ABDF

Hello everyone! Welcome to ABDF’s 2010 season. I leave for Sri Lanka in three weeks, and I want to let you know how things stand with me, with ABDF, and with Sri Lanka.

This has been a pretty productive winter break for me and for ABDF. And it’s been a learning experience too; when I founded ABDF I had no idea just how much work, how much follow-up and maintenance, such things as this website would take. I’m very grateful for my behind-the-scenes helpers, in particular Melton and Rachel, who have done a lot of work and taught me a lot.

I’ve also had a lot of fund-raising helpers, folks who have given their time and connections to make sure that we are funded this year. The result is that, if we maintain our current trajectory, we are on track to at least equal last years’ funding levels. Pretty good, considering the terrible state of the economy.

So, things are more or less in place for my departure. I leave the evening of March 9th, California time, and arrive in Colombo early afternoon of March 12th Sri Lanka time. I plan on spending up to a week in Colombo; I have a list of things I need to do there before I head over to Batticaloa (example: register with the US Embassy) and the 12 hour time difference will knock me on my butt for a couple of days. It’s been rather chilly in California this winter, so the heat is also going to make the transition a bit difficult.

We already have a couple great projects coming down the pipeline.

A particularly beneficial project is our Vantharumoolai School Furniture Project. Currently some students are sitting on the concrete floor during class. Why? During the military offensive that cleared the LTTE out of the province, refugees were housed at the school. For whatever reason, the refugees wrecked a good portion of the schools’ desks and chairs, among other things. No one, not the government nor the refugee agencies, is willing to replace what was destroyed, and the school has no resources to rectify the situation. Last year we set up a computer lab at the school, and when I toured the school I noticed all the piles of ruined furniture piled about. So I think this will be a very good project to start the season with.

It’s unreasonable to expect everything to remain the same, and thus I’ll be facing some interesting changes upon my arrival.

As you will all recall, the LTTE was defeated last spring. Riding a crest of popularity, the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, decided to call for presidential elections two years early, in an effort to consolidate his power. This election was held on January 26, and the President won by a wide majority. But it was complicated by the fact that the OTHER war hero, a man named Fonseka, ran as the opposition candidate.

General Fonseka was in charge of the military when it defeated the LTTE, and was one of the offensive’s chief architects. So he, too, declared himself to be the hero of the war. Then, suddenly, almost immediately after the rebel defeat, both men were at each others’ throats. What happened?

It’s a truism that when you have a country with a “strongman” leader, anyone who becomes popular is seen as a threat, PARTICULARLY if that other person controls the military. They inevitably fall out, and then battle for supremacy. This has happened countless times throughout history and in all cultures. If the citizenry is lucky, this battle for top dog status happens without coup or civil war. But at very least, some nastiness occurs before the dust settles.

Without going into details, the President accused the General of plotting a coup, and the General accused the President of war crimes during the war, as well as planning to rig the election. Both sides have presented “evidence” and have hinted at more to come.

As I have written before, in Sri Lanka it’s impossible to tell the truth about what’s going on. All sides are engage in propaganda, and everyone and everything is deeply politicized. The other side of that coin is that, in a sense, truth doesn’t really matter. It’s all about perceptions and what you can persuade people to believe. This is particularly true in Sri Lanka, which traditionally has a hierarchical social structure where one does not question authority, freedom of the press is a recent idea imported from the West, and the educational system does not encourage independent thinking.

So was the General plotting a coup if he lost the election? Were the elections rigged? Who knows.

The President won the election by about 20%. Even if there had been shenanigans, it couldn’t have effected the vote by 20%; international observers have stated as much.

Almost immediately after the election, General Fonseka was arrested and accused of treason. He is still under arrest, although formal charges have not been brought. Since his arrest, there has been some unrest, including several days of street riots in Colombo.

The government claims the General was about to launch a coup. To the rest of the world, it looks like a bare-bones power play. So even if the accusations end up being true, the way the government handled the General was, at best, sloppy. Of course it doesn’t help that the government has issued nothing but propaganda – and obvious propaganda at that – for years, and so the international community doesn’t believe any of it. This is the problem with crying wolf, isn’t it?

The President dissolved Parliament last week, and has declared yet another election, this one on April 8. Basically, he’s trying to use his popularity and electoral victory to “coattail” more party members and allies into Parliament, to increase his majority there.

Part and parcel with this is a new economic blow with possibly huge repercussions. Sri Lanka has been a part of what’s called “GSP+.” This program is a European Union benefit given to developing countries. It entails a severe reduction of tariffs on items imported into Europe. Sri Lanka has benefited tremendously from this break, especially the garment industry, one of the main employers in Sri Lanka.

However, maintaining GSP+ status requires the recipient country to make progress in democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Sri Lanka has not done this, and for several years the EU has pressed the government to improve its practices. In response the government has essentially given the bird to the EU, not believing that GSP+ status would be taken away. Well guess what. The EU has given Sri Lanka six months to make marked improvements, or the benefit will be withdrawn.

Were this to happen, and because the government is so defiant and xenophobic right now there’s no reason to believe change is coming, the result would be an huge economic blow. Sri Lanka sends most of its garments to Europe, and thousands upon thousands of people are employed in the industry. They will all loose their jobs.

The ironic thing is that the garment industry is centered in the Sinhala south of the island, and these folks are the biggest backers of the current president. Last year the president increased his popularity by bashing foreign governments, especially the EU, and this “standing up to the Western bullies” is a direct factor in his winning re-election. No one realized that you can’t give the West the finger with one hand, and then hold out the other and expect to be given money and benefits. So it looks like this anti-foreign sentiment in the South will come home to roost, with a vengeance.

OK, so what does this mean for me and the ABDF? Well in terms of our work in Batticaloa, not much. The District and Province are controlled by the TMVP, which is allied to President Rajapaksa. So not much is going to change in Batti.

The one major way we will be affected is in our political contacts. One of our friends is Muththu Sivalingam. He’s a Member of Parliament and a leader of the Ceylon Worker’s Congress (CWC), who represents the Estate Tamils in tea country. He is also Minister of Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure, an office with a good deal of influence. Thus far the Minister has helped us with making connections, as well as with my visa. As an MP he is now out of a job and Ministry is closed down. The CWC is in alliance with President Rajapaksa, and controls the Estate Tamil vote, so there’s no reason to think that Minister Sivalingam won’t be re-elected and (hopefully) retain control of the Ministry – but there’s no guarantee either. If he losses his seat in Parliament, it will make some of our operations in Sri Lanka more difficult. So we’ll see.

All of this, the end of the war, the feuding between the two most powerful and popular men in the country, both elections, the GSP+ issue; all of this means that Sri Lanka is very tense right now. Actually, let me be specific: right now the government is very tense, which means that Colombo is tense. I suspect that outside the capital, like during the war and past political crisis, things will be calm. And the tension isn’t, for once, ethnically driven. So at least there’s that.

Well, that’s the latest. I’ll describe more of our upcoming projects over the next three weeks… I already write novel-length posts!

So stay tuned!