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 Warring Parties
Mutual loathing between the President and the Prime Minister is imperiling Sri Lanka's delicate peace |
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| "Politics Is a Terrible Game" |
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Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga talks to TIME. The expanded interview |
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By Alex Perry Colombo |
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Posted Monday, March 22, 2004; 21:00 HKT
President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, the daughter of two Prime Ministers, has a member of Sri Lanka's First Family for half a century and President since 1994. She spoke to TIME's Alex Perry at President's House in Colombo.
TIME: What will this election decide?
Kumaratunga: The main issues are good governance and achieving a true and durable peace, not this farce of a peace process. The Prime Minister [Ranil Wickremesinghe] fooled everybody—the L.T.T.E. [Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam], the people, the President and even a large number of cabinet ministers—[by] saying everything was fine. [He made] secret promises to the L.T.T.E.: we still do not know what. There has been no transparency at all. And when I say good governance, I mean that there is [currently] a huge amount of corruption: everybody's shocked and disgusted with it. What happened during the PA [Kumaratunga's People's Alliance] government was child's play compared to now.
TIME: But on a fundamental level, isn't peace better than war?
Kumaratunga: Everybody is very happy there are no bombs going off and the people in the north are happy their children are not dying. But people in the south are very worried about the way the peace process was handled. The way the government turned a blind eye to the L.T.T.E. becoming stronger, bringing in nine shipments of arms and increasing their hardcore cadres from 6,000 to 18,000, putting up new camps, killing Muslim people. There have been nearly 20 attacks on Muslim villages. So what was going on underneath the apparent peace was causing a lot of restlessness.
TIME: What was the immediate reason for calling an election?
Kumaratunga: I was forced into it by a total breakdown of cohabitation in government. I tried very hard, but the Prime Minister was determined to harass me and chase me out. Everything was done to try to do that. I said let us carry on the peace process, but the Prime Minister did not want that at all. He has only one obsession: he wants to be the President. And he does not seem to care what happens to the country in the process. He is incapable of thinking big. It became my problem and the country's problem. We came to an impossible impasse. The only way to resolve it was to ask the people for a mandate.
TIME: What about the harm this has done to the peace process?
Kumaratunga: The story that the peace process was harmed after [I] took over is completely false. It had semi-broken down eight months before. There were no talks. After I took over, the Prime Minister made that his excuse.
TIME: Is this crisis solely the Prime Minister's fault?
Kumaratunga: I think so. When the Prime Minister was first elected, I sent for him and said, "This is a golden opportunity to work together. Though your work methods and personality are very different to mine, I am happy you are carrying on the peace process we started. But please let me know the main framework of the talks." He said, "Yes Madam, I can tell you in two days," but, I tell you, in two years, those two days have never arrived.
Finally, I honestly and very sincerely suggested to the Prime Minister that we try once again. In this room I spoke to him, very honestly and straight from the hip, and I told him it was the last chance for the country. "I know it is difficult for us to work together because our personalities are so different," I said, "but after all that you have made me go through, I am trying. So you can try." But he said no. It was a great pity. It was a great, great chance for the country because we are both democratic and our economic policies are similar and we both stand for peace. It's a matter of personality.
TIME: Where did all this animosity all start?
Kumaratunga: In the genes of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe. You can write that down. You know this person denied my son getting into a school in Sri Lanka. His uncle was responsible for my father's assassination. I used to get abused in cabinet meetings by four or five ministers, all arranged by the Prime Minister. [He would] sit there in Cabinet with a smirk on his face as his ministers abused me [with] the most horrendous insults. And all kinds of other things.
TIME: But you were friends as children?
Kumaratunga: He was my brother's classmate and for about four years my brother and he were quite friendly and he used to come home and play. I used to say "Hello," "Goodbye" and that was about all. Then I did not meet him until he became a minister.
TIME: And yet you have made friends with the JVP [Janatha Vimukthi Party], who killed your husband, and the monks, who killed your father?
Kumaratunga: The JVP did kill horrendously, they were fanatically nationalist, but this talk about them being chauvinist is not true. Nevertheless what should bother a normal democratic person is their history of general violence, their use of political violence as a tool. But the UNP [Wickremesinghe's United National Party] also has a record of the most shocking inhumanity and horrors. It is now proved that the UNP government killed 32,000 people. It is the UNP that criminalized politics. For me [as a widow], it is horrendous, it bothers me a lot, it nags at my conscience to work with the JVP and the UNP. There are a lot of nice people in the UNP, but Ranil symbolizes all that I dislike in the UNP. Nevertheless, for the sake of the country, we have to work with all these types. I will have to talk with [Tamil Tiger leader Vellupillai] Prabhakaran some day if I am allowed to live. Mr. Prabhakaran who tried to kill me.
TIME: You sound tired by it all.
Kumaratunga: My daughter says, "I like your soul and your spirit, and all this is killing your soul. Please go out of politics fast." In Sri Lanka, politics is a terrible, terrible game. So dirty, absolutely filthy. Decent people do not want to have anything to do with it anymore. My God, they don't want to touch it. We were not like that in 1977. Together with India, we were quoted as the two most democratic, peaceful parliamentary democracies in the entire third world. It is my dream that we move beyond [this]. I hope this will be realized before I get out of politics.
TIME: You want to quit?
Kumaratunga: Of course I do. I would love to leave. I am dreaming of a life beyond politics.
TIME: How can you be so sure that you want is what the country needs?
Kumaratunga: I don't think any individual [is] indispensable. But there are times in the history of a country when circumstances converge in a particular manner where people are called upon to lead historic processes. That's how mankind has moved forward.
TIME: What if no clear winner emerges from the election?
Kumaratunga: I would then invite the UNP to form one government.
TIME: What are the chances of them accepting?
Kumaratunga: I think there is a better chance of it succeeding this time.
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