come forward, so we can get an identity-related breakdown of the numbers and thereby get to the truth of the matter? 

The tireless efforts to hang the Sinhala Buddhist as the one and only villain in this drama cannot help reconciliation. Indeed, it allows those who in the name of identity plan and execute violence of one kind or another on religious or other minorities the perfect cover. They would be, simply, just a bunch of villains in a villainous majority community. 

On the flip side, it allows (as it has allowed) the quiet rise of racist and bigoted ideologies and attendant violence. They have the cover of the classic justification: ‘in self defense!’   

The bottom line: identity should not be a cover or an excuse for infringement of the law or abuse of constitutional safeguards such as religious freedoms. The ‘600’ (or more) are not helping. Well, they are helping all extremists, one could add. Half-truths do that. 

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Maithri-Ranil and the coherence deficit

Season for Lampooning

The defeat of the United National Front at the April 2004 Parliamentary Election can be attributed to the fact that the then President, Chandrika Kumaratunga pulling the political rug from under its feet by taking over three key ministries.   Supporters of that Government have lamented this fact.  Indeed, Ranil Wickremesinghe inherited in 2001 an economy that was in shambles and a nightmare security situation.  Few would have expected him to perform miracles in just three years.  His supporters bemoan the fact that the Government was not allowed to serve its full term and claim that had Kumaratunga acted differently the party would not have faired as poorly as it did.   

All that is conjecture, though.  While the UNF may have suffered because it didn’t have the time to implement its election pledges and then be subject to fair(er) assessment, there was also the vexed issue of its approach to the issue of national security.  The chosen path was the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), a flawed document if ever there was one, and one which demonstrated a sophomoric understanding of the key protagonist, the LTTE. 

The UNF alienated the Sinhala polity by signing the CFA and worse by offering puerile justifications.  The LTTE was the LTTE, as always viewing ceasefires, peace talks and such through a military lens (as acknowledged Lawrence Thilakar, one time international spokesperson of the LTTE).  The Government was naïve (to be generous in description) and paid for its naiveté.  In short, the arrogant, arbitrary and anti-democratic move of Kumaratunga appeared legitimate simply because the UNF had played into the President’s hands. 

The Government simply could not sell the CFA to the electorate.  At the time, they had the state media as well as most of the private media on their side.  Even the President, although she was the leader of a party in the Parliamentary Opposition, was ideologically on the same page as the architects of the CFA.  Apart from her aforementioned move to subvert the Government, Kumaratunga did not throw any sand in the wheels of the UNF’s ‘peace process’.   The UNF’s communication strategy as far as the CFA was concerned was a joke, one can conclude in retrospect.

However, was it just incompetence that wrecked the party?  No.  The issue is that even the best advertising campaign cannot sustain loyalty to an obviously flawed product or brand. 

All of the above is but preamble to a consideration of the current Government’s woes with respect to communications.  When a longtime critic of the previous regime who was also an ardent supporter of the CFA urges this Government to ‘talk to the people’, just 15 months after Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated, one can safely conclude that things are bad in the communications department.  Paikiasothy Saravanamutu discerns ‘a lack of focus’ the symptoms of which he lists in an article titled ‘Let’s talk in the new Year; the Government to the People’ thus: ‘a President more concerned about the leadership of his party, a prime minister who seems to be firefighting on a number of fronts with ministers in between of varying degrees of competence and a loquacity approaching the biblical Tower of Babel’. 

Saravanamuttu wants to Government to dialogue with the people on two broad areas: the ills of the previous regime and the rationale for change and reform.  He correctly points out that ranting and raving about the past without a single major conviction only feeds cynicism.  

He has not said a word about this Government being comfortable with nepotism, being ok with partying with by and large the unsavoury folk who benefited from their friendships with the Rajapaksas and nothing about the financial scandals and shady practices of this Government (Central Bank Bond Issue Scandal and the self-serving acts of the SLT Chairman).  Nothing about the 180 degree turn on the Port City Project.  That’s another aspect of the communication problem.   These things are too large to hide and this Government has not (perhaps for lack of time and for inheriting ills, to be generous) been able to create a blanket such as ‘victory over terrorism’ that the previous regime used to great effect. 

With respect to ‘change and reform’, Saravanamuttu focuses on his bread and butter issues: constitutional reform, transitional justice ad reconciliation.  He does not flesh these out and he need not, for he has expended enough energy already.  In this regard he is only advocating the repetition of a failed methodology of imposing upon the majority the will of a bunch of federalists who cannot get over the fact that separatism and its strongest advocate, the LTTE, lost out.  He wants the report of the Public Representations Commission on Constitutional Reform’ to be the basis for ‘change’.  If the LLRC was flawed due to its composition, this body is worse [See 'Scuttling reconciliation from within']. 

 If the Government wants to market such a report, it will be as difficult or worse than marketing the CFA.   

It’s about flawed producers and flawed products.  They rarely if at all secure loyalty among consumers. 

