Gotabaya undecided on entering politics; says he’s studying Trump

War crime investigations backed by some Western countries and the United Nations will exacerbate the differences between Sri Lanka’s two main ethnic groups instead of uniting them, former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa said.

Gotabaya made his comments four days after the U.N. Human Rights Council said Sri Lanka must make more progress towards meeting commitments to establishing a credible investigation into alleged war crimes during the country’s civil war.

The United Nations originally asked Sri Lanka to have foreign judges run the war crime probe focusing particularly on the last few days of the conflict. But President Maithripala Sirisena later said he would not agree to having foreign judges.

“How can you talk about investigations and foreign judges at the same time bringing these communities together?” he told the Foreign Correspondents Association of Sri Lanka late on Monday.

“By trying to do these things, you only try to bring people apart. If you think like that, there won’t be reconciliation at all. After a war, what can we do? Going back and harping on these things will never bring communities together. That will widen the gap.”

He also said that when Tamils talk about war crime probes, ethnic majority Sinhalese speak of the massacre of Buddhist priests and police and the horrors they experienced during the war, and that that could slow the postwar healing process.

The government has already launched some related investigations into alleged war crimes, but ethnic-minority Tamils have complained about the sluggish pace of probes.

On allegations of huge casualties in the war, ranging from 40,000 to 150,000, Gotabaya said that empirical evidence does not support these figures. The government census department had done a survey which revealed a death toll of 7,000 to 8,000. UNICEF had done an independent survey which did not support the allegations. Even the UN has not officially put out the figure of 40,000 killed.

Data available with the World Food Program and the District Government Agents had indicated a population of 300,000 in the war zone out of which most crossed over to the government side and were lodged in camps.

Asked about forced disappearances, he said that the allegations need to be investigated, and for that, people need to give credible evidence and identify the perpetrators, things which are lacking now.

Gotabaya Rajaksa, the most influential government officer in the Rajapaksa government, also hinted at a possible entry into active politics in future.

“I have not decided yet,” he told foreign correspondents here, without ruling out the option. A few of his supporters have been floating the idea of his presidential candidacy in 2020.

“If I can do something for the country, I will do that. I have that capability and I have proved it — whether during the war or in urban development. I did what nobody had done,” said the brother of ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who led the armed forces against the LTTE.

He was willing to work with a leader whose policies were agreeable, he said.

With regard to allegations of “top-secret death squads” during the Rajapaksa regime, Gotabaya Rajapaksa said there were no such units while claiming that “a lot of things happened without my knowledge.” 

He added that he was working more at the “policy and strategy-level and not on things at the tactical-level”.

Observing that he had never been a politician, unlike his family members who had been in politics since 1935, he said: “But Donald Trump has come from [business]. We have to see.” 

Asked if he considered the U.S. President a model, he said: “Yes, I am looking at him and studying him.”

Source: Reuters/Hindu/ENS

-Agencies