By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

Amidst a spate of summits last week underscoring the global economic and geopolitical headwinds that governments and countries are having to cope with, President Ranil Wickremesinghe attended the Paris summit convened by President Emmanuel Macron to achieve a New Global Financing Pact for the world. The Paris summit has created both optimism and skepticism. On the one hand, it has been touted as the new Bretton Woods that would reform the global financial architecture to narrow the gap between the global north and the global south by addressing the growing challenges of debt, poverty and climate change. On the other hand, there is skepticism given President Macron’s penchant for launching international initiatives while producing little or no results. Not unlike President Wickremesinghe’s penchant for launching national reconciliation initiatives with no deliverables to show in the end.

Since becoming caretaker President, Ranil Wickremesinghe has made four overseas trips last year and another four so far this year. There will be more of them before the year is over. The frequency of the President’s overseas travels may show the significance of the external factors that have a bearing on Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. At least that would be the travel justification that you can expect from the President’s Media Division. The visits also show that the President might be finding a comfort zone in his visits abroad, as well as an escape from domestic nuisances. He could also be more at home overseas than in the country. And more so when he has to engage in silly battles over archaeology in the course of his efforts to achieve the ever elusive national reconciliation. 

Economy and Reconciliation

The President is obviously determined to achieve both economic prosperity and national reconciliation. What is ironical is that while the President has set a generous time frame of 25 years (from now to 2048) to achieve economic prosperity, he seems stubborn about achieving national reconciliation almost overnight. In fact, he is already behind his own target date of achieving national reconciliation by 4 February 2023. It is not clear whether the President’s keenness to show early results on national reconciliation is for overseas benefits or for domestic purposes. It could be argued that without at least the appearance of efforts to achieve national reconciliation, it would be difficult to mobilize international support for overcoming the current economic difficulties, let alone achieve economic prosperity. 

But every time the President initiates something on the reconciliation front, he is faced with backlashes from nationalist circles. Last Sunday, I mockingly called the President as King Ranil. I must now add that if there is one area where the near monarchical powers of the President are checkmated and his executive initiatives could even be reversed, it is the area of national reconciliation. The latest in the reconciliation saga is the spat over archaeology, which seems to have become one of the new state weapons for mischief making in ethno-territorial politics. The Tamil Political Parties have in unison been complaining about the Archaeological Department, Mahaweli Authority, Forest Department, Wildlife Department, Tourist Board and the Defence/Internal Security Ministry dabbling in ethno-territorial politics and impacting the livelihood of Tamil and Muslim people in the northern and eastern provinces. 

The upshot of political mischief by state functionaries in the above-noted departments is either the eviction of people from their small and life-supporting settlements, or the refusal of permission to conduct essentially subsistence farming or other economic activities on lands where people live. On the other hand, according to Prageeth Karunathileka’s exposé in the Daily Mirror, the Department of Archaeology would seem to have had no qualms in allowing the Urban Development Authority to demolish the old buildings of the Bogambara Prison in Kandy, in spite of their palpably architectural and cultural value, to build a new commercial hotel in its place.    

The current fracas is over the Archaeological Department declaring vast extents of land surrounding Buddhist Temples in Mullaitivu and Trincomalee as heritage sites and prohibiting even subsistence economic activities on these lands. This has long become a bone of contention for the Tamil and Muslim political parties who are constantly exposed to the difficulties experienced by their people. So, it was not surprising to see President Wickremesinghe himself weigh in on the matter at a meeting attended by Department officials and Tamil political leaders. He famously or otherwise took to task the Director General of Archaeology, asking him whether the vihara in Mullaitivu could or should have more lands than the historic Maha Vihara in Anuradhapura. The Director, who is also an academic of sorts, has since resigned from his position as Director General. 

Udaya Gammanpila has now picked up the baton and has announced a pilgrimage of sorts with 50 others to Mullaitivu. Four former SLPP parliamentarians including Channa Jayasumana, the well-known pharmacological expert in gynecology, have asked the Speaker to appoint a Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the alleged “large scale destruction of archaeological monuments in the North and East.” To cap it all the President has reportedly decided “to appoint an Expert Committee to conduct a formal inquiry and report on the claim of land area in extent of 5,000 acres for the Kurundi temple in the Mullaitivu District and Thiriyaya temple in the Trincomalee District for archaeological purposes.” How sillier can politics get? And nowhere else, but only in Sri Lanka. 

Task Force Tamasha

The source of the whole archaeological tamasha is the Presidential Task Force on Archaeology that Gotabaya Rajapaksa set in motion to appease his nationalist bidders and as his singular contribution to nation making in Sri Lanka. The irony is that Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been chased out of office for his economic blunders, but his legacy in archaeology is being reactivated by the same bidders who insist on digging for ancient glory that will do nothing to pay the country’s debt or bring relief to its suffering people. Rather than being neutral and objective, the Department of Archaeology has itself become a party to the dispute and an advocate of divisive ethnic causes. In the Mullaitivu case, the Department has been acting not merely despite of, but in clear defiance of a handful of court rulings against rushing to action.  

The President cannot put the archaeological genie back in the bottle by creating another ‘Expert Committee’. There will always be those who will not agree with what the new Expert Committee will say, especially when the experts are identified as ‘Ranil’s experts.’  Nor can anything be achieved conclusively by rediscovering the lost legacy of Tamil Buddhism. It is not a search for historical truths that is required for facilitating better political relationships among Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups. The search will prove to be futile because contestation over history is the source and sustenance of divisive ethnic politics. 

What is required is a shift in focus to the present and the future through principled political leadership and persistent commitment to take one doable initiative at a time, and one after the other as a constant work in progress. The President must first acknowledge that reconciliation is slow burning cooking. There is no fast tracking of reconciliation and setting short timetables is not realistic but counterproductive. Second, what the President needs is not a task force or expert committee on archaeology, but an action committee of likeminded political leaders in parliament. 

The President’s problem is that he has multiple minds internal to himself and he finds different likeminded people for different purposes. Such an approach is not conducive to creating lasting or permanent alliances, and it runs the risk of alienating the MPs who are more principled and attracting only the opportunists who will give their support for some personal benefit and/or extend the life of the current parliament. The President’s SLPP support belongs to the latter category, and he can never count on them to support his reconciliation initiatives. On the other hand, the opposition MPs (SJB and JVP) who might be inclined to support him on reconciliation have been put off by his machinations on elections and his highhanded actions against protests. That is his dilemma, and no Expert Committee will help him deal with it.