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| Sunday, 2 November 2003 |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 1 429239 / 331181 Fax : 94 1 429230 Re-integration The attack by extremist communal elements against a festival of the arts bringing together the Sinhala and Tamil cultures came virtually on the eve of the announcement by the LTTE of its proposals for an interim administration for the North-East region. The coincidence is rather ominous. After all, the LTTE, which has led the Eelamist secessionist insurgency for nearly three decades, is now submitting for negotiation its own proposals for a new and decisive stage in the search for a conclusive end to that insurgency. They are proposals for an 'interim administration' or temporary form of governing authority, that will oversee affairs in the North-East until a final settlement produces a new and permanent political structure that will comprehensively meet the conditions for ending the war. The overall nature and intent of the LTTE proposals are significant. They are oriented towards a larger political solution that will re-integrate a fractured Sri Lankan State that has been torn asunder by ethnic domination, inter-communal violence, and finally, a brutal war that has caused social, economic and ecological devastation as never before in this island society's long history. While successive governments have formulated proposals for both interim as well as the final stages of a political settlement, and the Tamil leadership has previously presented certain broad principles for a full settlement that avoids secession, the proposals submitted by the LTTE on Friday are the first Tamil proposals to concretely address various needs of governance and social management inherent in the process towards a permanent settlement. In this case, the proposals are intended as an interim structure and, it must necessarily be so. In this, the LTTE itself recognises that there is much more to be done and a long way more to go before a final settlement is worked out. The Government has already given its first response on receiving the LTTE proposals via the Norwegian Ambassador. The most important element of the Government's initial response is its stated intention of moving quickly toward arranging for a new round of talks. This pronouncement is important in that it indicates the Government is seizing the opportunity to proceed with the peace process without any further delay and without allowing anything to serve as an obstacle. The current peace process seems to have reached a certain maturity in that both sides have now presented substantive positions that can be taken up for intensive discussion, clarification, reasoning, bargaining and collective agreement. At last both sides know, at least broadly, what each side wants and is also prepared to acknowledge as the parameters for negotiation. Now, it is to be hoped that both the Government's as well as the LTTE's documents will come to be used as a common basis for reaching agreement. It will necessarily be a slow process in which agreement is reached on the various aspects of the process of political settlement as and when they are taken up for negotiation. That there may be crucial differences between the Government's and LTTE's positions is also very relevant, especially in envisaging the length and complexity of the negotiations that lie ahead. But once the negotiations revive, it is to be hoped that the negotiators from both sides, and mediators, use both sets of proposals as a common resource of ideas from which both sides could take up elements to meet the various needs that must be addressed in a final settlement. What remains to be seen is whether political dissensions within Sri Lankan society, as violently demonstrated at the New Town Hall last week, will not be exacerbated either by the forces of extremism or by over-zealous measures to counter such extremism. While those groups that attacked the Sinhala-Tamil Cultural Festival are, no doubt, no longer representative of the mainstream, their very marginalisation, if forced on them unfairly, could drive them to measures even more extreme than mere fisticuffs and stone-throwing. |
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