ASIAN AFFAIRS INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT KUMARATUNGA

"I have too much power under this constitution"

Serge Berthier (SB) .- Madame President, you have been elected by the people at a large majority. However your party is not the largest party in the Parliament and you have asked in December 2001, Ranil Wickremesinghe, the leader of the UNP to form the government. Therefore Sri-Lanka is experiencing its first government of cohabitation. Is it really, under the Sri-Lanka constitution, a workable arrangement?

Chandrika Kumaratunga (CK).- J.R. Jayawardene (1) who passed the constitution in 1978 was a very Machiavellian man. Our constitution was not geared towards a system with a President from one party and a PM from another and therefore there is no institutional arrangement for different parties to cohabite. All the powers rest with the President who appoints the cabinet. In effect the Prime Minister is only a cabinet minister as the other ministers. The constitution and the institutional framework we have are not good.

S.B.- Why?

C.K.- As a democrat, I don't believe in such a system where everything is geared to the top. In fact I have so much power under this constitution, the only thing I cannot do is to change a woman into a man. Such a system is fraught with problems.

S.B.- Why do you say that sharing power is impossibility?

C.K.- The constitution was written so that Jayawardene would end up with all the powers. He had all the powers for a while but he did not know how to use them. He ended up opening the most horrendous chapter of Sri-Lanka history. He and his successor, Premadasa (2) created a killing field in Sri-Lanka, where about 50,000 young boys died.

S.B.- That was in 1979 and Premadasa was assassinated in 1993. Can't we look at the situation as it is today?

C.K.- Unfortunately I am at the top and the Prime Minister is from another party. I have no experience of cohabitation, he does not have any either. There is no practice or precedent. I tried to discuss the point but did not get the proper answer.

S.B.- What would have been the proper answer?

C.K.- The PM (Ranil Wickremesinghe) entered politics very young, 25 years ago when his uncle was in power (3). He was brought up in a political ambiance, which was very dictatorial and undemocratic. That is his nature. He does not believe in democratic dialogue and for cohabitation to work in a democratic country, dialogue is absolutely essential.

S.B.- And ...

C.K.- I go by the day, and it is not made easy by the other party.

S.B.- Did you discuss with the PM what you were expecting when you called upon him to form a government?

C.K.- His views were strange. He said: "Why don't we form a coalition government between your party and mine?". I said it could be done although there were many differences between his views and mine, and between both parties' positions. I was ready to compromise and said I was prepared to forget our difference for the common good.

S.B.- Then why do you say that his views were strange? What is not good politics?

C.K.- I found it strange because his proposal was like Adolph Hitler asking a Jewish party to join his government.

S.B.- Isn't a bit strong to compare your Prime Minister to Adolph Hitler. Do you think we should publish that?

C.K.- Yes, I do because his party is responsible for the death of 50,000 people killed in the field over the years, so the comparison is not too much.

S.B.- But the war with the LTTE really started in the 1970s at a time where he was not an influential politician

C.K.- He was nevertheless already a cabinet minister under this murderous regime.

S.B.- I see that you have a long memory but it would be useful sometimes to have a short one, if only we want to look at the future rather than settle old scores.

C.K.- You are right and actually that is why I decided to look at the positive development a coalition might create. That is why I said that I would try to put aside our differences and forget about the past. But I had to present such a deal to my party and I needed to have a case to present such a proposal. I was prepared not to look at economic issues or policies difference, but there were two fundamental issues I could not overlook. I told the PM that not only we had to look at the issues of compensation for the victims of the policies of the past generated by his uncle but also, that the last two weeks of the campaign before the election that he won, 60 of my supporters had been killed by the mob of his party. The election had been one of the most murderous we had. Houses were burned to ashes, people had the limbs broken when they escape with their life. The total I had been presented with was 60 deaths and 3,000 injured. I told him that it had to cease. Before we agree on a coalition, I said to him: "You have to stop this mindset". "We have to put in place an institutional mechanism to prevent any recurrence of violence between our parties", I said. I had been informed that police had received instructions not to proceed with investigation on this matter. I told him he will have to let the investigations proceed and compensations be paid. I told him he would have to do exactly as I did when I was PM, that is the honorable thing.

S.B.- What was more important for you, to get compensation for your aggrieved supporters or to find a mechanism to stop violence?

C.K.- To put in place an institutional mechanism is quite important because those problems recur all the time.

S.B.- Your supporters are also known to be occasionally violent.

C.K.- We have succeeded in reducing violence. I can't say we control at 100%, but probably at 90%. But this is absolutely not the case of the UNP, so an effort must be done. How can we have proper democracy if we let the mobs threaten the people?

