by Basil Fernando

The Trauma created by J.R. Jayawardene, former president of Sri Lanka, will remain in the Sri Lankan psyche for a long time to come.

During the last two decades Sri Lanka has become a highly traumatised nation. One man who contributed more than anyone else to this situation died a natural death on the 1st of November. The immediate reaction of Sri Lankans to the news of his death was angry words of bitter condemnation. This was also reflected by the first spokesman who was interviewed by the BBC soon after the death, who described former President Jayawardene as a person who took good care of himself and did not care for the nation. Responding to his death some said he should never have been born or that he should never have been the leader of the country. Others said he should have been punished for what he did. These reactions are only a minor expression of the suppressed anger in the minds of a people who had the misfortune of seeing every thing sacred in their country being destroyed before their own eyes. The impotence that a people feel before the unleashing of massive forces of violence often finds expression in terms of torrents of bitter words. Yet it is futile to attempt to seek revenge against a dead man. Sri Lankans will have to learn to cope with their trauma in a creative and a positive manner if they are to counteract the process of destructive violence that their society is now faced with. For this purpose it is necessary to try to understand Mr. Jayawardene. For to understand Jayawardene is to understand the underlying and root causes of violence in Sri Lanka.

Listening to a narration of what Jayawardene did for example, getting his party’s parliamentary group to give him undated resignation letters so that each one of them would be under the threat of being dismissed, having a referendum to decide whether there is a need for an election, trying to create the impression that his presidency had a direct link to the ancient monarchy to give himself an air of Royalty, adopting a constitution tailor made to himself, arranging acts to threaten the judiciary, while remaining as President arranging street violence against the minorities and a long list of many other acts - may be an amusing exercise for a person used to a more developed political system. For Sri Lankans it meant the loss of many of their loved ones, collapse of a political system that they were once very proud of, crisis of the rule of law and an ethnic crisis that has reached to a level of civil war. To understand all these it is necessary to understand the chief architect of violence of this new era of Sri Lankan history.

Jayawardene had no abiding attachment to any values. Born in 1906, forty-two years before Sri Lanka became an independent state, he belonged to a family which was well integrated into the colonial system. His father was supreme court judge under the colonial administration. There was nothing in the early years to portray him as a lover of his people or a lover of democracy. He was trained to be a professional lawyer at a time when law was considered a way of making money only and no way of doing anything useful for the people. There is nothing in his entire record to show any passionate interest in any values such as truth, fairness and compassion. In fact he had shown a capacity to consistently oppose any of these values.

As the period of representative democracy approached he showed his competitive spirit and joined the fray. Many external gestures of democracy were shown, but there was nothing to show an abiding interest in developing a democratic system in the country. Jayawardene was a party propagandist and electioneering wizard and nothing more. To win by any means was his sole motto, as a politician and as a human being. End justified the means, which meant winning elections by any means was all right. This was later extended to mean that retention of power by any means too was valid. The Referendum of 1982, the use of the emergency laws most of the time during his rule and the tailor-made constitution were products of the belief that to get and keep power anything was justified. The violence he initiated and propagated too was a part of this mindset. It was the conviction that winning elections by any means was right which gave rise to the manipulation of ethnicity as a political issue. In 1944 Jayawardene had already tried to rouse the Sinhala electorate on ethnic lines. The bitter harvest of this policy is the continuous civil war that has brought so much destruction to the country. To Jayawardene political opportunism was a virtue and not a vice. Such a philosophy easily gave rise to encouragement of murder and other criminal activities for political reasons.

Essentially Jayawardene was naive as a politician as well as an economist. Basically a parochial politician he did not have any direct experience of living some time in a developed democracy. As a very insecure politician he would not have wanted to be out of the country for long either. His belief that Sri Lanka could become like Singapore clearly showed a lack of any grasp of the South East Asian economic and political scene. His application to join ASEAN showed this naivety. He did not have any ideas for the development of the economy and just went ahead following external dictates without seeing the enormous social implications of such changes. When the consequences manifested themselves he wanted to erase them by sanctioning the ruthless use of violence. His concept of the security of the nation was that of the monkey who tried to chase the flies that disturbed its master by use of the sword.

His budget proposals in 1953 brought in the first greatest protests in post-independent Sri Lanka. The event is known as the Hartal, which virtually brought down the government. In the election that followed Jayawardene lost his seat. These two events intensified his hatred towards democracy.

Jayawardene separated power from responsibility. He made provisions in the Constitution for the President to be immune from even criminal prosecution. The emergency regulations under which he ruled most of the time assured military and law enforcement officers immunity for what ever they did. Strict limitations incorporated into the provisions of human rights in the Constitution meant brought in strong limits to state liability for violation of rights. To discourage people from making complaints against his supporters he sent all letters of complaints to the persons against whom such complaints were made. The result was intimidation and even violence against such complainants who were often victims of gross abuses. One such well known instance was the incident relating to the brutal murder of Father Michael Rodrigo. Rodrigo was a very erudite Catholic priest who gave up his academic career to work in one of the remotest villages. After several years of work he discovered the extent to which the poor people of these villages were harassed by the local supporters of the ruling party. Rodrigo who had himself voted for Jayawardene’s party sent a letter to the President stating the problem and gave a few names of persons involved in such activities. Jayawardene sent this letter to the persons named in Rodgrigo’s letter. Within a few weeks, Rodrigo was brutally murdered while he was celebrating mass. The culprits were never found.

To cure the disturbed psyche of the Sri Lankan people the truth of these times needs to be revealed fully. Only when people fully understand the entire truth which causes their trauma, will they be able to forgive their tormentors. Till then Jayawardene will remain a demon figure in Sri Lanka’s memory.