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There she goes again

The political centre of gravity is moving away from Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge, but she does not sense it. She was always late, but when she sees crossovers from the UNP and success in the peace process against the bookmaker's odds, she should have realised that her political decline is terminal.

She got booed at Biyagama however, and at the moment seems to be dead-set on undergoing the trauma of a public repudiation of her yearning to be the centre of all attention. That's a tad sad for a leader who prides herself as having imbibed politics with her mother's milk.

Her original arguments for being fearful that Mahinda Rajapakse will sell out the peace process have become so untenable that she doesn't come up with this line of attack anymore. All her guns have lost ammunition. She attacked Rajapakse for selling out to the coalition partners. Didn't happen, but she still insists on firing from the hip.

That's to caricature herself. Its comic. She does cause damage in the process, but mostly to herself though. The damage she causes the party and the President will be collateral, but it will in the end set her up for a graceless decline whereas she should have been able to exit regally and gracefully from years of public life, almost half of which was led at the helm of this country's affairs.

At least all her political grandstanding should have been done on behalf of herself. But she has hitched her wagon to forces that she wouldn't have touched with a bargepole in her glory days. To that extent, this denouement of her years in public life is hilarious for the simple reason that she doesn't see the theatre of the absurd that is reflected from it.

Warming up?

Some aspects of life were certain in those days, and one was that big match season was hot humid and dusty. Another one of the timeworn verities bites the dust. This March has been as damp and gloomy as a cold December day would be in Nuwara Eliya.

Have the climatological Cassandras been right -- and has there been a global weather pattern change that's threatening to make the match season a bit of a damp squib? We are sceptical. Man hasn't treated the environment with respect, its true, but despite that selfish agenda, the weather has behaved as if it doesn't care who owns the planet. Rains for instance, are temperamental affairs, and have never been any great respecter of big matches, as many teams that have been saved defeat by the last minute downpour would live their entire adult life to talk about. It's a homily allright - but the lesson to be had from all this is that man proposeth, and the weather disposeth.

Keeping our counsel

The LTTE lapsed into a state of anxiety over President's Counsel H L de Silva's statement that the ceasefire has been amended by implication at the Geneva talks. Tigers being afraid of lawyers may be a new one on us but this assertion by Mr. de Silva could have been dismissed as a stretch by the LTTE - but its spokespersons reacted to it with as if they have been bitten somewhat, and therein lies a twist to the whole tale.

What are the Tigers going to do about it, one can ask with utter insensitivity, but we wouldn't do that. They are obviously not going to the International Court of Justice, carrying a compliant against H. L de Silva, asking that he retract or apologise.

De Silva has done what has been hitherto, in general practise in dealing with the Liberation Tigers, thought to be impossibility. He has rattled the Tiger, perhaps unwittingly. We are all sensitive to that at this time when there is rapprochement, and a sense of new beginning.

But that wouldn't preclude any member of any party to the negotiations from having his own view on the ceasefire, would it? De Silva is not in court, and the fact that he was part of the negotiating team does not make his pronouncements gospel, but yet, nothing stops him from making his own judgments in public. After eons, the Sri Lankan team seems to have people who air diverse views, and there is nothing wrong in this as the 'narrative' cannot be determined by one party to the talks alone, as much as it cannot be determined by one member of one party.

H. L. de Silva, in however tentative a way it may be, has contributed to part of the 'narrative'. We are aware of the post-modern connotations of using the word narrative here, but its another way of saying that on the Sri Lankan side, they are not working to any given script or somebody else's script this time. What's important is that there are various narratives, but there is one uplifting peace bid.

H. L. de Silva's statement, given what's said above, shouldn't cause apoplexy either in the North or South. That sort of calm reaction we daresay will help build mutual respect. There is a chance that the Liberation Tigers are for once coming around to the idea that on the Sri Lankan side of the divide, people can actually put the thinking caps on and come up with some ideas whether they are bankable or not.

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