S.B.- Had you other conditions attached to your proposal to cooperate with the PM?

C.K.- To reduce the violence and improve the monitoring of elections was my first condition. The second one and it was my last condition was with regards to the peace process that we launched and that he would carry further. I told him: "Since you have said that you will pursue all avenues to bring peace, I would like to know what are your policies, in other words what is your bottom line, the maximum and the minimum that you will bring in your talks with the LTTE?". I think it was necessary because we had told our country what our action plan was when we started discussing with the LTTE, but he had not given any detail of his own plan. I told him how could I commit my party, a party as old as his', to things we knew nothing about since he had never said where he stands on this matter except that he want peace.

S.B.- Obviously his reply did not match your expectations?

C.K.- There was no reply. He said that he would give me a reply within two days. Now, nearly two years later, those two days have not yet arrived. Without those conditions fulfilled, there is no possibility of working together.

S.B..- What would be for you the minimal platform of cooperation?

C.K.- Our economic policies were not that different, although the level of corruption is much higher than before, but my two minimal conditions are the ones I mentioned earlier. They had to be fulfilled. He has not even tried.

S.B.- Nevertheless from time to time, we hear that the Prime Minister is trying to work with you, and you say the same. What is the meaning of those statements?

C.K.- Indeed, he keeps saying why don't we try to work together? We have on the surface a cooperation of some sort, but it is not genuine.

S.B.- What make you say that it is not genuine?

C.K.- Because what he does in the meantime is to intimidate my party and my people. I am telling him, whether he wants to cooperate or not, he should sooner or later stop all the violation of human rights that are taking place.

S.B.- Is there the possibility that Mr. Wickremesinghe has not less control of his own party and that you blame him for things out of his reach?

C.K.- People in the country know that his hold on his party is not that strong. Most of the people that don't agree with his attitude. They want to make a deal with our party. They don't agree with his tactics of intimidation and his anti-democratic ways. So that could very well be the problem.

S.B.- The most crucial element of any common platform would be, I assume, an agreement of the objectives of the peace-process. As you mentioned earlier you would need to have a common bottom-line and clearly you disagree with him on that matter. Could you explain why you feel the international community is wrong to believe that he has the right approach?

C.K.- The Prime Minister has been trying to do a good thing but using the wrong method. Do not forget that I pave the way and I secured a cease-fire before. We built the peace platform everyone is talking about, not him. When we came to power, the majority of the population was for more war as they had been conditioned that war was the only way forward. We took the pain to convince our majority that the solution was not war but negotiation and political arrangements. We did a lot of groundwork to have a massive support for such a move. Workshops were held, many discussions took place among our people so that they could understand the issue clearly. I was successful in changing the mindset. The people are now prepared to accept a constitutional change. Before, it would have been an impossible proposal. Too many segments of the society were opposed to any kind of negotiation. The PM was just therefore taking the issue further along what we prepared.

S.B.- Nobody denies that you paved the way. Why are you then so critical of the cease-fire as it is? Is it better than war and deaths among civilians?

C.K.- We should not denigrate the positive aspect of the current peace-process. It has brought a lot of relaxation between the LTTE and the army. Life is almost coming back to normal. Say that in some location, it is 60% of normal, or 50%. People can come back to their land in some area and get on with their life. Yet, we should also admit that LTTE is still extracting money from them and taking their children in the army, albeit in a more subdued manner. So there is an improvement, and it is good. But all this is not new. There have been previous cease-fires. It is just the longest one and the longest time the LTTE has been staying around a negotiating table .

S.B.- What are then the negative aspects then in what was known to be a difficult and tenuous process?

C.K.- What does mean cease-fire? a cessation of arm hostility for the objectives of peace through negotiation. So there are two elements to consider, the military one, and the political one. On the military side, cease-fire should provide the conditions to de-escalate the military confrontation. But no such thing is happening. The government is de-escalating, that is clear but we have no sign that the LTTE is doing the same. If anything, the information we got means they are actually rebuilding their military strength. Their forces were down to about 6,000 during the previous government and we have indication that they may be back to 16,000. There has been many violation of the cease-fire implicating movement of weapons. Most of the times, the government of the Prime Minister very foolishly let them go. I have always been against such a leniency but the Pm wanted to keep the LTTE at the negotiation table at all costs. So I was reduced to make a big fuss about some of them such as the Delft incident (4) so that as to trigger a reaction among the government. I have been constantly disappointed so much so that I have concluded that while the government was moving in one direction the LTTE was moving in another.

