For Peace in Sri Lanka, Remember Bandaranaike

The war is almost over in Sri Lanka, the papers announced.
What war? People asked me.
The war.
The war that has been going on so long, many in the West have forgotten it hasn’t actually ended. The war that has claimed thousands of lives, caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose their homes and livelihoods. The war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. That war.

When did this war start?
Was it 1983 as many official histories claim? Was it 1976, when the Tamil Tigers first came into being? Was it even earlier, when the Tamils clashed with government forces in opposition to the ‘Sinhala only’ legalisation?
The legislation marginalized non-Sinhalese speakers – ostensibly to distance Ceylon from its former colonial masters but also actively reversing the ethno-linguistic make-up of the civil service (from predominantly Tamil to almost 100% Sinhalese) in under a generation and effectively marginalising the Tamil population.
But marginalisation leads to discontent and discontent leads to resistance. Those are the mathematics of conflict.

For now, the Tamil Tigers are still fighting. And although they are evidently losing, no amnesty has been declared, no foundation for peace has yet been laid. When the Tigers called on the international community – that inscrutable animal – to broker a truce, Colombo resisted and anonymous government sources said that this will end as it started: fighting.
So the beginning of the end for this war may actually be less of a promise and more of a statement of fact: the war will be over soon, because there will be no one left to fight against.

But not yet. For now, the Tigers are still fighting and the military are preparing for at least one more, final, showdown before the curtain falls on this conflict. Meanwhile the rest of the world had forgotten there was a war going on still. And if we forgot the war, what are the chances of remembering Bandaranaike?

PM Solomon Bandaranaike was the man behind the ‘Sinhala only movement’. Obviously this did not start the war. Obviously he did not start the war. But he is where the story starts. And now that the story is about to come to an end, the beginning is of the utmost importance. Now, when people least want to think back, is when the past needs to be re-examined.

Healing is what matters now, I hear you say. Rebuilding, not rehashing.
But when the time comes to rebuild, will anyone remember Bandaranaike?
Will anyone remember that the young Sri Lanka had a beautiful, pristine, Westminster-style democracy, upon independence?
That was the fruit of ‘rebuilding’ as well.
Rebuilding.
But in doing so, the new system did not protect itself against ethnic take-over. It did not create structures and systems that could protect minorities, ensuring that they could not be disenfranchised, that the tyranny of the majority would not occur.
Mistakes were made.
The system was abused.
’Sinhala only’ was launched and although opposition and some negotiation took place, Bandaranaike’s legacy held firm – in the shape of laws and a political dynasty: his wife Sirimavo Bandaranaike was three times prime mister, his daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga president and son Anura Bandaranaike many times minister and speaker of the house.

Don't get me wrong.
I don’t want to reduce the legacy of a political dynasty to two words. But those two words, ‘Sinhala Only’, stand for the mind-set of an entire state apparatus - the apparatus that the Tamil Tigers rose to fight against. So all I’m saying is, remember Bandaranaike. Remember where democracy was weakest, and when rebuilding, build up there first.

If government forces crush the Tigers, defeating them completely and irrevocably, there will be victorious swagger where quiet reflection is necessary.
Of course, the victors will celebrate, the vanquished will nurse their wounds, families will heave a sigh of relief and no one will want to think back.
But if nobody remembers Bandaranaike, what are the chances of a lasting peace?

Bandaranaike demonstrated how easily democracy can crumble. How can we rebuild, without remembering Bandaranaike?

To end this, we have to go back to the beginning, to the structures that made ethnic politics possible in the first place. Now that victims and perpetrators have swapped places a number of times and every home has a personal tragedy in Sri Lanka, it’s time to go back to the beginning. Amends can’t be made. But amendments can, and the whole political machinery needs to be re-jigged with two words in mind. Not ‘Sinhala only, but ‘never again’.

The war is almost over in Sri Lanka.
And it’s time to remember that history only goes round in circles when we forget the likes of Bandaranaike, when we forget how painful stories actually began.

All together, one more time

I hate repeating myself. I hate it.
But while something remains true, it needs to be said again and again. For as long as it takes.

