Cleaning the Augean Stables, in Colombo

by Tisaranee Gunasekara-December 12,

2015, 6:44 pm
"The black cells will dry
up and die Or sing with joy and have
their way."
Jorge Luis Borges (Cancer Cells)
Last week Beijing went into shutdown
mode. Children were housebound,
factories and worksites closed and cars
disallowed on roads. The reason for this three day state of emergency was
not a terrorist threat but extreme air pollution. A foul smelling and tasting
smog enveloped the city rendering the very act of breathing lifethreatening. The Beijing Times very appropriately called it Airpocalypse.
China was infamous for a growth model which completely ignored
environmental concerns. The payback time has arrived.
According to a new scientific study, if climate change continues at the
current pace the Gulf region will suffer heat waves beyond human
endurance after 2070. The temperature hikes in the region might even
interfere with some Hajj rituals, warns Prof. Elfatih Eltahir of MIT: "One of
the rituals of Hajj...involves worshipping at the site outside Mecca from
sunrise to sunset. In these kinds of conditions it would be very hard to
have outside rituals."
At the 2010 Copenhagen Climate Summit, Chinese obstruction played a
major role in preventing a global carbon mitigation treaty. China did not
want any deal which would impede its rampaging economic growth. Today
its fabled economy is in crisis and over 70% of its population exposed to
pollution levels above national regulatory normsii.

Oil rich nations in the Gulf region, led by Saudi Arabia, have long opposed
climate deals which would affect their petro-dollars. Activists are accusing
Riyadh of sabotaging a Paris Climate deal which seeks to set a long term
temperature goal of 1.5C. The Arab Group was the only bloc which
opposed this limit and many environmentalists see Saudi bullying as the
primary reason.iii
Global climate change and internal pollution have a disproportionately
devastating impact on small countries like Sri Lanka. A larger country
might be able abandon a highly polluted area as uninhabitable but for
countries like ours, that option does not exist. And though we cannot play
a major role in reducing global climate change, we still have the capacity
to reduce national pollution levels. That, in fact, was one of the main
promises of both President Maithripala Sirisena and Premier Ranil
Wickremesinghe at the January Presidential election.
President Maithripala Sirisena is the Minister of Environment and no fault
can be found with his many utterances on the subject. The problem is how
the words are translated into action or not. The best case in point is the
issue of the pollution of the Kelani River, the source of drinking water for
many people in the Western Province. In recent weeks, the authorities
have taken legal action against several river-polluters. This is a
commendable development. Unfortunately, action is being taken only
against small scale polluters, mostly householders. Large scale polluters,
such as the Coca Cola Company which released a pollutant into the river
twice this year, continue to stay above the law.
The devastating effect of the Chinese growth model in China is a good
enough reason to take a careful look at such Chinese inspired projects as
the Colombo Port City. Environmental devastation was one of the
arguments used against this project by the UNP, while in opposition. Mr.
Wickremesinghe is on record promising to scrap it, once elected. Now the
onetime critics are silent and there are indications the project will resume
next year.
Why are the former critics of the Port City silent? Does it mean that they
were wrong and the Rajapaksas were right about the desirability of the
project?
Or are they silent because they have been bought, with campaign funds

and other goodies? Was no action taken against Coca Cola because of
American pressure? Has Mahinda Chinthanaya taken over Maithri
Palanayak?
The practice of catching a few sprats while allowing sharks to go free is not
limited to environmental matters but common to many areas, starting with
corruption. This discriminatory treatment is tarnishing the governments
reputation, turning its declarations of good governance into a mockery and
providing aid and solace to its opponents.
War Heroes and Justice
The Rajapaksa way of protecting war heroes and punishing Tigers was
extremely discriminatory. The main criterion in deciding who should be
protected and who should be prosecuted was the stance on the
Rajapaksas. Those Tigers who became Rajapaksa pets went free while
those war heroes who opposed the Rajapaksas were persecuted. A war
hero didnt have to be a political opponent of the Rajapaksas to suffer this
fate. A senior military intelligence official who got into a fight with Minister
Mervyn Silvas reprobate son was hounded, made to incriminate himself
and dishonoured.
Many Tamil men and women were locked up without charges for years,
while the chief financier and arms procurer of the LTTE and Vellupillai
Pirapaharans handpicked successor became a privileged citizen. Mr.
Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP remains free because the AGs
Department is reportedly unable to find any evidence against him.
That was how the Rajapaksas protected war heroes and prosecuted
Tigers.
The military is a microcosm of the society it comes from. Lankan society
has been experiencing a ceaseless wave of violent crime at least from
2006. The fact that murder and rape proliferate does not mean every
Lankan is a murderer or a rapist. There have been several incidents of
uniformed men committing crimes against ordinary citizens, including child
rape, even outside of the North and the East. This doesnt mean that all
military men are criminals; it merely means that some are. And they
should be brought to justice, irrespective of their war record or the
ethnicity of their victim.