S.B.- What make you so sure of that to the point that you seem occasionally prepared to challenge the rational of the cease-fire?

C.K.- My conviction is based on the fact that we cannot say that the military component of the cease-fire has so far brought a reduced level of engagement. So the move towards disarming and demilitarizing the issue is not taking place. The second point is that a cease-fire must be used for to engage into a negotiated settlement for a political solution, but up to now the LTTE has not provided a single sign that they want a negotiated settlement along a federal state that we can accept.

S.B.- But there has been statements to the contrary according to the media?

C.K.- We should not deceive ourselves. There has been only one statement to that effect, only one in so many meetings and even that statement, a single sentence among a full page of bla-bla was much more ambiguous than what the media reported.

S.B.- What is then your conviction?

C.K.- There has always been a mention of internal determination within the Tamil homeland. It is combined with some reference to a federal structure within the state of Sri-Lanka but one sentence is a bit short, so nobody has really come to the heart of the problem yet. And the LTTE proposal on the matter is far away from what is acceptable.

S.B.- Can't Sri-Lanka evolve towards a federal state if it brings peace to a country ethnically divided (5)?

C.K.- The question is very much at the center of any solution and yet so far we are circling around without going into any substantive formulation. A peace process needs an objective, that is peace but how can you get it? It is not spelled out. The main problem that has caused the war is the Tamil problem and the government and the LTTE have to sit down and address it and list down, one by one, all its components and sort them out. The government of the Prime Minister has not down that. It has so far looked at the humanitarian aspects of the cease-fire, which are not negligible, but not at the political content. In my view, it is significant that of the three committees created under the peace process, the committee looking at the political arrangement that would bring a definitive peace is the only one not working. When the PM was coming to brief me on the progress, he always talked about peripheral issues and probably revealed only 10% of what was said. I spent a year asking him: what about the political propositions? He would tell me that they would be discussed later. My view is that after so many months, no substantive political discussions have been held. The negotiations were just a traveling circus with one purpose: get money out of the donors, while the substantive issues were set aside. I could not last forever.

S.B.- Maybe that process is necessary to build a level of confidence between the parties?

C.K.- Remember that I have been through the motion once and nearly lost my life at the end (6). Therefore I consider I have some experience of this matter and once again I was seeing absolutely no sign that would allow me to conclude that the LTTE was moving towards a political settlement.

S.B.- But this time the LTTE is staying at the negotiating table. Isn't an encouraging sign?

C.K.- Well, you have to judge it in a different light. The difference between what we tried in the past and today is that the international situation has changed dramatically since then. The positive factor is that the new environment is putting a pressure that was not there before for the LTTE to come to the negotiation table.

S.B.- You criticized the Prime Minister for being soft, what do you want?

C.K.- I want peace but not at all costs. The problem I see is that we need a constitutional arrangement that would solve the Tamil problem but not at the cost of letting the LTTE organizes a dictatorship that would deprive the Tamils of their rights (7). That would be a threat to all our civil liberties. So their main objection is probably that I want a political settlement based on plurality while they don't want one that would be based on such a principle. Their views on a federal system are unknown.

S.B.- What did you discuss with Prabakharan, the leader of the LTTE, when you started the peace process?

C.K.- We exchanges more than 45 letters (8). Mostly the LTTE was asking for more rights for this and that. I gave as much as I felt was reasonable, but I kept pressing one question and the cease-fire we had collapsed about it. The question was a simple one: give a date where we start discussing the political framework we could agree on. He did not reply the first time. He said that he had missed out the question. So I repeat it. He did reply that he would reply later. I stressed that without a date we could not go on. You know the rest. What can I say? We have yet to see a sign of change.

S.B.- The LTTE is a secretive organization. Could the current political procrastination due to differences of opinion among the leadership?

C.K.- Of course, one has to allow for such a factor. LTTE is probably a difficult organization to control and the one thing I consider an achievement that could help the process is the fact that Prabakharan has so far kept the whole cadre of the organization together, but whether it is why, the closer we come to the heart of the problem, the less responsive LTTE becomes, only the future will tell.

S.B.- The LTTE has claimed for long that you were an obstacle to peace, and the Prime Minister is quite saying the same. Why such attacks?

C.K.- For the LTTE, it seems that I am the only one that had the courage to resist their blackmail and be prepared to lose the (December 2001) election because I would not concede things that look important to me, in particular the freedom of the people to chose their leaders.

S.B.- And the Prime Minister?