So.
The Greek Prime Minister was quite clear: ‘I am not thinking about elections. End of discussion’.
Well if you say so…
The most ineffectual man in European politics hath spoken.
Predictably, nobody cared. Almost simultaneously the opposition leader announced that he is ready to be judged by the people in an election that he deemed both expedient and imminent.
Mr Papandreou said it was time he measured himself against History (whatever that actually entails). In this most critical of junctures, and sounding uncannily like his dad, Mr Papandreou spoke of his financial vision, which boils down to privatising banks and getting the ‘rich to help out’.
So, to recap, the government won’t tell us what their financial plan entails (see my post Greece 2009: welcome to the dark side), the opposition’s financial salvation plan sounds like it came straight out of a 1950’s ‘socialist government’ manual while the Greek Communist Party’s response to all this was to rehabilitate Stalin. Yes that’s right. And I don’t know what’s more outrageous: the fact that they are not dealing with any of the current problems plaguing Greece but rather speaking of a man who has been dead since 1953 or that they are publicly redeeming the reputation of one of the world’s bloodiest leaders. But then again this encapsulates beautifully the general status of Greek politics: shut the windows, turn off the TV, throw away the newspapers, keep it self-referential and make sure you don’t deal in real issues.

Meanwhile, just to add to the comedy of it all, Vassili Paleokostas and Alket Rijay, serving sentences in an Athens maximum-security prison, have escaped. They were airlifted, to be precise. By privately-hired helicopter, off the prison building roof. Again. Having escaped the same way just under three years ago.

What’s the connection between the escape and the various party preoccupations discussed at the start of this post, I hear you ask?
None. None whatsoever. That’s the whole point.
Those governing don’t even bother to come up with a credible story on why things are bad or what they are about to do to make them better. The opposition is jumping up and down going ‘pick me pick me’ with no real plan beyond changing the wallpaper once they are in office and the smaller parties – that could represent the core or at least the start of civil society – are looking in, looking back and looking lost.

As lost as the security services that manage to be terrified of disruptive and violent elements, outwitted by prisoners who do not even need to vary their routines in order to escape and bring the force of the Force to bear on dissenting students, disgruntled farmers and errant teenagers. Same old, really.

And the government does not feel the need to declare elections; the opposition talk about history; and this particular story is getting way out of hand. Same old, yes.

So, I am deploring the state of affairs in Greece again.
For as long as it’s deplorable, I shall be deploring it.
For as long as it takes.

At least we have Dev Patel

Because, let’s face it, reading the British press gives me little joy otherwise.

Jade Goody, of course, all over the papers. And it is terribly sad that she is dying so young. And I appreciate what she is doing and why. But she is one of those celebrities I do not understand – famous for being famous – of which we seem to have many.

The sports pages are out, as my football team needs a miracle to avoid relegation.

The financial pages are interchangeable with the obituaries, without the warm and fuzzy memories of better times, and the analysis pieces seem hell-bent on feeding the monster that is the ‘crisis of confidence’ that they agree underpins it all. And although Gordon assured us he has saved the world, neither the world nor this particular corner of it seem saved or indeed safe.

And today the usually level-headed Guardian predicted a summer of violent street fights for the capital, with the middle classes taking to the streets to protest the credit crunch and fight with the police in the process.

What this fear is based on is unclear.
Clashes over Gaza between police and protesters in January are cited, but the comparison is hardly credible as neither the issues nor the demographics in question are inter-changeable. Plus the January clashes were an isolated incident.
But the article is adamant the police expect a ‘summer of rage’ in 2009. They even seek to scare us with the prediction of ‘a return to the 1980s’. Whether that also entails a covert threat that the police will go back to Thatcherite styles is yet to be determined.

‘Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.’
This is assuming that the middle classes do not demonstrate. And that issue-specific demonstrations are easy to ‘hijack’ by determined agitators. Not to mention the assumption that disgruntled and disappointed masses can and do get violent. All tall orders. All, I’m sure, backed by statistics and blind to individuality.