These are not the only communication problems that the Government has.  The major issue is coherence or rather a massive coherence deficit.  The Prime Minister and the President have on occasion made contradicting statements.  Rajapaksa vilification has supplanted policy statement as the thrust of the Government’s communications strategy.  More than all things it seems that this government is hell bent on mimicking the previous regime in all the wrongs it was guilty of.   We are not seeing nepotism and cronyism declining.  We are seeing these openly affirmed.  Politicians and their near and dear are making bucks and ironically some of the buck-makers used to be quite cozy with the previous regime as well!

 

There are and always have been multiple tools and media to communicate, Saravanamuttu is correct.  The problem is, you cannot communicate if you don’t know what to communicate.  To put it bluntly, you can’t communicate ‘Yahapalanaya’ if there’s very little that is ‘yaha’ (good) in your ‘paalanaya’ (governance).  You can’t sell rhetoric when you are in Government, you are required to market delivery.  The Government can talk, as Saravanamuttu urges it to do, until the cows come home, but if you lack coherence, you are not going to be doing much by way of communication.

The bottom line, which by the way Saravanamuttu’s alarming ‘call for communication’ is but a symptom, is that the Government has rendered itself speechless (‘kata uththara nae’) on a number of counts and this just 15 months after Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated.  The loquacity that he speaks of, ironically, is an indication of this condition.  That is the communications problem in a nutshell.  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who writes a weekly column titled 'Subterranean Transcripts' to the Daily Mirror.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene

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The politics of moral objection

The revelations by the website Colombo Telegraph pointing to fraud and deceit by the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in an article titled ‘Exposé: Center for Policy Alternatives defrauded and hoodwinked donors,’ are serious and damaging to say the least. Obtaining funds from multiple donors for a single project, submitting invoices for workshops never held, double-billing and entering non-project related expenses in ‘safe columns’ and wholesale cover up of fraud make a sordid story.

It’s a story that doesn’t sit well with the image that the CPA and its all-powerful Executive Director Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (the Board of Directors and all employees of the CPA will not utter a word that is not sanctioned by him; indeed they refer all inquiries on all matters to him) have been projecting to the world. Transparency and accountability are their bread and butter. Good governance is their after-breakfast cup of tea. Democracy is their dessert. As for dinner and drinks, there’s a lot of indulgence on the part of the CPA and myopia on the part of donors, according to the Colombo Telegraph. The Colombo Telegraph ‘Exposé’ not only wrecks this portfolio but calls to questions journalists, rights advocacy groups, operatives in certain UN agencies, diplomats and all manner of ‘experts’ who have for years built cases against Sri Lanka based solely on the word of this individual who is now right in the middle of this controversy.

Not too long ago, Sunanda Deshapriya, another individual who has made quite a name for himself in these very same circles and who was let off light by the CPA courtesy Dr Saravanamuttu calling what as clearly a swindle ‘lack of clarity in financial dealings,’ quite unabashedly said ‘this is what happens 90% of the time in all NGOs’. What right, then, do these individuals and organizations have to talk about accountability and other kinds of wrongdoing, one wonders.

None of this is new as far as the CPA is concerned. The outfit received a staggering Rs 58 million to monitor the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in 2010, obtaining money from the Netherlands, the USA, Germany and the UK. We do not know if this was part of the Rs 272.31 million the CPA is reported to have received from various donors between 2007 and 2010 (see also ‘CPA, NPC and TISL are about bucks [big bucks]’). We do know that the CPA regularly solicits donations from the general public to carry out their activities (go figure!). For an analysis of all this (to which the CPA never responded with any clarity), see ‘Is an election a ‘village tank’ for monitors and donors?’

So it’s not new. So let’s leave it at that. Let’s talk instead of what this particular ‘Exposé’ elicited by way of response on the website.

Some have cheered. Others have cursed the website for broadly two reasons, a) taking time off from investigating and exposing similar stuff on the part of the regime, the Rajapaksas, ministers, officials and their supporters, and b) for hurting those who are championing causes such as human rights and good governance. ‘This is not the time,’ some argue. ‘This is not the way,’ others offer.

The ‘b’ above is interesting, ‘interesting’ because almost all the objectors are vociferous critics of the Mahinda Rajapaksa and his Government. They object to much the same things that the CPA has been accused of. Indeed, most of them don’t offer any critique of the article itself. So what do we have – honest objection to mismanagement, theft, deceit and so on or regime-hatred, plain and simple? Is it something like, ‘it’s ok if our guys do wrong, but not this Government!’? Or are they placing a greater burden on those in power to do the right thing? That’s not evident in the comments. In any case, if the watchdogs and gurus of human rights and good governance are themselves corrupt, if they are even touted as the ‘true opposition,’ are these objectors just a bunch of losers who have nothing better to do than rant and rave just because their outcome preferences didn’t materialize?

The first set of objections, i.e. ‘a’ above, are more interesting. Now Colombo Telegraphs has hardly been using kids’ gloves on the regime. If that were the case the website wouldn’t have been blocked so many times. Indeed, the very same objectors have saluted the website time and again for taking on the Government, from the President downwards.

