Overcoming the disaster

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January 1, 2005
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Victor Ivan treats the December 2004 tsunami as a test the Sri Lankan state failed. Warning instruments existed and went unused; the armed forces were instructed too late to be effective outside the north-east where they were already concentrated. Forty-eight hours after the waves the government allocated Rs 100 million in urgent relief — a hundred rupees a head for a million destitute — and eight days later the President's office put reconstruction at Rs 100 billion against the Central Bank's provisional Rs 400 billion, a sum equal to a full year of government spending or three years of Tokyo consortium aid. In twenty minutes the country lost lives and property comparable to twenty years of war. Ivan argues the two catastrophes cannot be addressed separately, since housing tsunami victims alone would affront those displaced by the fighting, and calls for a two-year all-party government charged with physical reconstruction and with enacting a new constitution — something he thinks civil society will have to compel the parties to accept.

The tsunami tragedy may be considered an instance where the state and the politics of Sri Lanka were subjected to a severe test.

In spite of the fact that there were all the instruments necessary to fore- see the coming calamity, Sri Lanka was unable to make use of them. Not only was there a failure to make use of the possibility of minimizing the loss of life by the calamity, the government’s failure to minimize the loss of life through effective action in- creased the loss of life and property. If the armed forces could have been used immediately after the disaster, the resultant loss of life could have been reduced and it might have been possible to remove the dead bodies, clear the roads and bring them to an appropriate condition in which they could be used for traffic much ear- lier.

However, the three armed forces received the necessary advice very much later. Consequently they were unable to render an immediate and efficient service except in the north- eastern areas where the three forces were largely concentrated. 

The state also failed to display a large approach fitting the magnitude of the happening. The government announced, 48 hours after the calamity, that a sum Rs100 million was allocated for urgent relief. When the number of persons made destitute is considered to be a million, the amount that each person would get is Rs100. This cer- tainly shows that the government did not have a sound grasp of the magni- tude of the calamity. 

A statement issued by the Presi- dent’s office eight days after the event was that the President’s assessment of the cost of rebuilding the country was Rs100 billion. That also shows the government’s failure to portray the magni- tude of the tragedy realistically. 

The fact that a loss of life and property equal to that caused by the war that had dragged on for more than 20 years was caused within 20 minutes of this disaster may be considered a fate- ful feature of this natural disaster. The number of deaths and disappearances will be nearly 50,000. The number of those made destitute is more than a million. According to the provisional estimate of the Central Bank, the cost of the disaster is Rs400 billion. That is equal to the value of the government’s total expenditure for one year and the total allocated for three years for Sri Lanka by the Tokyo aid consortium. 

The problem of destitution so far had been confined to the Tamil and Muslim people of the northeast, but now it has become a general prob- lem of the Sinhala people of the south too.

A program that would provide homes to those who lost their houses in the tsunami disaster alone, would inevitably displease those who lost their houses due to the war. This shows that the solutions to be offered cannot be confined to the victims of the tsunami tragedy alone. This shows that the destruction caused by the eth- nic problem and the war has to be tak- en together with the tsunami tragedy, and that an approach is necessary that would bring solutions to both prob- lems at the same time. 

That will have to be a massive program of rebuilding the towns, the infrastructural facilities and the hous- es as well as a program of reorganization of the state which is decaying. In short, it has to be a program that will give solutions to the political problems raised by the war and the problems caused by the tsunami, in addition to being a program that will seek solutions to the social economic problems created by the war and the tsunami. 

However, the state does not ap- pear to have a broad vision required for the purpose. In order to overcome the massive destruction caused by this tragedy all the political parties must get together and function under a common political umbrella for at least a limited period of time. It must be an all-party government formed for a period of two years, and the physical re-building of the country and the re- organisation of the state must be made the main aim of that temporary all- party government. Building of houses and rebuilding of infrastructural facili- ties destroyed by the tsunami and the war must be the aim of the physical reforms, and the aim of the political reforms must be to enact a new constitution for an efficient and democratic state which protects the rights of all the people, and is responsible to the people and is respected by all. This disaster can be overcome only if the country adopts such a program. Such a thing can happen only if the civil society compels the political parties to take up such a program.