The fact remains, however, that Mr Hartshorn has intelligence suggesting that the mood of demonstrations has changed recently with a noticeable increase in the specific ‘intent’ to create public unrest among protesters in this country. Plus things are not rosy in the rest of Europe. Inevitably, the farmers’ road blockades in Greece are cited as a sign that this is a Europe-wide phenomenon (failing to mention that such blockades happen every few months in Greece because there the system did not need the global financial meltdown to stop working).
Still, demonstrations also took place in France and Iceland and the piece is evidently worried.

Some of the agitators are well-known, apparently, but in times of stability their message falls on deaf ears, says Hartshorn, whereas now many hitherto respectable citizens may be lead astray out of desperation.

Well, if we know who they are, why don’t we send the agitators to their rooms?
You think I’m going mad, but I’m only quoting from the latest Tory youth offender handling recommendation (‘ground them’).
An ASBO and no TV for two weeks. Sophisticated policy-making in action.

No TV for two weeks might not be a bad idea though. It may actually spare said offending youths from losing their faith in the system entirely. That way they would not hear about the thousands of people who contracted HIV and Hep C through transfusions with contaminated blood during the 70s and 80s.
Just the story the ailing NHS needed to lose even more public confidence, as doctors find themselves over-worked, over-managed and under-trusted by harassed patients.

And I can’t even take solace in the sports pages.
So thank God for Danny Boyle and his decision to receive his Oscar skipping like Tigger. Just the feel good factor we needed.
If only Parliament would close its sessions with a hug, a kiss and a group dance. Skipping is optional.

El divo: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

I was not going to blog about this.
Say it again. I was not going to blog about this.
But when people make mountains out of molehills I get annoyed. So here it comes.

Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stormed out on Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos. That’s funny, of course and every Tom, Dick and Harry blogged about it. But I didn’t. No Sir.
But then I started reading what other people wrote and I started getting annoyed, predictably, at how so many commentators managed to royally miss the point. People always miss the point when it comes to Turkey. But that’s another story for another time. So here I am, blogging about the things I was not going to blog about. Bloody typical.

Still.
Anyone vaguely interested in geopolitics knows that Turkey has traditionally been an ally of Israel’s.
In practice, this translates into a strained security understanding that enjoys the full backing of the all-mighty Turkish Armed Forces while civilian authorities remain ambivalent. At times, politicians have even expressed open hostility. That never lasts long. The last prime minister to do so (the notorious Necmettin Erbakan) was summarily deposed (for a variety of reasons) by an army communiqué in 1997. No violence, no coup, no fuss. Just a bit of paper and a press conference. Job done. It as called a post-modern coup with no hint of irony.

My point is, Turkey's security bonds with Israel are strong. And although Erdoğan’s personal preference for the Arab world ahead of Israel is well documented, his outburst was not a sign that Turkey is breaking with Israel as the press reported. Nor is it a sign of latent anti-Semitism, as the Economist’s Amberin Zaman claims, out of left field.
For the millionth time: disagreeing with Israel is not tantamount to anti-Semitism. Millions of Jews disagree with Israeli policy. Israelis disagree with Israeli policy.

Still, I don’t mean to defend Erdoğan.
A grown man, a professional politician and a, now, seasoned Prime Minister should be sober enough to not storm out when things don’t go his way. But to accuse him of anti-Semitism is to miss the point of what happened.

Erdoğan is a religious man. That much is well-known.
What that means is hard to tell as current legislation prevents him from expressing extreme religious sympathies even if he harbours them. We know he is pious and devout; we know he has fallen foul of the secular authorities and served a short jail sentence for ‘inciting religious violence’ through the use of some patriotic verses written in a time when secularism was not yet in vogue. And we know Erdoğan seeks to bring Turkey closer to the Arab states for the first time in its history. What that means is, again, not clear because this is rhetoric, scoring points with the religious heartland at home, rather than a genuine foreign policy position.

But that’s what Erdoğan does: he says out loud the things everyone had hitherto whispered. That is what makes him popular even with people who don’t actually agree with him, especially those who don’t have to live with his policies: the Europeans. With every nod from Europe, Erdoğan is a little safer at home, and so it continues.

