Power and politics after polls

She summoned a meeting of the National Security Council for the same evening. However, exhausted due to monitoring developments related to Wednesday's polls, she put it off for Friday. Meeting that morning at the "Janadipathi Mandiraya," with service commanders, the Police Chief and defence officials among others, she was quick to assert the powers vested in her under the Constitution.
A Defender Land Rover and another vehicle carrying unindentified armed men during last Wednesday's polls in a picture taken by cameraman J. Weerasekera

She made it clear as President, Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief, she was in control of the security forces and the police. She was empowered to issue orders and to exercise other powers vested in her.

If she was in a defiant mood, despite the People's Alliance receiving a drubbing at the polls, moving in to advise her to act cautiously was her loyal Defence Secretary for over seven years, Chandrananda de Silva. He said though she enjoyed constitutional powers, allocation of funds for the working of the Presidential machinery was in the hands of Parliament. Mr. de Silva's note of caution was quite clear – a confrontationist course would force the now UNP dominated Parliament to throttle the Presidential system by denying it funds. Some of the provisions of the J.R. Jayewardene constitution were coming into play only now.

President Kumaratunga told the National Security Council she would be inviting United National Front leader Ranil Wickremesinghe to form a Government. However, she said she may have to raise objections to some of the Ministerial appointments. It is an obvious reference to swearing in some of her erstwhile Cabinet colleagues like S.B. Dissanayake and G.L. Peiris.

As the NSC meeting was under way, a Sri Lanka Air Force Mi 17 transport helicopter landed at the Army sports grounds. Special Task Force commandos in battle fatigues formed a human wall as former Deputy Defence Minister, Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatte, alighted and walked into a green coloured Peugeot car. He was whisked off to "Janadipathi Mandiraya."

There, he told the NSC he had just heard the news that former Deputy Speaker and PA Parliamentarian, Maj. Gen. Sarath Munasinghe, has lost the election in the Kurunegala district. The former Military Spokesman who joined the PA contested last Wednesday's polls on the UNP ticket. This distraction was to lead to some caustic comments by at least two security forces top brass. That over, the meeting continued to focus on election violence and related matters.

If President Kumaratunga chose to re-assert her constitutional role to the men in charge of the country's security forces and Police, the latter were entertaining concerns about their own future in the months ahead. This is despite assurances that they need not fear for their positions since they came under the direct purview of the President. The conduct of many high ranking officers in the security forces and Police during the polls campaign and on election day has drawn the attention of the United National Party leadership. 

They had obtained the names, designations and details of the partisan role played by them. Nowhere was it more acute as it has been in the case of the Police Department. 

The UNP leadership is deeply critical of the role played by Inspector General of Police Lucky Kodituwakku. They accuse the 62 year old Police Chief, whose term has now been extended until the end of next year, of being openly partisan and totally insensitive to representations made by the then opposition. UNP leaders are already busy compiling a dossier of instances they allege are efforts to subvert a free and fair poll. Despite this, UNP officials say, a larger section of the Police force carried out their duties conscientiously.

Evidently, Mr. Kodituwakku himself appears to be alive to the issues. "You and I are on the chopping block ," he told Defence Secretary Chandrananda de Silva at a conference in the Ministry of Defence last Thursday. He was alluding to the outcome of Wednesday's elections.

But the veteran bureaucrat was to remark that he had no worries since he had worked a long tenure. The conference of security forces top brass and police was held to discuss the closure of civilian entry/exit points from security forces controlled areas in the Wanni and the East. Of particular significance was the closure of the gateway at Piramanalankulam checkpoint in the Vavuniya district on polls day. This led to some 24,000 Tamil voters being prevented from casting their votes.

Vavuniya Government Agent K.Ganesh said about 24,000 voters from uncleared areas of Vavuniya and Mannar districts were to come to polling stations in the cleared areas to cast their votes. He said the Security Forces Commander, Vavuniya, Major General Shantha Kottegoda, had informed him that the Army had decided to close the check-point at Piramanalankulam. Accordingly, he had informed the Commissioner of Elections Dayananda Dissanayake.

However, Mr. Dissanayake said in a television speech on Friday, dealing with matters relating to the conclusion of the poll that he had spoken to Police Chief Lucky Kodituwakku and Army Commander Lt. Gen. Lionel Balagalle. He said it would not be feasible to conduct a re-poll there. Lt. Gen. Balagalle had explained that only an average of 300 persons could be granted entry every day into areas controlled by the security forces. This was after completing security procedures.