The point is valid, however, for those who have adopted a ‘hands-off completely’ policy on all things associated with this Government, from policy to implementation to not too flattering personal eccentricities. Such people are clearly salivating seeing Dr Saravanamuttu at the receiving end of charges much like those he himself utters at every turn (the ‘salivators’ must include NGO heads competing for the same funds for similar projects) and at the prospect of his international backers getting uncomfortable. After all, it is Colombo Telegraph and not the state-owned media that’s saying all this, and many who have backed the CPA and Dr Saravanamuttu are big fans of that website.

The issue at hand is hypocrisy. The bigger issue is that what’s wrong is wrongdoing and not ‘CPA-wrongdoing’. There can be no ‘ok levels’ to it for these are bound to be subjective and conveniently set margins.

Perhaps it is because NGOs set themselves up as paragons of virtue who can do no wrong that people are upset. The truth is that there’s error and deceit in all sectors. NGOs often think of themselves as a ‘parallel state’, but what we see is a society whose sectors mirror one another. The state sector is corrupt (and this is not new or newsworthy any more), the corporate sector is as corrupt (but they are not touched by some – but why?) and the so-called ‘civil society’ (read, some self-styled NGO saints) is corrupt.

There’s a question that needs to be answered: ‘Where and how do we begin to correct all this?’ Self-reflection could be a possible answer – both for individuals and groups.

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No one gives a hoot about truth, it seems

There can be no ‘reconciliation’ (whatever that means) without ‘closure’ (whatever that means).  There can be no closure without ‘truth’ (whatever that means).  It follows then that obtaining truth is a non-negotiable for closure which, in turn, is a non-negotiable in the matter of reconciliation.  The ‘whatever that means’ is a necessary interjection because politics is not clean. It is not objective.  The rhetorician lords over the logician in these things. Preferences make for privileging and suppression.  And this is why it can be ‘logically’ said that those who talk of truth, justice and reconciliation as though these are obtainable through clean and clinical cuts of reason are either utterly naïve or are charlatans disguised as benefactors of humankind. 

And yet, come ‘Geneva Time’ we hear these words a lot.  Reconciliation.  Truth.  Justice.  Accountability.  All articles of faith. For some.  Like Tamil National Alliance Member of Parliament M Sumanthiran.  He wants all of it.  A few teaspoons of reconciliation, a dash of truth, a sprinkling of justice, a tablespoon of accountability and you’ve got it made.  A good speech that is, there’s no denying that.

But then again Sumanthiran doesn’s own any of these, separately or together.  Others are smart too. They too pencil in a liberal dose of the said goodies for, as I said, they make for good speeches. ‘Others’ meaning people like Ananthi Sasitharan, for example. 

They say certain towns are too small for two big persons.  Geneva is small and small-minded though both Sumanthiran and Ananthi are it looks like they both think the other is too big to share stage with.  So there was a spat. 

Now this could have been because of upstaging-need, we don’t know, and we really don’t know why Ananthi was upset with Sumanthiran.  Perhaps  she felt a pinch on her ego.  We can guess why Sumanthiran was not in a spotlight sharing frame of mind though.  She has the potential, he might have thought, of wrecking his speech; not on account of using the same vocabulary but, in fact, for the very ‘problem’ of using the same terms. 

See, Ananthi Sasitharan is not cool.  Not for people who take human rights and human wrongs seriously.  Sumanthiran is smart enough to know she’s a liability.  There’s a story she says and a story she would rather no one talks about.  She will talk of a missing husband but will not talk about the husband and what he did.

Sumanthiran is Colombo, Ananthi is not.  Sumanthiran heard of depravation, Ananthi saw it.  Sumanthiran knew that Tamil civilians were used as a human shield, Ananthi knows who the humans shielded.  Sumanthiran knows that those Tamils held hostage by the LTTE tried to flee into areas controlled by the Sri Lankan security forces, Ananthi knows who tried to stop them and how.  For Sumanthiran it was nameless, faceless ‘Butcher-Boys’, for Ananthi it was her ‘Butcher-Boy’. 

Ananthi’s husband, Elilan, was one of the butcher-boys and he played the part to perfection.  He was seen brandishing a sword with blood dripping from the blade, threatening those who would flee with dismemberment.  Some had obviously defied the order and paid the price, the relevant exchange marked on a blade-ledger with the blood of the defiant. 

Sumanthiran knows that the West doesn’t like hearing about blood, about the swipe of sword and the ‘un-limbing’ it produces.  Sumanthiran probably didn’t want those ‘specificities’ brought into the Geneva discussion because it would spoil Ananthi’s case as well as the TNA’s case.  ‘Spoil’ would not have meant the US-led resolution would have lost out. No, it would have made some people squirm in their seats.  People notice squirms.  People comment.  It’s loss of face to lose composure. 

Winning the vote is one thing, but losing credibility and sympathy is quite another. In the long run, sympathy counts.  Even the biggest hypocrites would be happier if they don’t have to field tough questions about the credibility of ‘victims’ especially if these ‘victims’ are providers of ‘evidence’ used to lengthen charge-sheets. 