Yet his record remains mixed.
He has liberalised the penal code but imposed restrictive legislation on alcohol; he has strengthened civilian control of the polity but he has also politicised the judiciary and skewed the demographics of the civil service.
He has brought Turkey closer to Europe and that has ensured his survival. But the truth is, he is pro-accession because he has no choice: his religiosity can only survive under an EU-sponsored freedoms discussion and his personal politics can only be legitimised as by-products of EU membership efforts. The secularists scowl, the traditionalists cheer and he walks the political tight-rope with ease, agility and flair.

Of course many wonder whether he’s worth all this effort. Whether EU accession is compensation enough for putting up with him. Recently, the Courts came close to resolving this dilemma as they questioned the constitutionality of the ruling AK Party, but Erdoğan survived again. By the skin of his teeth. And that made him even more of a hero with his constituents. Of course.

So, for me, his dramatic departure in Davos was not an act of political defiance.
It was a primadonna moment.

A perceived pro-Hamas leaning in Turkey meant that Erdoğan’s meeting with Peres was never going to be easy. But it doesn’t follow that Erdoğan’s outburst signifies, as one writer put it, ‘Turkey’s shift away from the West’. Easy tiger. The West is currently telling Israel off just as much as Turkey is. Erdoğan is, for once, on message and in good company.

Equally, to read too much into his actions is to give him credit he has not earned. Zaman, Turkey’s most religiously-minded mainstream daily, ran editorial upon editorial suggesting that what Erdoğan actually meant is that peace-building requires an honest assessment of the corruption and incompetence on the Arab side, US and European naïveté when it comes to Israel and the simple fact that Israeli hard-liners always seem to carry the day in Israeli domestic politics.
I’d have a lot of respect for Erdoğan had he said all that. But he did not.

Of course he objected to the Gaza killings. And of course Peres pushed back. That much was expected.
But then Peres accused him of not knowing what actually goes on in Gaza. And then the moderator, David Ignatius, started tapping Erdoğan on the shoulder, so he would cede the floor. And without wanting to trivialise this, Erdoğan does not take kindly to any slight to his personal authority. Satirists, cartoonists, journalists have found themselves fined and tried for mocking Erdoğan. He is under EU caution for his intolerance to any slight to his authority. Tap taps on the shoulder and accusations of ignorance don’t sit well with him.

So is that why he stormed out?
I’d say partly. The other part being made up of a plethora of factors including his religiosity, personal dislike for Israel and commitment to his pro-Arab, Muslim brotherhood rhetoric.

This was not about Turkey’s radical repositioning on the geostrategic map. This was not a symbolic departure from the straight and narrow as defined by the acquis communautaire and EU lore. This is not even about Turkey breaking with Israel (although stranger things have happened and one never knows what tomorrow brings). This is simply a diplomatic blunder by a man who occasionally gets carried away by his own self-importance.

So here’s my two kuruş’ worth: there’s no massive political realignment afoot. Just a garden-variety case of over-inflated political ego and a bit of a temper.

Now let’s sit back and watch him spin this to his advantage at home.

Greece 2009: Welcome to the dark side

So I was in Greece last week.
I did the whole staying-up-till-six-am-eating-and-drinking-with-family. I played the let’s-see-how-much-caffeine-it-takes-to-kill-you game. I saw friends. I walked the streets of my youth. I spent time at home.
It was good.
But inevitably at some point, I turned on the TV. And, the Petroula debacle aside, in the space of the 10 minutes I lasted in front of it, I saw 3 things:

I saw the anchorman of a major channel battling with the news that the Prime Minister of Iceland is gay. Why that is news in the first place, I cannot say, considering it is neither newsworthy nor new. But they were announcing it still and the newscaster was struggling with his terminology. After half-starting on ‘homosexual’ and ‘lesbian’ he settled for ‘the PM of Iceland has… errr… special abilities’. Quite. X-ray vision and telekinesis, I’m sure. Pity I’m straight. But for a change in my sexual preferences I could be Wolverine.