Who gave the orders to close the check-point ? That appears to be a mystery with military officials pointing the finger at the Ministry of Defence. In return MoD officials placed the blame on a senior Army official and claimed his decision was unilateral and had no prior Ministry approval.

The Sunday Times has seen the minutes of a meeting of security forces and Police top brass at the Joint Operations Headquarters weeks ahead of Wednesday's elections. According to the minutes, Police Chief Lucky Kodituwakku read out two intelligence reports, one from the Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DII) and the other from his own Special Branch, to say Tiger guerrillas planned to carry out attacks at the check-points on the eve of the elections or on polls day. Evidently, the motive was to disrupt election activity.

According to the minutes, Gen. Rohan de S. Daluwatte, had directed that copies of the two reports be circulated to field commanders in the area for their necessary action.

The two intelligence reports appeared strange indeed. Other intelligence reports by the Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DII), in the runup to last Wednesday's elections had spoken of Tiger guerrillas scrupulously refraining from carrying out any attacks during the polls period. This is particularly after a suicide bomber exploded himself at Chitra Lane, Thimbirigasyaya, ahead of an attempt to assassinate then Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake and an attempt by Sea Tigers to bomb a vessel carrying fuel to the north.

Questions on how credible the two intelligence reports read out by Mr. Kodituwakku have become more clear now. Not only did the LTTE desist from triggering off incidents in the Jaffna peninsula to pave the way for victory by Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a group which has received its fullest support, it also allowed some 24,000 civilians to leave for the controlled areas in the Wanni to cast their votes. Without LTTE approval, not one civilian would have been in a position to leave areas dominated by it to cast their votes.

Hence, high ranking Army officials who may have thought they were helping the People's Alliance Government by shutting down the check-point and effectively disenfranchising 24,000 Tamil voters did not realise the colossal damage they had done. Not only international polls observers but western diplomatic missions based in Colombo were equally concerned.

If one of the crucial issues during elections was solving the ethnic conflict, the act of denying a large number of Tamil civilians to vote at a national election, only goes to undermine the confidence one can expect them to have of a united Sri Lanka where they too are participants in the process of electing a Government. Like many other military blunders, this one in the political sphere will also go into the limbo of forgotten things.

There were no major incidents between the security forces and the Tiger guerrillas in the North and East during the period of the run up to elections though ironically election violence in the rest of the country recorded over 2000 incidents with over 45 fatal casualties-a telling indictment on the law and order situation in the country.

In contrast, the LTTE adopted a low-key posture quite different to the suicide bombings perpetrated during the 1994 presidential elections and the general elections of 2000. There is little doubt that the restraint shown by the LTTE this time from interfering with a democratic election was a compelling decision aimed at securing its position internationally in the wake of the assault against terrorism by the Western democracies after the September 11 incidents in the United States.

There is no better way than a show of tolerance for democratic values to lessen the stigma of being branded as terrorist. An impression that the LTTE very much like erased in order to gain recognition as an organisation albeit militant involved in a democratically justified political struggle. In this context, it is relevant that the Tamil National Alliance, which gained 15 parliamentary seats at this election, recognises the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamils. This coming from an alliance of four accredited political parties confers a political role to the LTTE.

Whether this nexus implies willingness of the LTTE to change its hitherto intractable militancy to a democratic role has still to be demonstrated. In the meantime, the military status quo in the North and East remains unaltered.

It is premature to conjecture on the policy of the newly elected UNP Government to maintain the delicate balance between the conduct of security measures to combat the LTTE whilst at the same time negotiating for a political solution. That the Tamil parties have declared that the de-proscription of the LTTE should be a pre-condition for negotiation makes the situation difficult for the new Government as apart from domestic pressures this question is also of international concern as UK, USA and Canada have proscribed the LTTE in their own national interests.

However, until political strategies are determined and formulated, it is necessary that the Government maintain national security measures and its right to govern. To do so, military measures are necessary. Measures that not only concern combat but which extend beyond to matters of civil affairs and the exercise of the writ of government in the large tracts of uncleared areas in the North and East. Thus, the defining of a military strategy that is in harmony with a clear political strategy will have to be one of the first tasks of the new administration.

In the past, without any clear-cut and continuing national political policy to resolve the ethnic conflict, military strategy lacked political purpose and direction. Military operations often were planned to meet parochial political exigencies at the expense of military judgment at enormous and tragic cost of men and material.

Unsound military policies were compounded by questionable equipment planning and procurement procedures contributing to overall military ineffectiveness and corruption.

