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| Sunday, 28 December 2003 |
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Editorial |  |
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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 11 2429239 / 2331181 Fax : 94 11 2429230 How do we discover the golden mean? And so the editorialist gets up on his annual pulpit to survey the state of the nation and the world during the year which is fast receding and draw his portentous lessons there from. In the big wide world the most striking event no doubt was the Bush-Blair blitzkreig on Iraq but even with Iraq over-run and Saddam Hussein captured there is no end to the terror and blood-letting the moral of which perhaps is that self-styled crusades are not always destined to succeed and that nationalist zealotry is not so easy to crush as these crusaders might fondly imagine. In Sri Lanka, of course, the most momentous event was no doubt the seeming collapse of the tenuous co-habitation which the political pundits had been seeking to promote between the President and the Cabinet of Ministers for the last two years. As the year fades away there is yet no sign of the future of this arrangement with both parties being seemingly satisfied to put the process on hold until the Christmas and New Year revelries are completed. Is this a sign of realism on the part of the political establishment or a symptom of that monumental self-complacency for which the Sri Lankans are justly famous? Only time will tell but time is running out fast. The pundits and the wise-acres, the professional do-gooders and the interest groups are all agreed that only a consensus between the two main political parties of the South can put the peace process back on track but the magic formula or the manthram which can work this trick continues to elude the nation. Cannot the United National Front Government manage the peace process without the three portfolios of which they have been deprived? Conversely can not there be some give-and-take, some half-way house on the lines suggested by President Kumaratunga where both parties have a stake in the Defence Ministry? Once the revelry dies down and the euphoria of celebration is dissipated these are the hard truths and realities which the country will have to face in 2004 which can well be a make or break year for the fragile Sri Lankan nation and the earlier the national leadership comes to grips with these issues the better it will be for our uncertain political health. As the LTTE has indicated if the Southern leadership has to get its act together in order for the peace process to be restored is there any fundamental differences about the approach to peace? Are there sections who feel that peace is being obtained at a cost they can not bear? What are the conditions, circumstances and parameters of the peace which we desire? While there is no difference of opinion on the need for peace all kinds of opinion in our sadly fragmented society will have their own ideas about the peace which they desire. This is not a sentiment confined to the Sinhala polity, the familiar bogey, alone, as the case of the TULF President Mr. V. Anandasangari demonstrates. While recognising the desire of the Tamil people to live in dignity in a multifarious Sri Lankan society that desire has to be tied both to the aspirations of other communities as well as the need for continuing with the cherished tradition of social democracy in the country. The challenge before the national political leadership, straddling all communities and political complexions, in 2004 will be to discover the Golden Mean by which this sadly befuddled nation will be able to recover itself.
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