|
|
|
| Sunday, 12 March 2006 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Mahindapala's way of building consensus Debate: A Reply to H.L.D. Mahindapala's article of last week, by Chula De Silva It is interesting to note that Mr H.L.D. Mahindapala headlines his article 'building consensus with the enemies of peace.' Ranil Wickremesinghe signed the ceasefire agreement with the LTTE and if that qualifies him to be an enemy of pace, so be it. But may we assume that Mr Mahindapala is correct and that Wickremesinghe and Chandrika Kumaratunga are both enemies of peace. If one does not build consensus with one's enemies, what is the meaning of the word consensus? Reaching out to 'enemies' is what consensus is all about. Argument So it appears that Mr Mahindapala has not come to terms with the fundamentals of this argument, which is that Rajapakse should be looking to build consensus with everyone, and that means those who are perceived to be enemies,. Mr Mahindapala may not have heard Nelson Mandela say "we have to build peace with enemies, not with friends." It's the same as saying "we have to build consensus with enemies, not with friends." I have to also thank Mr Mahindapala for making my argument on my behalf, better perhaps than I could have myself as he is a well known journalist and a writer and I am not. With all the writing skills at his comment, Mr Mahindapala states that the day the southern political leadership says 'enough is enough' is the day that peace will dawn. This is a significant admission on the part of a person such as Mr Mahindapala. He is justifiably a person who comes across as being extremely critical of the LTTE and its leader. But, one does not need to be a rocket scientist to notice that in this sentence he has admitted that the key for a long lasting peace lies in forging a southern consensus. This is not going to be an easy thing. It is his implication that it is difficult. It is Mr Mahindapala's strong implication in saying "enough is enough" that it is difficult to forge a southern consensus and that it has been tried for a very long time without success. Peace talks Making some dubious noises in the background is not the way to build consensus writes Mr Mahindapala. I would agree with that. But, take the recent peace talks in Geneva. What are the dubious noises that the Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga combination made to undermine the talks? This seems to be the whole problem. Mr Mahindapala wants the opposition and Mrs Kumaratunga whom he perceives as being in opposition to president Rajapakse, to shout down the peace process. Mr Mahindapala wants that to happen so that he can then turn around and say that they are not cooperating. But they have been more supportive than that. None of them at any point has said that the recent talks are of no use, or that the ceasefire agreement should not be strengthened. They have always been for the strengthening of the ceasefire agreement, which is exactly what the negotiating team representing president Rajapakse's government has gone to Celigny in Geneva and done -- they have strengthened the ceasefire agreement. Mr Mahindapala may have scarcely noticed it, but it is the president's coalition partners who raised hell about the fact that the ceasefire agreement was not 'strengthened.' What does this show? Ranil Wickremesinghe is offering a olive branch , and his actions in this regard are not confined to "making a few dubious noises in the background." Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe did come on national television and say that there is no alternative to the ceasefire agreement and that it remains the same, the same as when he signed it. It follows therefore that there is no problem for Mr Wickremesinghe to offer the olive branch to the president, which is exactly what he is doing. There is no problem for him to offer the olive branch, because on the issue of the CFA there is no vast disagreement between Mr Wickremesinghe and Mr Rajapakse. This is why I wrote that there is an emerging consensus. There is an emerging consensus almost by accident, as it is said, by default. It is not strange therefore that I have said "there is an emerging consensus" even though Mr Mahindapala and other such writers are trying their best to torpedo it. Mr Mahindapala is attempting to make tortured arguments by saying that no unqualified support has been offered by Wickremesinghe? Who offers unqualified support these days? It is indeed a tortured argument to say that there is no unqualified support. The rational thing to say would be that he has offered very reasonable support -- he has not been disruptive and taken-on and attacked the entire peace process as it has been the national habit on the part of opposition parties in the past. A rational judgment will be a relative judgement. Instead of this Mahindapala is Mahindapala, in asking Wickremesinghe to give absolute unqualified support. But this is the closest that any Sri Lankan leader has come to offering unqualified support. Olive branch He also conveniently forgets the argument made by me that it is to president Rajapakse's credit that Ranil Wickremesinghe has been able to offer this olive branch without being scoffed at. As I wrote in my earlier letter to Mahindapala, both Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe are consensus builders. Therefore it is clear that president Rajapakse is willing to work with the reasonable support that Wickremesinghe has to offer. What more evidence of this than the photographs that have appeared in almost all national newspapers of the UNP top guard, Moragoda, GL Peiris etc., meeting president Rajapakse and exchanging views at the all party sessions which were centred around the ongoing peace process, the post Geneva phase. When the proof of the pudding is in the eating, Mahindapala calls it dubious, noise being made in the background? Some of the contradictions in what Mr Mahindapala states are amazing indeed. He writes that the south of the country is in tatters, that it is disunited as the UNP is. That being the case according to him, he wants to continue to keep it in tatters, because at the slightest sign of emerging consensus such as what we see when we have a look at those photographs, Mr Mahindapala rushes to condemn the leader of the opposition and the former premier of the country. He writes that they should issue a joint statement that they will offer unconditional support to president Rajapakse. Hara kiri This is so ludicrous that its like saying the opposition should disband itself and promptly join the government. Consensus does not mean that the opposition is going to commit hara kiri. In which country is the opposition going to do something like that? Consensus in essence and even in dictionary meaning is that people with diverse and disparate views will come together in common cause while retaining their own identity. It does not mean subsuming of each party's own identity, as Mahindapala very naively assumes. I feel I have barely taken on Mr Mahindapala but I have already written over a few pages on my word processor. I shall stop here adding that Mr Mahindapala acknowledges that the Wijewardene tradition was not narrowly nationalist when he says that Esmond Wickremesinghe veered from that original Wijewardene tradition. |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Produced by Lake House |
