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Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake

The Big Tiger Chief will make his annual pronouncement today and he will be listened to with unusual interest speaking as he will in the immediate aftermath of the installation of a new President in Colombo. Over the years Mr. Prabhakaran has with characteristic disdain dismissed Sri Lankan elections as Sinhala politics having no bearing on the Tamil people and the fact that he is able to translate this disdain into palpable reality was borne out by the boycott which the LTTE imposed on the Tamil people of the election on November 17.

Consequent to the results it has become fashionable to claim that Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse is only the President of the Sinhalese and as a corollary that he is a 'hardliner' on the National Question. On the first count the new President had no option (the Tamils of the North and parts of the East being precluded from the elections) while what is easily forgotten is that in recent times there has been an amazing transference of the 'hardline' and 'moderate' positions. Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, who signed the Ceasefire Agreement with the LTTE for example, was until 1994 a key Cabinet Minister and sometime Prime Minister of a Government which prosecuted an energetic war against the LTTE. What is more this Government turned its guns not merely on the LTTE but Tamils as a whole by burning the Jaffna Public Library and presiding over the infamous Black July of 1983.

Is it fair to dismiss President Rajapakse then as a 'hardliner' even before he has been heard on account of his alliance with the JVP and the JHU? On the same token then Mr. Prabhakaran is the biggest 'hardliner' around on account of his insistence on a separate state. But we shall not be so unkind to him for he is the product of history as much as any Sinhala politician of the South.

It is not any inborn quality in an individual but surrounding political and social circumstances which make him or her a hardliner or moderate, a liberal or a tyrant. Mr. Prabhakaran for example is the supreme product of the decay of the National Question due to the failure of the post-Independence national leadership to build the Ceylonese nation (as it was then) round itself. The anglicised bourgeois leadership which replaced the British Raj was so alienated from the ways of the mass of the people (whether Sinhala or Tamil) that they were content to mimic their departed masters. The result was that they failed to forge a single Ceylonese nationalism subsuming communal identities and give a sense of fresh national identity to a long subjugated people. For example if Sinhala and Tamil had been made the national languages in the immediate aftermath of Independence it is possible that the virulent form which the Sinhala-Tamil conflict assumed in later years could have been avoided.

Similarly if there had been all-round development of the country the cry for a federal state could have been avoided. What is tragic is that today nearly six decades after Independence the deep South (from which the new President hails) is as backward as the arid North for which the LTTE is waging its separatist war. Such were the follies of the smug, deracinated leadership which stepped into the white man's shoes. The result of this indifference to the cultural aspirations of the people was the eruption of opposite nationalisms on both sides of the communal divide. Sinhala nationalism took the form of Sinhala Only as the language of the state while Tamil nationalism emerged as a campaign for a federal state evolving in time to a separate state centred on what was claimed to be the 'traditional Tamil homelands' in the North and the East. The situation was aggravated by Sinhalese being settled in these areas under Government-sponsored colonisation schemes and soon what was a language battle snowballed into a struggle for territory where rival identities became locked in mortal combat.

To characterise President Rajapakse as a 'hardliner' on account of his JVP and JHU allies is therefore not very helpful because the attitude of these two parties towards the LTTE is in substantial measure the product of the LTTE's own actions. After all political violence is not a method unknown to the JVP. It is almost as if the JVP sees in the LTTE its mirror image.

It is the LTTE's authoritarianism which sets off the JVP's vein of Sinhala majoritarianism which is anyway alien to the categories of orthodox Marxism. In fact as a party of the radical petit bourgeoisie primarily of the Sinhalese the JVP has more in common with the LTTE, a movement of a militant Tamil petit bourgeoisie and there is no reason to believe that given the proper political circumstances there can be no reaching out between the two parties.

In fact, the narrow margin of the Rajapakse victory holds out hope of a speedy movement towards negotiations. If the President had won overwhelmingly that could well have been exploited by extremist Sinhala opinion as a vindication of its position. The results however show that the electorate while rejecting the UNP's accommodationist stance towards the LTTE has voted for Mr. Rajapakse's line of a honourable peace.

So whatever the word from the Wanni will be today President Rajapakse will do well as he has already promised to prepare the Southern electorate for negotiations and even a radical solution. Part of the reason for the breakdown of talks during the Wickremesinghe administration was that the CFA from which the peace process stemmed was hatched in secrecy and delivered stealthily. Therefore, any future negotiations must take a different course. The Rajapakse administration must prepare southern opinion at its broadest and deepest ends for a negotiated settlement. For its part the LTTE itself has to be flexible in its stance. Explaining why the Tamil people should boycott the Presidential Election 'Dedunna' the Sinhala organ of the LTTE has said editorially that the Tamil people can not wait till freedom and democracy fall into their laps from the hands of the Sinhala rulers. They have to fashion their freedom and the equitable society of their expectations with their own hands.

Addressing the Sinhala people the paper says the highest contribution the Sinhalese with a conscience can make is to safeguard the Tamil people's freedom struggle and think of ways of liberating themselves as well from the yoke of slavery. That is the only way to true freedom and true solidarity.

This clarion call to the Sinhala people sounds uncannily like a socialist appeal to brotherhood and solidarity but it is difficult to believe that it will find much resonance as long as the LTTE pursues military tactics to achieve political goals. The LTTE, of course, will retaliate that it was driven to violence because Sinhala Governments of all colourations had consistently reneged on promises made to the Tamil people.

That can not be disputed but now that the new Government has expressed its willingness to begin a fresh round of talks the LTTE must place politics above military objectives and in the spirit of the 'Dedunna' editorial convince the Sinhala people that they are indeed ready for a common approach to achieve that freedom and solidarity which its propagandists have set before all the Sri Lankan people as the new Jerusalem of their dreams.

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