Accountability, Reconciliation, Democracy
With regard to Sri Lanka, the argument is put forward that without accountability there will be no reconciliation. Opinion divides between those who advocate or support an ‘independent international inquiry’ and an independent domestic inquiry.
Sri lankan soldiers
The question is therefore raised as to what the international standards and best practices of accountability are. What does the overwhelming evidence show? What are the best practices with regards to post-war accountability?
It is further argued that greater democratization and fuller accountability regarding the war are indispensable complementarities. Therefore it has also become necessary to re-scrutinize the emphatic assertion that post-war accountability, democracy, good governance and post-conflict reconciliation are integral parts of a single package or located on a continuum.
Democratization
In the first place, let us examine the evidence with regard to democratization. Even if one were to adhere to the notion of a worldwide trend towards democracy, I would remind the reader that there is no single worldwide or universal trend, there are universal trends (plural), some of which tend to cancel the other out, or combine in a fashion that modifies the outcome. Thus the ‘End of History’ meets ‘the Clash of Civilizations’, with unforeseeable results. Authentic adherence to pluralism has not only a domestic but also a global dimension; recognizing that there is a plurality of global trends, such as democratization as well as multi-polarity propelled by newly emerging powers, and the Asian resurgence.
This being said, I think the late Prof Huntington was onto something when he wrote of the Third Wave. He was referring to the great waves of democratization, the first being in Southern Europe in the 1970s, when the long lasting dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and the ‘younger’ ones in Greece and Turkey collapsed. The second wave swept Latin America. The Third wave (or was it the fourth?) took down the Soviet bloc. I would say the fourth (or was it the third?) wave was in East Asia: the Philippines, South Korea and Indonesia. My slight confusion is because the Philippines restored democracy in 1986 and Indonesia in 1998, with the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe and Russia ’91 falling in-between. The Arab world is experiencing the fifth wave.
No accountability hearings
Now it must be emphasized that in the overwhelming number of these democratic transitions (with the GDR case being a short-lived exception), openings or re-openings, there were no accountability hearings with regard to the conduct of the militaries of those countries. More: an amnesty, or the pledge not to rake up accountability issues, was part of a compact which underpinned democratization and guaranteed stability and forestalled further polarization.
So accountability probes were not part of the great waves of democratization, and were perceived to be counterproductive to the grand bargain that underpinned the project. More starkly, democracy and accountability did not go together. It was, more often than not, a question of democracy OR accountability.
Post conflict reconciliation
The picture is no different with regard to post conflict reconciliation. From the Spanish civil war to the Philippines and Indonesia, the post conflict reconciliation process did not involve accountability probes. These were regarded as dangerously lacerating and polarizing. Here again, accountability was not understood as a precondition for reconciliation but as a potential threat, and it was often a choice of reconciliation OR accountability.
In some cases, accountability issues have been allowed to surface only after decades have passed. Chile is about to probe the death of President Salvador Allende
Bodies of dead tigers being transported in full sight
not only almost forty years after the event but a few decades after the restoration of democracy. Bangladesh is opening an inquiry into atrocities committed by militia during its war of independence in 1971, forty years ago.
Settling accounts with violent pasts
Most societies settle accounts with their violent pasts by classically cathartic means such as artistic expression and public debate. Thus, some accounts are better balanced by History and left to what the French called la longue durée, the long term — and to future generations.
Reconciliation is more readily achieved and more rooted through a negotiated compact between all democratic stakeholders. Such a process has already been initiated in Sri Lanka.
It is against the backdrop of these developments that the current commentary on the external challenges to Sri Lanka must be embedded.
Exaggerated threats
Governments the world over certainly do point to external threats to shore up domestic power and legitimacy. Sometimes these threats are real, sometimes not. Sometimes they are real but exaggerated. Sometimes the threats could have been better met with a different government or existing governments could themselves have better met the threats had they conducted themselves differently.
One would expect oppositional or dissenting political discourse to differentiate between real and unreal threat, accurately depicted and exaggerated threat, and treated and untreated external problems. That, however, is not the case in Sri Lanka. Here, criticism of the government with regard to external challenges falls into two equally absurd categories.
One is that there is no such threat and that all mention of such external foes or challenges is but a ploy of the Rajapakse regime which must be exposed and rejected as fake by all brave and discerning souls. Another argument is that yes, there are challenges looming but those external forces are not a threat to Sri Lanka and its people — only to the ruling elite, and liberation through ‘regime termination’ will someday be at hand by the blessed intercession of these external factors and forces.
The anti-government discourse
Taken together, the anti-government discourse is that there is no external threat to Sri Lanka as a country, a state, and if there is, it is to be welcomed as a lever to prise out the incumbent administration.
A dissenting discourse less irrational than this would have yielded a different line of argument, namely that there is an external threat which should be combated but that there are better and worse ways of so doing; choices between projects of defending national sovereignty and defeating the secessionist and pro-secessionist forces in the Cold war being waged against Sri Lanka.
Yet, this is not the case made by the local oppositional ideologues. The decisive and virtually complete decimation of the military apparatus of the LTTE is used as argument that there cannot be any external threat because there is no LTTE to constitute that threat. This argument is absurd on two counts. Firstly, it is manifestly the case that while the Tiger armed force was wiped out, or to put it differently, the Tigers were wiped out as an armed force, the Tiger movement or network based overseas could not be wiped out and remained intact, simply because it was out of the physical reach of the Sri Lankan state. Secondly, winning a hot war in no way precludes a Cold war.
The world is a dangerous place
Recent developments in the global arena demonstrate the truth of the old cliché that lies at the heart of the Realist discourse from Thucydides onwards: the world
First casualties of war:Children in a Refugee camp in the East of Sri Lanka
is a dangerous place. In such a dangerous environment, states must be watchful of their independence, interests and power.
