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| Sunday, 14 December 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Political crisis: Regaining the peace agenda Sixth Sense by Raj Gonsalkorale LTTE leader Prabakaran has to be a leader who has more ammunition in his armoury than surface-to-surface missiles and 120 mm cannons. No doubt he has achieved his current status through an abundance of terror, summary executions, and coercion. While the issue of terror is a debatable one, with the LTTE and many political commentators claiming that the Sri Lankan State has also resorted to state terrorism, the other two things have been the mainstays of the LTTE leader's armoury since he began his campaign for a separate state. Prabakarans tactics have not been limited to summary executions and coercion. They have included a sustained campaign to portray successive governments of Sri Lanka, and the Sinhala people, as murderers intent on destroying the Tamil identity and Tamil culture in Sri Lanka. Many local as well as international institutions have been very successfully lobbied by the Tamil Diaspora, at the instigation of the LTTE, to promote their propaganda campaigns. The LTTE has had widespread success and clearly, they have had the better of the propaganda battle. The only person who tried valiantly to mount an alternative campaign to demonstrate to the world that everything the LTTE said was not true, was Mr Lakshman Kadiragarmar during his tenure as Foreign Minister in the Chandrika Kumaratunga government. He made significant progress, and his efforts, more than anyone else's, resulted in the banning of the LTTE in the USA, the UK and India, and it cast the spotlight on them in other countries such as Australia with the intelligence organisations in those countries increasing their vigilance on illegal activities engaged in by the LTTE. What the current government leadership in Sri Lanka, and many local and international media institutions, seem to forget or not recognise, is the effort made by the previous Chandrika Kumaratunga government, and in particular its Foreign Minister, to clearly and firmly lay down the agenda for finding ways and means of settling the conflict by peaceful means. It is politically expedient for the Wickremasighe government to ignore the strategy and tactics adopted by the previous government. This could be because they have blood on their hands, not having supported the peace negotiations based on the proposals introduced by the previous government, and the resulting resumption and escalation of the war. It is also perhaps politically expedient for the current government to ignore the fact that the LTTE may never have agreed to a ceasefire and commenced discussions, if not for the hard work done by Kadiragarmar. Since the defeat of the Kumaratunga government, the LTTE has changed tactics and successfully wrested control of the agenda, and they alone have fiddled while the South has allowed itself to burn, figuratively of course. World leaders like Bush and Blair, have been ardently pushing for a peaceful solution to this conflict, and they have joined a chorus of other governments and international institutions pressurising the Sri Lankan power centres, the President and the Prime Minister, to commence peace talks with the LTTE, and grant them a political package that many of these leaders would have very likely strenuously rejected in their own countries. While there may be numerous reasons for the intense interest shown by the international community in recent times, it cannot be denied that the change of tactics by the LTTE has contributed significantly to this change of heart. Today, Prabakaran has nearly become the third VIP that a visiting foreign dignitary should meet, after the President and the Prime Minister. To become such a VIP has been a long and bloody journey for a virulent terrorist leader responsible for the deaths of so many innocent civilians and leaders both in Sri Lanka and India. However, seen from the prism of contemporary reality, can anyone blame Prabakaran for the new image he has created for himself? Can anyone doubt that he has achieved this ascendant position partly due to his own tenacity and partly due to the ineptness of our Southern leaders? After all, we have had a procession of leaders since independence, each opposing the other, and allowing a comparatively rudimentary conflict to fester into the sore it has become today. This situation still continues and current indications are that the President-Prime Minister power sharing consensus is yet to be resolved. In addition to the negative image this continues to create, it further enhances the LTTE leader's position as the man of peace who is waiting for the Sri Lankan (Sinhalese, in the eyes of the LTTE propaganda campaign) power struggle to come to a end. It rightly adds to Prabakaran's claim that neither he nor the Tamil community can trust the Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) leadership to negotiate a solution in good faith. Yet again, it is Prabakaran who is calling the tune and setting the agenda. Surely, isn't it time that the Sri Lankan leadership had some say in the formulation of a future agenda? Why is it that we have allowed the LTTE to deviate from their original chosen path of an interim solution, to overcome, in their own words, the ineptitude of the Sri Lankan government in addressing the critical issue of reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement? Why have we allowed this priority to be muddled with a proposed structure that is far beyond an interim solution meant to address these issues? From an LTTE point of view, this is well understood, as they stand to benefit most when they set the agenda and when they are in the driving seat. It serves their interests to propose the most extreme of ambit claims and state their expectations very clearly and without any ambiguity, lest anyone should say at a later date that they said something then and are saying something different now. It also serves them to place on record that they are not agreeable to share any power with the power centres in the South and that their concept of power sharing is to share the land (and sea) mass of the country, and administer their share of the land and the sea completely independent of those administering the South. If this is not a separate State, then what is? Rightfully, many can ask the question as to how the South can regain the agenda, and prevent the breaking of the country into two separate States. The issue really should not be merely the prevention of such a break up. It should be a matter of asking some questions as to why it should break up in order to find a solution to the ongoing conflict, and then proposing a solution for issues that are at the centre of the conflict. That is what should really be the challenge for the two power centres in the South, not the ongoing bickering as to who should or should not have control of defence. As noted in a previous column, there cannot be and should not be a debate over who should have control over defence, as that function is the responsibility of the President as per the constitution of the country. The challenge, and the responsibility of the President and the Prime Minister is to wrest control of the agenda - not to make it a Southern (or Sinhala) prerogative, but to make it a national, inclusive paradigm so that the LTTE ceases to be the sole organisation which is dictating the agenda. The ongoing feud between the President and the Prime Minister does not give an indication to anyone, least of all the LTTE and the Tamil community, that the Southern power centres are interested or even capable of making this conflict resolution exercise a national process. The recent overtures of the President gives some hope that she is determined to make it a national issue, but the Prime Minister's prevarication leaves others with the perception that he wants it to be a political party issue. Whatever political motives the President may have for the current strategy she has adopted, she has given the perception that she wishes to wrest control of the agenda and to make it a truly national process. Herein lies the difference between the perceived impressions that the general public has been left with in regard to the way the two power centres seem to have approached the conflict between the two of them. It is time that the President and the Prime Minister made some firm decisions. They should make the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the North and East a priority for the country and involve the LTTE in all decision making processes. If other Tamil political parties are agreeable to make the LTTE their sole representative in these decision making processes, that should be recognised, as that is a decision for the Tamil community. A similar involvement of the Muslim community needs to be recognised in developing the Eastern province. Perhaps a process such as the Marshall Plan should be introduced to undertake this reconstruction and rehabilitation, along with a parallel process to commence discussions on a broader political solution to the conflict. If all the protagonists to this conflict are genuinely interested in the welfare of the people who have been most affected by the 20 year war, and they are willing to eschew violence as a means of achieving a political objective, there should not be any reason why the reconstruction process cannot run parallel to a political conflict resolution process. Such idealism could be nothing but wishful thinking! A Marshall plan type strategy to undertake the reconstruction of the North and East could even be managed by a body that is neither a LTTE institution or a Sri Lanka government institution. A policy making body comprising the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government and the Muslim community could be entrusted with the task of making political decisions related to reconstruction and rehabilitation a well as re settlement. There is no reason why some of the administrative processes cannot function as they are now functioning, with the LTTE continuing to carry them out in the areas under their control, and the Sri Lankan government doing so in areas under government control. This is by no means an ideal situation, but it might be the only way out of the impasse in recognition of realities on the ground. Considering that a form of Federalism seems inevitable in the longer term, and as many administrative functions are devolved in a federal structure, it should be quite conceivable for the LTTE to be given more formal recognition carry out some of these functions. A national agenda that recognises these parallel processes and the ground realities should pave the way for an end to the current impasse. |
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