The problem with all this is that it throws ‘the truth’ out of the equation.    Is Ananthi ready to be truthful about her husband?  Isn’t the truth of what he did, who he killed, who he ordered killed, the grief thus engendered, the doubts and lack of closure it all resulted in less worth investigation and comment than the truth about her husband’s fate?  Is Sumanthiran ready to talk about Elilan-truth?  How about the other fellow travelers, people like Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Jehan Perera, J.C. Weliamuna and Nimalka Fernando?  How about Frances Harrison and Callum Macrae?  Would David Cameron be interested?  How about a whispered query from Navi Pillay to Ananthi?  Would Al Jazeera ‘explore’? Would Channel 4 give us an exposé and air it on the sidelines of the next session of the UNHRC?

Or are they not interested in ‘the truth, the WHOLE truth and NOTHING BUT the truth’?    And if that’s the case, are we to conclude that they are not interested in justice either?  Can we all agree, thereafter, that this reconciliation talk is just a lot of hot air and that no one really cares about peace, harmony, holding-hands, singing the national anthem in 157 dialects? 

A final question:  can we just move on now?

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Stars of the Geneva Pantomime (Revisited)

[Go through this -- written 3 years ago -- and you will find the guys making noises are the same guys who've always made noises when they batted for the LTTE.  The exception is of course Sunila Abeysekera, now no more.  Oh yes, and Patricia Butenis has a new name: Michele Sison.  More importantly, you will find that this is indeed a pantomime and should be treated as such.  Applaud if you are duly entertained!]  

The US Ambassador, Patricia Butenis is reported to have invited some people to discuss a report submitted to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by some personal advisors.  Why Ki-moon has to make public a personal communication I do not know.  It does seem odd that he treats the said notes as documents that have official and legal standing within the UN system.  As odd is this meeting called by Butenis ‘to discuss’ we are told, the above personal communication, in order to figure out ‘how to make use of it as a constructive instrument for reconciliation instead of one of division and polarization’.  
 

First of all, if a representative of the United States Government was to use anything to bring about ‘reconciliation’ in another country, then protocol demands that relevant discussions should be held with responsible and appropriate authorities in the Government of the particular country.   While the Embassy has refused to comment on the meeting or what has been discussed, one of the invitees has revealed what it was all about. 

The report (in the Daily Mirror online version) came under the heading ‘Diplomats, NGO talk on report’.  The identities of the party-goers were embedded in the title, at least as far as those who are alert to political machinations in Sri Lanka are concerned.  There was Paikiasothy Saravanamutt (Centre for Policy Alternatives), Jehan Perera (National Peace Council) and J.C. Weliamuna (former head of Transparency International).  All three organizations are under a cloud suspect regarding financial deals and how and on what they spent enormous amounts of money obtained from various donors including the USA.  That Butenis, who came out to publicly defend (to the best of her ability) these three organizations, invites them to a chit-chat about how Sri Lanka should manager her (Sri Lanka’s) affairs does not come as a surprise.   Not surprising either that Perera subsequently underlined the fact that Butenis had come out in his defense.

There had been three other invitees.  Sudarshana Gunawardena (Rights Now) once engaged in shameless chest-beating, claiming ‘The Government’s war balloon will burst in Killinochchi!’ That was wish, not prediction based on sober consideration of ground realities. Sunila Abeysekera has accumulated considerable credentials as a mouthpiece for Eelamists.  She has campaigned tirelessly to conflate the LTTE and the Tamil Community. Her loyalties are well known.  The third, Sherine Xavier (Home for Human Rights) has openly stated that among her role models was Adela Balasingham, widow of the LTTE’s longest serving ideologue, Anton Balasingham. Adela was not an LTTE sympathizer. She was and is an ardent and unrepentant LTTE activist and an apologist for that organization.  Xavier has made her ideological and political loyalties pretty clear.

These individuals have frequently argued for legitimization of the LTTE and granting of status-parity vis-à-vis the Government of Sri Lanka, and demonstrated a consistent determination to turn a blind eye on atrocities perpetrated by that organization.   Wikileaks has revealed that Butenis has been one of the biggest advocates for an international investigation into the manner in which the military offensive was executed.  Saravanamuttu has been a cheerleader for the same and one of the first to applaud the love-notes exchanged between Ki-moon and his ‘advisors’.  There are no prizes for ascertaining the identities of the principal sources tapped by these ‘advisors’.  This post-report tea party therefore was scripted a long time ago, i.e. when Ki-moon was prevailed upon by individuals such as Butenis to circumvent and thereby undermine the UN system and all procedural statutes.  In short, it would not be incorrect to say that Butenis had in fact met with the local branch of the LTTE’s rump.  That she invited other diplomats shows attempts to broaden the political base of this insurgent collective. 

Jehan Perera says that the meeting was about turning the advisory note into a ‘constructive instrument’.  He does not dare question the validity of the document in terms of procedural norms of the UN.  He is blind to the manifest double standards embedded in the very exercise.  He does not dare question the reliability of sources.  He will not dare comment on the neutrality-credentials of Ki-moon’s advisors nor acknowledge their slant towards the LTTE position regarding all things Sri Lankan. 