C.K.- The LTTE was in the last election canvassing for UNP (the Prime Minister's party) against my party. It looks that what they are trying to do with this government is to drag on the process so that it will remain right in the middle of the next election.

S.B.- Does that mean that the LTTE is trying to influence the domestic agendas of your parties and play one against the other?

C.K.- What do you think? When Mr. Balasingham (from LTTE) says that Chandrika Kumaratunga is the only obstacle to peace, he is clearly siding with the PM and that is an indication of how the LTTE want to use its leverage in the coming presidential election. How this translates into voices remain to be seen, but that is a fact. The last time, they first try to kill me, then the last two days of canvassing, their people went on their bicycles and went everywhere asking to vote against my party. The fact is that the people (of the South) are very worried that the LTTE can bring chaos. That is in the back of the mind.

S.B.- The next Presidential election is in 2005. There is a two terms limitation and so you will not be able to contest the election for a third time. What are your plans for the future and the future of your party?

C.K.- I don't want to discuss it. I still have not decided. Politics is not everything. There are other things that interest me and there is life after politics. In Europe, politicians retire and get other jobs. De Gaulle retired. Even in England they retire. In Asia most try to keep power till they die. I find this horrible. I certainly would not do that. There are many more beautiful things to do. I certainly want to retire from politics before I die.

Spring 2003

© Asian Affairs.com

Notes:

1- Jayawardene, the leader of the opposition for many years, won a landslide victory in 1977, promising a free market economy and to address Tamil grievances. His party, the UNP won 139 seats while the party of Sirimavo Bandaraike was thoroughly defeated. On august 20 1977 an island curfew was delcared to curtail the violence in Tamil territories. To appease the Tamil community, in the 1978 revised constituion, Jayewardene gave Tamils wide ranging concessions, in particular he elevated Tamil to the status of national language. However since the language issue was never really an authentic reason for the eruption of ethnic violance, its resolution did not in any way contribute towards an end to the violence. To the contrary, it polarizes the society in two groups. Assassinations and bombings continue unabated. During that year Anton and Adle Balasingham (Adele was British) joined the LTTE in London. On July 1979, the Parliament passed the Preventin of Terrorism Act, which was similar to the South Arican legislation of the same nature. It denied trial by jury and allowed detention of suspects for up to 18 months. Then Jewayardene declared a state of emergency in Jaffna. It was the start of the end of Jaffna, a cosmopolitan and rich city that had been a commercial hub in the region for centuries. Today it is a ghost town with a tenth of its population living in precarious conditions among the ruins of its rich past.

2- Premadasa, Prime Minister under the Presidency of Jayawardene won the Presidential election in 1988 by a slim majority. He is assassinated on May 1st 1993.

3- Ranil Wickremesinghe is the nephew of J.R Jayawardene. He was elected to the Parliament for the first time in the landlside 1977 victory of the UNP, his uncle's party. He was only 28 year old. His uncle appoints him Vice-Minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1978, he is promoted Minister, at age 29 with the Manpower and Youth portfolio. Later on, he also gets the portfolio of Education. When Premadasa became President, Ranil Wickremesinghe became the leader of the House. He is only 40 year old. Later on, Premadasa appointed him Ministry of Industry, Sciences and Technology. In the vacuum left by the death of Premadasa, taking control of the leadership of the UNP party, he was from May until the general election of July 1994, Prime Minister. Chanfrika Jumaratunga winning the election, he remained the leader of the opposition for the next thirteen years.

4- Delf is a small island in front of Jaffna. In February 2003, a boat was intercepted carrying weapons for the LTTE. The three members of the crew committed suicice by blowing the boat rathe than surrender. The LTTE accused the Sri-Lankan army of having assassinated the LTTE crew but the Norwegian obervers that were present at the time confirmed the version of the government.

5- In the Northern provinces, the Tamil, Singhalese and Muslim community are of equal importance. In the South, the Singhalese are predominent and in the Jaffna peninsula, there are no longer any significant Singhalese population.

6- During an electoral rally, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb closed to Madame Kumaratunga, killing one official and wounding several people including Madame Kumaratunga who lost an eye.

7- The LTTE was considered a terrorist organization that do not represent the majority of opinion in Tamil-controlled areas. The LTTE has pursued a policy of assassination of any moderate Tamil politician that was presenting a challenge to its vision of an independent Tamil state. In the North, it considers itself as the ruler and does not recognize any other political organization than its own.

8- On January 5 1995, Chandrika Kumaratunga, agreed to a cease-fire after exchanging 20 letters with the leader of the LTTE. The cease-fire broke on April 19.

© Asian Affairs.com