All governments in the past two decades of conflict are answerable for the vacillating political policies in regard to this vexed problem, and flowing from it, for the ineffective and confused military strategies.

This has today resulted in a stalemated situation with the security forces having lost large areas of territorial control to the LTTE with the government unable to exercise its writ in those areas.

One of the first tasks of the new administration will have to be to restore its political writ. This require the balancing of political and military measures each complementing the other towards a national strategy to combat the LTTE and to evolve a political solution to the North-East problem. To do so require fresh military strategies on the one hand and on the other the resolve of all political parties.

The drubbing received at Wednesday's elections by the pro-government Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) at the hands of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has also opened a new equation in the complicated politics of northern Sri Lanka.

The EPDP, a group headed by Douglas Devananda was also once in the armed struggle for "liberation" with the LTTE. But the LTTE did not tolerate others, wanting to be sole representatives of the minority Tamils of Sri Lanka.

The LTTE targeted their rivals one-by-one. First, the unarmed politicians and then the armed militants were ruthlessly eliminated. The EPDP managed to barely survive and opted to seek refuge with the Colombo administration almost as security from the claws of the Tigers.

The late President Ranasinghe Premadasa enrolled their services in the early 1990s. They were allowed to carry weapons and their men were given as scouts for the Army which was badly in need of Tamil speaking intelligence gatherers in the battle against the LTTE.

President Premadasa was also said to have banked on their services for certain strong-arm exercises that he required to be done to ward off his political opponents.

Government sponsorship is vital for a group like the EPDP. For one thing, they need a licence to carry arms, which they say is necessary to keep them safe from the Tigers. So, to ditch a defeated government and join the victorious opposition is essential for their very survival.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga embraced the EPDP and vice-versa. For her, the four seats the EPDP plundered in the northern Jaffna peninsula was crucial for her to barely survive with a wafer-thin majority in Parliament. Douglas Devananda was made a Cabinet Minister by President Kumaratunga and many eye-brows were raised when he was allowed to make a speech at the state funeral of former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, soon after last year's elections even though traditional leftists with whom the matriarch worked, were ignored.

Jaffna, the northern citadel and the entire peninsula was handed over to Devananda and his cohorts, to run the civil administration while 40,000 government soldiers were stationed to ensure the LTTE did not wrest control of the area. The EPDP ran the show the way they knew best, mostly by terrorising the people. Their stamp was left in several unsavoury matters, including the killing of the Tamil free lance BBC correspondent and the hurling of a grenade at the Uthayam newspaper office.

During the election campaign they unleashed their men on candidates from other parties with knives grievously wounding them. Corruption was rampant in government projects and monies siphoned off for their activities.

The Army looked the other way. It was none of their business. On the one hand it was politics. On the other, EPDP cadres continued to help the military with vital intelligence.

Suddenly, there is now a vacuum following Wednesday's election. The EPDP halved their representation in Parliament, winning only two seats in Jaffna, one in the islet of Kayts off the coast where they run a one-party show. What is worse is that even their two seats will not be required by the new UNP government in Colombo which has won a clear majority.

So, will the EPDP be dispensed with? The newly created Tamil National Alliance (TNA) comprising of unarmed parties sympathetic to the LTTE has established their dominance in the Tamil-speaking areas of the north and east, no doubt with the backing of the LTTE.

The new UNP Government would opt to work with the TNA in a bid to woo the LTTE to the negotiating table and thereby end the 18 year separatist war that is draining the country's resources, while the TNA will not like the Government having any truck with the EPDP during the exercise. They would like to take over the civil administration of Jaffna, Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts, something the LTTE would take delight in.

The new Government will not mind, for the moment, this transition in the hope that it would lure the LTTE for talks. 

The Kumaratunga Government warned that the UNP and the LTTE had a secret deal, a crudely trumped up political allegation which was rejected by the people. The possibility that the UNP had an understanding with the TNA to get the LTTE for talks based on an interim administration in the north-east was lost on the electorate that wanted the PA's inefficient rule ended.

Opinion polls conducted during the election campaign showed that the Sinhala majority is in favour of talks with the LTTE rather than a fight to the finish, which many feel the Army, for whatever reason, has failed to deliver.

For the moment, yet another honeymoon period between a new government in the south and the LTTE in the north would seem to have begun. There is international pressure as well on the LTTE to renounce terrorism as a means to an end.

If talks produce an amicable settlement, the story ends there. But that is easier said than done. There may come a day when the Army is called up, again, to crush the LTTE's war for independence.