He will not pick out discrepancy, contradiction, exaggeration, meanness of spirit, LTTE-slant, whitewashing of terrorism, lack of substantiation, malice, selectivity, academic dishonesty etc., all of which jumps out of the text at every turn.  That he (and others, probably) believe that anything ‘constructive’ can be squeezed out of such a woefully compromised document says a lot about his intellectual ability and overall integrity. 

I challenge Jehan Perera, here and now, to an open debate at a forum of his choosing, about how such a document can be used ‘constructively’ for reconciliation.  It would be incumbent upon him to prove its worth as an effective instrument against division and polarization. 

The meeting indicates a need to close ranks.  It is the typical response of those who have nowhere to hide.  Now it is official.  It is now established beyond a shadow of doubt that Ambassador Butenis has entertained the local representatives of the LTTE’s rump.   Jehan Perera has confirmed this.  Full marks for his honesty (but will he tell us if the ‘advisors’ consulted him?).  Zero for his intellectual worth. Zero for his political designs.  Zero for his malice. 

msenevira@gmail.com

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The Ki-moon panel’s report and the strippers it spawned*

It's a neat plan. The ill-willed gets some quotes from the ill-willed, write a report, the 'informants' say 'see, even they say it' and mutual-massaging inflates, inflates and inflates.  And so the infamous 'Darusman Report' will in fact chair the UNHRC sessions later this month.  So let's get that 'telling story' out again.

The most positive about the report drawn up by the panel appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to advise him on Sri Lanka is that it has helped a lot of arrogant, ill-informed (or partially or fully blind), doubled-tongue individuals to strip themselves in public.  No surprises in terms of the identity of the strippers of course, not to those who are alert about these machinations. 

First off, there’s Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, in clearly reduced circumstances these days courtesy funding dry-up and questions regarding inordinate amounts of money obtained from multiple sources for the same project with little to show by way of delivery or indeed who got what for what and when.   Now it is no secret that most ‘experts’, whether commissioned or not by respectable or dubious organization come fortified with pre-conceived notions about Sri Lanka and the conflict.  It is no secret that one of their key informants is Saravanamuttu and that courtesy calls are duly made on arrival, notes compared etc.  So when misinformation with pernicious agenda that include(d) deliberate moves to downplay LTTE atrocities and grant that terrorist outfit parity of status vis-à-vis the Government of Sri Lanka hurrah the comments made by a recipient of hospitality and (mis)information-largess and says ‘see, see, even they are endorsing what I’ve said for a long time’, it is time to ask Charlie Chaplin to roll over. 

Then there’s a woman called Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, saying ‘If Indian wanted to emerge a leader on the global political stage then the leadership would have to take a position on Sri Lanka’s war crimes’.  This is in response to the above report.  Cute.  First of all, the panelists themselves aren’t sure whether such crimes were committed.  The report talks of ‘allegations’, whose ‘credibility’ is of course predicated on the (un)reliability of their sources. 

Ganguly has deftly twisted allegation into fact.  What’s funny is that Ganguly has not called on India (or anyone else) to take a stand on India’s crimes against humanity, for example in Kashmir.  Neither has Ganguly made note of the fact that India funded, trained and armed the LTTE. 

Ganguly wants India to ‘show intention of protecting the rights of people over Government’.  This would require Dr. Manmohan Singh to engage in self-flagellation.   Ganguly’s meanness is pretty naked when she says ‘There are people in Tamil Nadu who also care about the issue’.  So it is not about Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans, it is not about the victims of a war, it is not about the perpetrators of proven war crimes (the LTTE) as opposed to alleged transgressions (the allegations coming mainly from those associated with known terrorists).  It is not about enhancing the dimensions of reconciliation or expanding the democratic space. It is about malice. It is perhaps even about revenge for preventing a preferred outcome.  Ganguly therefore gives a good run for Sara’s money.

Then we have former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss telling Jon Snow that the said report indicates a ‘Srebrenica Moment’ for Sri Lanka.  This man was found guilty of leaking totally unsubstantiated information about the conflict to the international media, causing much damage to the country’s image.   He quoted the so-called ‘doctors’ serving in LTTE-held areas.  The UN later retracted all these statements, including a horror-mongering one about 20,000 people having been killed in a matter of a few weeks.  As for the ‘doctors’, they all confessed later that they were forced to lie by the LTTE.  Weiss and others did not, as reasonable, impartial people might do, adjust picture.  Weiss went with the misinformation.  Called it ‘fact’.  Naturally, a set of panelists with dubious track records engaged in a pernicious witch hunt, found these cooked up numbers delicious.  With no regard for the ethics pertaining to source-reliability, they took fiction as fact. And now we have Weiss saying (like Saravanamuttu), ‘see, see, even they are saying what I said two years ago!’    

 I am perturbed, though, that David Miliband hasn’t joined the clown-wagon yet.  He has all the credentials to outstrip Saravanamuttu, Ganguly and Weiss. 