So I flicked the channel in disgust and I got the news on a different one where the reporter had intelligently edited clips of a few ministers contradicting themselves drastically in public statements made within the last few days. My favourite was the minister for agriculture. On being informed that a group of disgruntled Cretan farmers were coming to Athens (with their tractors) to demonstrate, he said they would be welcome and a public debate would ensue. What actually ensued was a street fight complete with teargas and police violence captured on camera. The same man subsequently said that the state did what it had to do to prevent social unrest. So the state moves against protesting citizens, for their own sakes. How reassuring.

So I flicked the channel in despair and got three government spokesmen, ministers and under-secretaries, as well as a clip of the prime minister all saying the same thing ‘we have a plan to get the country out of the financial crisis’. ‘What is it’, ask the journalists. ‘We have a plan’ they repeat. What is it, I shout at the TV. ‘We have it and have had it since June’, Palli-Petralia (Minister for Employment and Social Protection) insisted. Yes but what is it? ‘We have it’.
Insolent citizens not taking the government’s word for it. Shame on us.

So I switched the TV off and turned to the newspapers. Asking for it, I know, but I am a news junkie and will never learn. So I discovered the following: I learned that the government’s popularity is waning (there’s a surprise) but the Prime Minister remains popular and is thought of as the stronger leader (God help us) – possibly assisted by the fact that the leader of the opposition seems to have no ideas whatsoever and an inability to string a sentence together without stumbling at least once.
I also learned that information about abuse in Greek prisons had been released again a few days previously, but no inquiry had been instructed and nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. I read about the farmer strikes and road blockades (part of which was the Cretan farmers incident). I also read about the failing economy, the faint echoes of land-sale scandals implicating the church that are now old news and the odd report about financial irregularities and EU controllers. Business as usual, really.

And then it struck me.
How all this was reported as a matter of fact. As if chaos, disorder, narrow-mindedness, dishonesty, injustice and incompetence were given facts of life that we were all powerless against. As if all this was our fate and, although we can see right through it, there is nothing we can do about it, there is nothing that can be done about it. As if change is not an option, not a possibility. As if hope is all but dead even though criticism isn’t. As if we are all spectators in a football match we have no power over. We can shout and swear but can’t touch the ball. We can see all that’s wrong but don’t believe we can fix it, don’t believe a fix is possible.

So nobody acts.
So nothing changes.
So.
So welcome to the dark side.

Chavez latest: calling a spade a spade

Have I or have I not already said that the essence of democracy is that it can vote itself out of existence at any time?
No need to search back through old posts. I have and it is.

Knowing this, however, doesn’t make it less painful to watch when it happens.

So Hugo Chavez has been given the people’s blessing (via referendum) to run again and again and again for President. Because the 10 years he’s already had in power are not long enough.

Mr Chavez is popular. He is charismatic, he is loudly anti-American and that always goes down well with the masses the world over. His socialist programme has moved many but the jury is still out on his effectiveness as a president. To put it mildly.
Nevertheless when he announced that he needs to stick around for another term after this current one expires in 2012, in order to consolidate Venezuela’s socialist revolution, the referendum was called and the people spoke: 54% backed an end to term limits. In other words, 54% chose ‘more Chavez’.

Chavez’s time in office so far has not been smooth and uncomplicated.
Removed from office for 2 days by an abortive coup, winning a recall referendum and several elections, you may say that his survival in office despite the hurdles is a sign of the people’s will and his own determination.
You may also say that this is not the first time he tried to ensure he can run indefinitely – a similar attempt in 2007 failed but that, evidently, did not put him off. And now, 2 years on, he got the constitutional amendment he was after in a vote that was described by observers as free and fair. Although critics claim that government funding and blanket TV coverage (a Chavez speciality) swayed the vote, no allegations of fraud have been made.

So the people have spoken and, in a democracy, the popular will wins the day. Right? Right.
And it is within the people’s power to scrap the limits on how often politicians can run for office, right? Right.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Democracy is all about voting and free choice, of course, but it’s also a system that relies on certain vital ‘mechanical’ elements in order to actually function. One of them is checks and balances. One of those is the limit on how many times someone can run for office.

So democracy can vote itself out of existence alright, but once it’s done that, let us not kid ourselves, it no longer exists.