Our old enemies, the secessionists, seek to resume the struggle by other means, and win by them. These enemies are manipulating the dangerous trends in the world arena which threaten national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. The overseas-based secessionists hope to leverage these external trends and factors so as to isolate Sri Lanka.
While the Rajapakse administration may be accused of many a sin of omission and commission, it did not create the Global Tamil Forum, the British Tamil Forum, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam and the pro-Tamil secessionist tendency in Tamil Nadu. Nor is it responsible for Tamil nationalism’s imprudent refusal to regard the existing Constitutional provisions for Provincial autonomy and power sharing as the point of departure for political dialogue.
There is an inherent contradiction between the call for a so-called independent international inquiry into the conduct of the legitimate Sri Lankan armed forces in the closing months of the war, and the imperative to defend a popular war of national liberation and reunification and the armed forces that waged it on behalf of the nation.
There is also an inherent contradiction between those who claim to stand for greater democratization and post-war ethnic reconciliation, and the call for an inquiry, with its inevitably attendant lacerating and polarizing implications. Developments in the Middle east highlight the crucial role of the armed forces, and those with the armed forces ‘on side’, enjoyed a peaceful denouement or development. It is an impossibility to retain the support or neutrality of the armed forces, itself a bulwark of peaceful democratization, and simultaneously advocate an external or externally induced wide-ranging inquiry into its conduct in recently concluded, necessary and nationally popular war.
In conclusion I confess a certain perspective. To my mind, the more valuable debate in the Sri Lankan media would be over how external threats should realistically be countered, the armed forces best defended, national sovereignty best protected in the inclement international weather, and the historic military victory made permanent. This debate is currently not taking place. Instead there is a three way split between those who acknowledge a threat but see it as emanating from every quarter and are unwilling to display the pragmatic flexibility to counter these threats, those who assert that the threats are imaginary and denounce the country’s elected leadership for attempting to alert and resist, and those who, with little hope of electoral legitimacy, are awaiting the landfall of those inimical external trends onto Sri Lanka’s shores.
July 25, 2011 at 11:17 am
Dr. Jayatilleke, I agree with several key points that you have made but at the same time have to disagree with your summation. It is true that secessionist forces are running rampant in the guise of the diaspora and they portray a very real threat to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. It is true that the debate should be on how Sri Lanka can realistically counter this threat. First and foremost we need to prove that we are competent enough to counter the threat. And yet, the Government that you are defending has in its ranks clowns who take a “movie star” attitude towards foreign policy and politics which seems to emanate from a diet of too much bollywood movies. Even in the land of bollywood politicians are smart enough to differentiate between real life and celluloid. These jokers who on the surface seem dumber than a bag of hammers are actually among the most devious and criminal personalities this country has ever produced. The simple fact that you associate with these people makes you incapable of providing anything constructive towards the issue of reconciliation and accountability… In your honest opinion would you (an intelligent soul yourself I hope) not prefer to be part of a government where your talents would actually enable you to do something that matters.
July 28, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Dear Nadim,
“Dumber”? Well they didn’t do too badly did they, destroying a terrorist army that far less ” dumb” leaders failed to for thirty years…and avoiding foreign intervention while doing it?
You also write that”The simple fact that you associate with these people makes you incapable of providing anything constructive towards the issue of reconciliation and accountability…”
In the first place, as my article shows, I believe that accountability is best left to the next generations, so I have no role to play there. I am happy I played a marginal role in helping bring accountability to the fascist Tigers.
In the second place if your statement is true, then you must rule out a great majority of the citizens of the country who continue to vote for these leaders. If those citizens are incapable of playing a role in reconciliation, then who is left?
Finally, you write: “In your honest opinion would you (an intelligent soul yourself I hope) not prefer to be part of a government where your talents would actually enable you to do something that matters.”
Surely, even going by the UN Experts panel report, the battle at the UNHRC in Geneva in may 2009, mattered quite considerably, so I cannot complain that I wasn’t able to use my talens in something that matters. Representing my country in a capital of a Permanent member of the UN Security Council also matters.
In any case, this is the elected government of the day, and I don’t have the choice of serving another, non-existent one!
October 25, 2011 at 12:40 am
True… I stand corrected.. It is whether fortunately or unfortunately… The elected government of the day… And democracy in Sri Lanka is to be admired seeing as the only piece of good governance legislation was done away with…and replaced with legislation that any sane person would clearly see as the foundation stone of totalitarian rule…. All with the support of the people…. Maybe Sri Lanka is a lost cause……… What would you do dear doctor If the next generation of Sri lankans comes to view their motherland as a lost cause…. True you have put your talents to good use in protecting our sovereignty…. But What’s the point of protecting sovereignty if it has been made impossible to enure the rule of law…… And maybe dumber was not the term…but devious seems to fit the bill perfectly…. I eagerly await your reply… After all it would be a crying shame if even one of the next gen that you put so much faith in, comes to view their nation as a Los cause…or a pr circus as it were… Democracy is a wonderful thing.. But easily manipulated… At the end of the day bad things happen when good people do nothing to stop it… And it would seem that our country is fast running out of good people.
July 24, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Following truly democratic governance alone will answer ACCOUNTABILITY.
Does the Regime have an iota of it is the question here – and not the
word-play of the Writer, as usual.
July 23, 2011 at 3:17 am
Sri lanka is the country no accountability for anything. Govenmment officer are not accounable for their duties. Minister are not accoutable for their resposibiliy. I can give very nearest examples
1. heaginf deal for Petrolium
2. import for low quality petrol for higher price
3, higher construction expenditure for ICC without proper approval
who accountable? no one
suffer only pulic
this is same for war
July 22, 2011 at 9:53 pm
great article Dr Dayan.