Last but not least, we have the United National Party, not knowing whether to strip or dress.  We had some initial statements condemning the report. This was followed by a novice parliamentarian saying that the party can’t reject the report for it would amount to rejecting the charges against the LTTE.  Now that’s good for a thousand guffaws!  It is clear that the ‘LTTE’ part of the story had to be thrust into the report for reasons of balance-cosmetics.  What is most important for a responsible political party to do is to assess the credibility of the exercise in the first instance and then to examine whether or not the contents add up to stated mandate and relate a cogent story that is flavoured with fact and integrity. 

This is no Srebrenica moment, folks.  This is a Sri Lanka moment.  As Sri Lankans we need to ask some questions from ourselves.  Here goes:

Are we better off today than we were in April 2009? Are we happy or sad that the LTTE is out of the political equation?  Was it possible to end the war in any other way?  Do we want the affairs of our country to be run by a bunch of people who are clearly hand in glove with the LTTE rump overseas and others who entertain fantasies about dividing our country?  Can we respond to the above strippers in any better way than to live, breathe and act the truth that we are best when we are united?

*First published in April 2011. 

Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation' and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com

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On making valid points and fudging critical issues

[This was a follow-up piece on what I had written about prominent NGOs like the Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Peace Council and Transparency International were up to.  It is part response to a manifest dodgy piece by CPA chief Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu following my article and other comments on these NGOs.  This took place 3 years ago.  Still valid, I believe]
 
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, in what he purports to be a response to critical reports about the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) of which he is the Executive Director and to what he thinks are ‘personal attacks’, has made some very valid and thought-provoking observations (see ‘Hack-attack,’ in the Daily Mirror of April 7, 2011).  He has not mentioned what the ‘personal attacks’ are or who has made them. Neither has he mentioned what these ‘critical reports’ are about or who the critics are. That’s interesting and pertinent. 

I did comment on Saravanamuttu and the CPA at length in an article titled ‘Is an election a ‘village tank’ to monitors and donors?’ in the Daily Mirror of March 22, 2011, mentioning the enormous sums of money that the CPA has received from the governments of several countries in its capacity as the most visible member of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) and perhaps the only member with any real on-the-ground presence.  In that article I raised some questions about promise and delivery and about the logic of requiring scandalous amounts of money to pay for what seemed to be inexpensive services.  

I also asked why the CPA has not come clean on how much was spent on what and who got how much for what.  Elsewhere (for example in the Sunday Lakbima News of April 10, 2011) I noted the fact that the CMEV, for all the millions upon millions of rupees it has got its hands on over the last 12 years, failed to convince enough people about the importance of the work they do in order to build in sustainability to their projects.  I noted that the CMEV, perhaps for lack of funds, did next to nothing during the recently held local government elections. 

Saravanamuttu has, as I said, made some valid points.  He has said, for example, that the CPA had furnished all financial reports requested by the CID when MP Rajiva Wijesinha raised some questions in Parliament last year.  He has said that in any case the said information was already available with the Registrar of Companies in accordance with relevant audit requirements.  He has also raised the (valid) question, ‘why investigate right now?’ and added ‘why at all?’ He has asked whether the CPA (and other organizations) have been guilty of crime.  These are questions that the relevant authorities might want to respond to, although I don’t think that an investigative body has to launch action based on auspicious times or that investigations should be launched after it is established that a crime has been committed. 

In general, Saravanamuttu’s response does raise the question of selectivity, though.  In addition, the entire process and its political overtones does indicate that the regulatory apparatus is lacking in many ways and perhaps has in-built loopholes that make for inefficiency and hanky-panky.  As he has pointed out, the CPA and CMEV are legitimate bodies and recognized as such and moreover accorded respect by the Elections Commissioner.  If any mischief has been committed by the CPA/CMEV (and all indications are that they have) then the Elections Commissioner is automatically an accessory after the fact of mischief-making and other relevant wrongdoing.  C.A. Chandraprema has addressed the issue of flaws in the regulatory mechanisms in his article, ‘The legal basis of NGO impunity’ (The Island of April 7, 2011).

Saravanamuttu has not asked why the condition of accountability has not been raised with respect to other organizations, non-governmental, corporate and of course state agencies.  As far back as 2002, I insisted that for transparency and accountability to have any meaning in governance, there should be an Independent Audit Commission written into the now defunct 17^th Amendment, flawed document though it was for reasons I have elaborated in many in the Sunday Island at that time and elsewhere subsequently. 

He claims he has been threatened, harassed, branded as traitor and that the public has been exhorted to spit on him.  He says he has been accused of being supportive of the LTTE and terrorism.  He has said there has been no substantiation of the allegation that he nor the heads of the other organizations about whose finances questions have been raised and which share with the CPA ‘a common critique of the regime’ have indeed been supportive of the LTTE and therefore terrorism.  This is not true.  Whitewashing the LTTE, bending backwards to legitimate that organization and give it parity of status vis-à-vis the Government of Sri Lanka, turning a blind eye to fraternal organizations purportedly engaged in rehabilitation in LTTE-controlled areas when in fact they were knowingly providing money and material to the LTTE and doing the utmost to save the LTTE leadership during the last days of the conflict are only some of the ‘evidence’ of support, not to mention of course the fact that they were actively endorsing the LTTE’s preferences in all stages of all negotiations.  There’s nothing illegitimate in all this of course.  Feigning neutrality in the political arena and claiming to be apolitical, however, is rather disingenuous.  As for threat and harassment, again, this shows in the very least flaws in the overall security apparatus, even though it is true that those diametrically opposed to the views held by Saravanamuttu and his ilk have suffered the same kind of abuse but in greater magnitude with scars to show to boot.  