O tempora and all that

Early last week, when I was in Athens, I met an old friend for an overpriced beer and a long-overdue catch-up. As we were chatting, he got to berating the phenomenon that is Petroula. Obviously, I had no idea what he was talking about. But I could guess. Partly because he’s eloquent and partly because I know what Greek TV is like. Leggy, busty blondes is what prime time private Greek TV is made of. But still, I was curious, so I checked it out the next day and discovered that this particular specimen of television genius tells the weather in fur-trimmed lingerie. Feminist activists turned in their graves and my mum tutted in disapproval, as I explained that I absolutely had to watch this: it is a social phenomenon and I am a social scientist. Yes. That’s right.

So the phenomenon that is Petroula is half-naked, a gentle breeze ensuring the little she wears sways suggestively, and her language is loaded with innuendo. She meows the names of towns and islands, sighs the temperatures and mouths the wind directions. I am female and I am straight yet I still found it mesmerising for about two minutes, because it is so openly sexual that, surely, I thought, it has to be a double-whammy: a critique of the voyeuristic tendencies of Greek TV and the thinly disguised sexualisation of TV presenters and a simultaneous ‘tapping into’ the phenomenon they criticise. A bit like the black-eyed peas singing ‘my humps’ and having the people they were mocking buy their singles while the rest of us sniggered conspiratorially. Market smarts or artistic sell-out, you decide.

Only with Petroula there is no dilemma. There is no critique. The whole thing is a full-throttle indulgence in soft-porn aesthetics. So I watched – by way of sociological research, you understand – and it appears I was in luck: it was the prodigy’s birthday and she did a dance and everything. As she progressed to the pièce de résistance , her catch phrase, ‘I am Petroula and I just finished’, which in Greek carries the innuendo of sexual climax, I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry.

I wanted to laugh because it’s funny. It is so bad, it’s funny.
But it is mindless and despite the fact that the girl has great legs, I failed to see why she has become a sensation in Greece ahead of others.

But I also felt a rising sense of despair.

I was not prepared for this. I expected to have a giggle and a shake of the head. But I was confronted with a summary version of Greece’s deadlock in a frilly nighty: Petroula, I discovered, started off on 50 euros for a 3-minute slot. Now she’s famous and her 'show' is longer, that figure must have risen. But 50 euros for 3 minutes of shaking your boobs and moaning in front of a camera is a lot of money, especially in a country where other people her age would be making about 500 euros per month. If they were lucky.

So rather than laughing, I found myself doing the maths.
People in their early 20s who are not Petroula, make a salary that is hardly a living. Most young people can’t leave home – and it’s not because of family values any more, it’s because they simply can’t afford it. So they live with their parents and their salary becomes their pocket money while mum and dad still pay the rent, electricity and grocery bills.
And then these 20-somethings spend the little they have on over-priced commodities in a country that is rapidly becoming one of the most expensive in Europe, with a cup of coffee costing as much as 8 euros in fashionable haunts.

And as I watched Petroula celebrate her 20th birthday on television, I got angry. Because all the people who should be engaging in politics, trying to change their fate and fighting for the future, were at home watching her too. People her age, who can’t afford to not live with their mum and dad. People her age who don’t realise that by living with their mum and dad they don’t just compromise their coming of age, they also create a long-term effect on the Greek economy, as their parents cannot retire and their savings are depleted while their offspring fail to become financially independent through no failure of their own.

O tempora. Yes. But morality? This has nothing to do with morality.

I had thought I’d have a laugh and I found myself immersed in gloomy socio-economic analysis. Because I looked at Petroula and I saw a generation that is stuck, truly stuck, in a financial black hole and doesn’t seem to realise that this way is not the only way. And they stay at home on their mum’s sofa and find Petroula hilarious.
Maybe I am reading too much into things. I often do. But Petroula, for all our scorn, is doing well for herself. And her peers, who find her condescendingly hilarious, choose to talk about her rather than their own predicament.
So she serves her purpose and the world carries on like before. And it’s only a matter of time before things get too dire and Petroula’s becomes a coveted career, a way to ensure a better life.

O tempora indeed. I fear we’ll be saying that a lot in the years to come.