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| Sunday, 14 December 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 Futile politics The relative success on the cricket field may not be enough to boost this festive season's revelries as Sri Lankans yet remain in suspense over the future of their governance and their hopes for a long term peace. The prevarications of our national political leaders, their reluctance to enter into new arrangements of genuinely shared State power, is not a reassuring signal to either the citizenry of the South or the people in the embattled North-East who are anxiously waiting to see a permanent end to their woes. And this is not to mention the controversy involving our very own top cricket bureaucrat. Adding more gloom to the atmosphere is the news that our politicians and some of our security officials may have actually betrayed national security interests in what seems to have been a crude political stunt ahead of the hard-fought elections in 2001. The Commission that probed the controversial raid on the Army's secret installation in a housing scheme in Athurugiriya in 2001 has firmly concluded that the raid was not a mistaken effort to uncover a guerrilla hide out as it was originally portrayed. The fact that political leaders are cynically prepared to endanger entire military strategies - in this case one of the Army's most successful operations against the separatist insurgency - in their attempts to gain political advantage over their rivals starkly reveals the true depths to which this country's political culture has sunk. Even as that incident linked to a previous election is being probed, the citizenry anxiously wonders whether it will, in the near future, be compelled to face yet another bout of political stunts and violence that now seem to be the hallmarks of elections in this country. As public opinion has clearly indicated through numerous polls and, the electorates' Will has been indicated in successive parliamentary and presidential elections, the people of Sri Lanka, of all communities and classes, generally wish the two main national political parties to shed their rivalry for power and collaborate in the urgent task of peace-making. The extent of the sharing of the national vote between these two parties is such as to clearly indicate that a consensus is essential between these two political formations if any kind of permanent settlement is to be set in place by means of constitutional reform and the re-structuring of our polity. Thus, any attempt to go to the electorate yet again is simply futile. There will be only a repeat of the current political balance of power. Worse, it will be only after a repeat of the violence and tragedy that inevitably accompanies elections in this country. Citizenship The implementation of the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Law will erase one of the darkest blots on our post-Independence national image. At long last, a whole community of people on this island, whose blood, sweat and tears earned a sizeable proportion of the national wealth for the past 150 years and more, have been drawn into the social fold as full citizens. The bitter irony of Sri Lanka's attainment of freedom from colonial bondage was that it almost immediately placed this segment of the island population, the Hillcountry Tamils, in bondage, minus citizenship and deprived of all the facilities, rights and freedoms that go with it. Both national political parties played a role in this enormous political sin. Today, after decades of suffering and absolute exploitation, all political parties in Parliament have, in passing this law, brought this shameful episode to a close. |
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