What I find strange about Saravanamuttu’s response is that thinks passing the buck to the Registrar of Companies is adequate answer to questions about financial matters.  This is strange because he claims often and is recognized by his donors and others who frequently quote him as representative of civil society.  This ought to make him answerable to the general public and moreover, given known antipathies, should not make him see state as organ of civil society in all things transparent and accountable.  Whether or not the mechanisms of the state are flawed, whether or not state agencies are engaged in a selective and unwarranted investigation of his organization, Saravanamuttu, knowing very well the problems pertaining to information flow between state and public, ought to have (but of course not required to) come clean about how much, from whom, for what and to whom. 

He says foreign donors are aware of what the organizations monitoring elections do and that the organizations report to these funders.  That multiple funders appear to have given money to the CMEV for the same project, that relevant amounts seem highly exorbitant and that the monitoring outfits appear to have axed sustainability in order to milk and re-milk a set of generous donor cows doesn’t give his boast much meat, especially since the other organizations he mentioned, PAFFREL and CAFFE (one assumes) would have also obtained similar quantities of dollar-milk from these very same dairy.  He has not explained why the CMEV required so much money and from so many donors.  He has not explained why the CMEV spent Rs. 1.12 million in rent for a headquarters to monitor activities in the Eastern Province over a period of 48 days, for example.

Saravanamuttu says that CMEV’s audited accounts are electronically available on the CPA’s and CMEV’s websites.  CPA’s website is, for the record, ‘under construction’ and does not give all the annual reports and none since 2009.  The CMEV’s accounts are hidden in the middle of a large pdf document in literally very small print. I am not claiming that the relevant auditors have been negligent or mischievous.  Audit reports are essentially summaries.  The onus on Saravanamuttu, who talks of transparency and accountability, is to give the details that don’t go into these reports. 

Instead of all this, Saravanamuttu chooses to point fingers at those who have criticized the CPA/CMEV, demanding that they reveal who gave them the information.  I have the photocopies of agreements that the CPA has signed with several donors.  Suffice to say I have friends in government as well as the cartel that calls itself ‘civil society organizations’. Saravanamuttu knows he has more enemies within that without, given competition for the same funds from the same donors. 

What is relevant moreover is whether the claims made are accurate or not.  He has not denied.  Nor has he explained, in the public interest that he professes to care so much about, how much was received, for what exactly and into whose bank accounts the money went.

He asks the valid question, ‘Are these individuals (those who have criticized and raised questions regarding the CPA/CMEV and others) acting alone or are they acting on instruction?’ I can’t speak for others, but I am hardly acting on ‘instruction’ for I owe no one any favours, except those I love and the tax payers who paid for my education.   Whether or not the state has got its act together, these are questions that need to be asked, especially considering the holier-than-thou nature of rhetoric spouted by the likes of Saravanamuttu about transparency and accountability. This is not about bucks. This is about big bucks.  It is about coming clean. Or closing shop. The ball is in Saravanamuttu’s court, not as far as the state is concerned, but insofar as ‘civil society’ is implicated. 

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Is an election a ‘village tank’ to monitors and donors?

[Sri Lanka has had elections since 1931.  We got 'monitors' only recently.  The need was produced by palpable election malpractices, many but not all eliminated by the introduction of new laws and adoption of fraud-resistant techniques.  With the need to monitor, naturally, there came 'monitors'.  And there were and are all kinds.  We are now getting ready for Provincial Council elections.  Naturally, there's talk of monitors and monitoring.  This piece was written and published almost 3 years ago. Still valid, I believe]

There’s an old joke about NGO operations in Sri Lanka.  NGOs are said to send identical project proposals to several donor agencies.  For example, money would be solicited to rehabilitate a village tank (weva).  If more than one donor agrees to support the project, the particular NGO would not rehabilitate more than a single weva but would submit the identical final project report to each donor.  Some NGOs, the joke goes, would ‘rob’ the work of another NGO, claiming that the weva that NGO 2 rehabilitated was in fact the one mentioned in the proposal and referred to in the relevant report(s). 

That’s an old joke. Decades old.  Donors have since, we are told, tightened monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. Moreover, NGOs competing for the same funds are ever watchful and more than willing to rat on fellow-racketeers.  The state got into the act a little while later. So did individuals and groups who were suspicious of NGOs, especially those outfits that bent over backwards to promote the division of the nation, destabilization of the country and whitewash terrorists and give them legitimacy of one kind or another.  Tough.

This is after all the Age of Communication.  It is not that donors are unaware of the existence of other donors. Typically, also, the donor community, especially countries that have a diplomatic presence in the particular country, run into one another in various forums and indeed their top officials deal with one another on first-name basis.  In general they are aware of who is doing what and where.  ‘Who’ meaning the donors as well as the recipients of their largesse. 