The demand by the Rajapaksa camp that no action should be taken

against members of the armed forces for any crime committed during the
war years is grotesque and dangerous. The uniform shouldnt place its
wearer above the law. It does in practice, especially in lands where the
rule of law is weak. But it shouldnt become policy or be enshrined as an
inviolable maxim. That is the sort of impunity the Rajapaksa camp is
demanding when they say that no one who took part in the victorious war
effort should be prosecuted for any crime.
Except Sarath Fonseka (and others like him) who fell foul of the
Rajapaksas.
Sri Lankas international woes stem not from the war against the LTTE per
se, but from Rajapaksa politico-propaganda antics. The Rajapaksas
renamed the war a humanitarian operation and decreed that zero-civilian
casualties be accepted not as a desirable goal but as living reality. Even
mentioning the possibility of any harm coming to civilian Tamils became
equated with treachery. This policy prevented the admission of collateral
damage caused by human error, something no war, however clean, is free
of. Had the Rajapaksas done what the Americans did after the air strike in
Kunduz, Sri Lanka would be in a much better position today investigate
at least some of the charges, admit human errors where warranted,
apologise and pay compensation.
Unlike in the case of Kunduz, the civilian victims after all were our own
people.
Then there were crimes such as the killing of five students in Trincomalee
in 2006. A case was filed in a Lankan court, but the regime interfered in
the judicial proceedings while the military threatened witnesses and
families of the victims. Egregious deeds such as these debased Lankan
justice system and totally destroyed its credibility in the eyes of Lankan
Tamils.
Its when governments fail to act justly by their own people, those people
turn to outside entities and forces for justice.
Now the Rajapaksas are trying to gain political mileage from the problem
they themselves created. Any attempt to deliver justice to any Tamil will be

depicted as a step against Sinhalese. Like Donald Trump in the US or

Marine Le Pen in France, recreating a sense of victimhood in SinhalaBuddhist masses was and continues to be a pivotal Rajapaksa tactic.
It can work, if living costs and unemployment do not decline, if living
conditions of ordinary Lankans do not improve.
Extremists usually make gains when an economy is in crisis and ordinary
people fear for their future. What was true of the Nazis in Germany can be
true of the Rajapaksas and their BBS type allies in Sri Lanka.
A New Politico-Ethical Bind
Christopher Clapham identified "the lack of organic unity or shared values
between state and society" as the "single most basic reason for the
fragility of the third world state"iv. Fidelity to Sinhala-Buddhist
supremacism (masquerading as patriotism) and idealisation of the military
were the shared values the Rajapaksas exploited to create and maintain
an organic unity between the Lankan state (under their near absolute
control) and Sinhala society.
Good governance was supposed to fulfil the same function for the SirisenaWickremesinghe administration. The basic premises of good governance
were to become the shared values between the new government and that
segment of society which voted it in. Since good governance was depicted
and seen as the dividing line between the Rajapaksa regime and the new
Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, its basic premises included
eschewing the main aspects of Rajapaksa governance such as corruption,
nepotism, repression, anti-democracy, anti-people economics and ethnoreligious racism.
In 2013, a former journalist paid a call on President Rajapaksa in the dawn
hours and reportedly found him standing on his head. Upon inquiry, the
President replied, "We have done so many good things. The opposition
cannot see any of them. So I stand on my head to see how I could see the
country in that position."v
Perhaps President Rajapaksa failed to read the danger signs in late 2014
because his vision was topsy-turvy.

Is the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration becoming afflicted with

topsy-turvy vision as well? How else can the Central Bank bond scam seem
kosher and the outrageous acts of nepotism from the president downwards
seem just and necessary?
Cleaning the muck of Rajapaksa rule is no easy task. Adding to the muck
can only make that task harder. The Augean Stables would never have
been cleaned if Heracles kept on adding more cattle to the existing herd.
Credibility is the lifeblood of any administration. No party can hold onto
power (or win power) without credibility. The Rajapaksas lost power
because they lost credibility with their base. If there is too much of a gap
between words and deeds, no amount of spin-doctoring or media control
can prevent the erosion of credibility. And without credibility, elections
cannot be won, even with unprecedented levels of power-abuse and
unlimited amounts of money.
ihttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/extremeheatwaves-could-push-gulf-climate-beyond-human-endurance-studyshows
ii http://fortune.com/2014/11/05/the-cost-of-chinas-dependence-on-coal670000-deaths-a-year/
iiihttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/08/saudi-arabiaaccused-of-trying-to-wreck-the-paris-climate-deal
iv Third World Politics: An Introduction
vThe Sunday Times 10.2.2013
Posted by Thavam