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| Sunday, 11 December 2005 |
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Who is to bell the cat? Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake Is there no end to the winter of our long discontent? This question will occur to any reasonable-minded citizen watching unfolding events. A new President has assumed office after an election which even the ranks of Tuscany could not disparage. It was an entirely different matter that the LTTE imposed a boycott on the Tamil people of the North although this has naturally caused chagrin in the losing camp. But only the churlish will claim that this has undermined President Mahinda Rajapakse's legitimacy to that office. But what do we now witness? The scene would be comic if not for its tragic proportions. On one hand we have the parrot cry on the part of sections of the international press and their pet local poodles that a hard liner has ascended the throne. There are other more bizarre elements who even cast the President as a war-monger. And as if to make reality out of fiction the LTTE has begun attacking the armed forces in the Northern and Eastern provinces. Schoolboys are being provoked to attack soldiers who are bound by a Ceasefire Agreement. Diabolical attempts are made to pit the Muslim people against the Rajapakse administration. It is not the easiest of exercises to read the mind of the reclusive LTTE chieftain cocooned in his Wanni enclave but obviously he has his own two-track approach to the problem. While the new President is doing his best to forge a wide-ranging Southern consensus on a settlement to the National Question before negotiating with the LTTE Mr. Prabhakaran also has an understandable problem. On one hand he has to give time to the new President which the oracular Anton Balasingham speaking from London has said could be as much as a year. On the opposite pole he can not also being seen as letting down his cadres to whom he is the Messiah. So we have the contradiction of the LTTE being ready to do business with the 'pragmatic and realist' President while attacking the armed forces and spreading dismay and gloom. But for his own part President Rajapakse too has shown a flair for real politik. While calling for a negotiated settlement he has not neglected the military flank. The new Defence Ministry Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse and the new Army Commander Lt. General Sarath Fonseka are both hardened military commanders with a wide knowledge of the theatre of our tragic fratricidal war. So does all this mean that war is imminent? Only the feeble-minded will be persuaded to accept such a supposition. Just as much as President Rajapakse has to ponder issues of war and peace Mr. Prabhakaran in his own way has to face the same intricacies and ramifications. So who will bell the cat, cut the Gordian knot? Much has been made of the President's alleged cold shoulder to Norway and the condemnation of that country by his ally the JVP. But what President Rajapakse obviously intends is to involve the international community on the widest possible scale as the guarantors of our peace. If he has given preference to Asian countries and most notably India that is obviously because of geographical proximity and common spiritual ties. No man is an island and likewise no island can be insular. Just as we as Sri Lankans must appreciate this reality our international friends too must appreciate the concerns and anxieties (some times deteriorating into phobias) which grip Sri Lanka's communities and have contributed to poison the blood stream of this nation. Nobody would like the sound of the war drum. But neither will most people
countenance the dismemberment of the country. If Sri Lanka is today at the
cross-roads it is up to her own communities to settle their problems. But we
also need the gaze of the world and its hand on our shoulder as we come to
grips with our agonising dilemma. |
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