This is why it is strange that the Centre for Policy Alternatives could apply for and obtain a staggering Rs. 58 million to ‘monitor’ the Presidential and Parliamentary elections held in 2010.  The breakdown is as follows:  Rs. 13 million and Rs. 20 million for the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections respectively from the Netherlands, Rs. 9.9 million from the USA (both elections), Rs. 22 million from the Federal Republic of Germany (Presidential Election) and Rs. 3 million from the United Kingdom (Presidential Election, covering just the Eastern Province). 

The monies had been obtained by the CPA on behalf of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV).  The CMEV, according to its website, had been ‘formed in 1997 by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), the Free Media Movement (FMM) and the Coalition Against Political Violence as an independent and non-partisan organisation to monitor the incidence of election related violence’ and is currently ‘made up of CPA, FMM and INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre’. 

The FMM has a long history of engaging in fraudulent activities and its one time ‘convenor’, Sunanda Deshapriya, who also worked for the CPA (the incestuous nature of these outfits is well known) was asked to resign after being caught fudging accounts and pocketing bucks.   INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre has not updated its website since August 11, 2009 and that’s surprising for an outfit devoted to ‘documentation’ in this day and age.  Sunila Abeysekera, another NGO fellow-traveller of the likes of Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (CPA) and Jehan Perera (National Peace Council), is said to have been a co-founder of ‘INFORM’.  The entire lot engages in a lot of mutual back-scratching and rewarding one another (yes, incestuous is the word).  Anyway, the bottom like is that for all intents and purposes, CMEV is the CPA. 

We don’t know as yet if this Rs. 58 million is a part of the Rs. 272.31 million that the CPA is reported to have received from various donors over the past three years. We don’t know if other fraternal and similarly gift-exchanging organizations such as the NPC, PAFFREL (People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections) and Rights Now (convened by Sudarshana Gunawardena who is also ‘Convenor’ of the ‘Joint Movement for Democracy’ and who recently praised Saravanamuttu when he received a ‘Citizens’ Peace Prize’ awarded by Jehan Perera’s NPC), received money for monitoring activities pertaining to the said two elections from these same funding sources.  We do know that PAFFREL has come under an accountability cloud after its long serving boss, Kingsley Rodrigo passed away recently. 

We don’t know whether the tax payers of the Netherlands, USA, UK and Germany are aware that their governments have been pumping money into organizations with dubious track records including surreptitious and sometimes open support of terrorist organizations.  We do know that Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu has close associations with certain political parties and has even shared stage and petition-space with politicians and parties, a fact which these funders cannot be unaware of and which moreover compromise the ability of the CPA/CMEV to exercise neutrality in election monitoring activities. 

We do not know if each donor mentioned above were aware that the CPA/CMEV were being funded for the same project by the other three.  We do not know the details of the budgets submitted by the CPA/CMEV to each of these donors and we hope that Saravanamuttu gets his ‘under construction’ website running soon and, in the interest of his favourite buzz-terms, transparency and accountability, lays it all out for the benefit of the public he seems to love so much. What we do know is details of the budget submitted to the Secretary for State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs represented by Mark Gooding, Deputy High Commissioner, British High Commission in Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

We don’t know if CMEV rented out a special monitoring office during the two elections or used the CPA office down Ernest De Silva Mawatha for the purpose, but the budget indicates that Rs 1.12 million has been allocated for rent. This is for monitoring activities in the Eastern Province.  The project duration is from December 15, 2009 to January 31, 2010.  That’s 48 days or more than Rs. 23,000 per day!  That’s just a single line-item of the budget.  I don’t have to get into the details.  Saravanamuttu who signed the agreement on behalf of CPA would, I am sure, give us the beef.  Rohan Edirisinghe who signed the agreement with the Netherlands Embassy and L.M. Cuelenaere (Ambassador) who signed on behalf of the Embassy would similarly, in the interest of transparency and accountability (to the people of Sri Lanka and the tax payers of the Netherlands), reveal details of the budget submitted by the CPA/CMEV. 

Saravanamuttu also signed on behalf of the CPA the agreement with the U.S. Department of State (Jeffrey Anderson was the other signatory).  He also signed the agreement with Germany, represented by the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jens Ploetner.  These gentlemen, given their long-standing and dedicated service to the cause of democracy, accountability and transparency, reveal all shortly, I am sure.   They will tell us how many people were required for the overall monitoring exercise and reveal their names too for they know only too well how NGOs cook up names and numbers.  In the interest of decency and civilization and since all this is about the wellbeing of democracy and the citizenry of Sri Lanka, leave no stone unturned so that we know that things are all above board. 

The CMEV, according to their website, has been monitoring the recently held local government elections.  There’s no record of how much money they got, from whom and for what. They’ve issued statements so one assumes that they did some work on the ground.  If they did monitor and did so without bucks, then one cannot help wondering why Saravanamuttu, Edirisinghe and others needed so much dough to monitor the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in 2010.  Were they marketing and selling the same ‘weva’, one wonders.  More disturbingly, one wonders if the donors were ‘in the know’. 

Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com

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