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| Sunday, 15 May 2005 |
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UNP: Politics of imbecility by Jayatilleke de Silva "A politician thinks about the next election; a statesman of the next generation." - J.F. Clarke quoted by Joseph M. Fox in Executive Qualities.
While refusing to respond positively to the invitation of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to discuss with her the proposed Post-tsunami Operational Management Structure (POMS) Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has said the UNP cannot take a stand on it until the Government position is known. It was precisely to inform him about the Government position that the President invited him. Hence his refusal to meet her seems a lame excuse. Nor does it credit him with intelligence. When the President repeated the invitation in spite of his earlier refusal he had come out with further lame excuses. He has taken the President to task for saying that the POMS is not part of the peace process. According to him it would imply that the Government would be operating outside the Tokyo Declaration, which includes the Oslo Communiqu‚, and hence it would mean that the parties to the conflict would no longer be bound to explore a federal structure based on a united Sri Lanka. When the President said that POMS is not part of the peace process but only an administrative arrangement to ensure a more equitable and efficient utilization of foreign aid for post-tsunami reconstruction, she said the truth. One would recall repeated pronouncements by the LTTE after the tsunami that the priority at the moment was humanitarian assistance and not the immediate resumption of the peace process. This was in fact accepted by the Government and the donor community. It is strange that the UNP did not react in the same manner when the LTTE said the same thing. We are appalled at the imbecility of the politics of the UNP that cannot differentiate between immediate and long-term relations. While it is true that the POMS is not part of the peace process it does not imply that it has no effect on the peace process. Actually the implementation of such a structure as the POMS would bring the two combatants together in joint action, which could become a new and substantial confidence building mechanism with a direct and favourable impact on the peace process. We are also surprised how the Opposition Leader deduced that the parties would be operating outside the Tokyo Declaration and the Oslo Communiqu‚ and that they would be abandoning the search for a Federal solution based on a united Sri Lanka. Either he is suffering from dementia to the extent that he has forgotten the preamble to the Ceasefire Agreement that he himself signed that states that the overall objective of the parties is to find a negotiated settlement to the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka. The Ceasefire Agreement is still operative. Hence one finds it difficult to comprehend the logic behind the Opposition Leader's thinking and pronouncements. The Oslo Communiqu‚ was actually one issued by the Royal Norwegian Government after the Oslo Round of the peace talks. It expressed a tacit agreement (not put down on paper) by the parties to explore a federal solution. The President in her New Year Message also reiterated the desire to explore the federal solution and the Opposition Leader is only trying to confuse and scare the people by hinting that the Government is moving away from the path of peace. It should be pertinent to recall that the Draft Constitution 2000 which the UNP opposed tooth and nail in Parliament and burned its copies had envisaged a federal structure for Sri Lanka. Already there are administrative structures that have joint participation of the Government and the LTTE. Various administrative mechanisms at district level that deal with post-tsunami relief and rehabilitation activities are by nature similar to the proposed POMS. Thus it is a case of formalising structures that exist de facto at district level and providing similar structures at provincial and national levels. Moreover, the POMS will be operative only in a 2-kilometre coastal strip affected by the tsunami disaster in only six administrative districts. Thus POMS is not a multiple headed dragon that would devour either the Sinhala or Muslim communities but an administrative structure that would include all of them. On the other hand, Government's failure to set up even such a structure would give the LTTE an opportunity to convince the international community that the majority community is opposed to any devolution of power and as such they have no alternative other than to fight for a separate state of their own. Thus it would, in effect, threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. UNP opposition to it is hardly comprehensible in view of the fact that it was blaming the government for not proceeding with the ISGA proposals that had gone much far in devolving power and contained certain questionable elements. The Opposition Leader has also tried to indicate that international donors have invariably linked any joint mechanism for post-tsunami relief with the peace process. It is hardly necessary to counter this argument as the results of the Sri Lanka Development Forum that meets in Kandy on Monday would show that the two are not interlinked except in the long-term perspectives explained earlier. A news story carried elsewhere in this issue cites the Resident Representative of the World Bank in Sri Lanka Peter Harrold as telling a Press Conference in Colombo that a joint mechanism is not a pre-requisite for assistance. The behaviour of the Opposition Leader could be explained only in one way. It displays nothing but crass opportunism and politics of imbecility. Ranil Wickremesinghe is a man in a hurry. All his actions are aimed at the next Presidential election which he wants this November. The plight of tsunami victims is not his concern. The UNP did absolutely nothing to alleviate the sufferings of the affected during the fateful December days. Most of their MPS were not available for relief activities. In fact they were even complaining against the JVP that was in the forefront in relief activities at local level. However, several weeks after the disaster the UNP tried to capitalise on the plight of the victims and mobilise them against the government to their advantage. Fortunately their attempts to do so were thwarted by the political wisdom of the people who refused to join their bandwagon. They also unsuccessfully tried to arouse the coastal people against the 100-metre buffer zone. Now five months after the tsunami they have openly vowed to exorcise the 'evil UPFA'. Their main strategy seems to be to capitalise on differences of opinion within the UPFA and split it. That is why it has unleashed a relentless struggle against the main Alliance partner - the JVP. The Alliance partners, we hope would not fall prey. It is to the credit of the SLFP and the JVP that they have seen the danger and are trying to narrow their differences. Their expectations of an imminent fall of the UPFA government failed to
realise after the agreement between the Government and the CEB Unions
brokered ably by the Prime Minister. As the JVP Leader Somawansa Amarasinghe
had reportedly said the JVP remains the best ally of the SLFP. Any parting
of ways by them would be only playing into the hands of the UNP. |
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