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Contours of peacemaking

Round 2 as the news-writers are prone to dub it, will get under way this week, when the rest of Sri Lanka will be struggling to shake themselves from the torpor of New Year overindulgence.

This round to be held at a scenic lakeside Swiss resort is getting under- way in much the same way that other rounds of talks have begun - with a good deal of anxiety written into the script.

But, the questions concerning travel arrangements etc., for the negotiating parties are minor matters in contrast to the more important issue of maintaining a tenable truce. But, the spirit of compromise prevailed at the last round, which probably means that both parties have grasped the fact that peacemaking entails losing face to some extent. If both sides lose face simultaneously however, the net gain could be totted up to both parties.

What both sides have to watch though, are their respective war constituencies. The Liberation Tigers have a volatile crowd of tub-thumping warmongers, particularly in the diaspora who are LTTE stakeholders to boot, as they have contributed to the organisation's kitty.

These are the hard facts, and they have to be factored into any realistic equation for predicting outcomes of negotiations. If the LTTE's war constituency is still very virile the President's one however is now a bit blunted - even wounded. Reasons for this are best left unsaid at the moment.

This and other reasons make it important for the negotiators on the state-side of the divide to be somewhat tolerant of the LTTE with regard to the minor irritants at least. If both parties got as far as the negotiating table in the first place, its futile getting into a twist over details and incidental matters.

If Afghanistan and some of the other failed states on the map can veer towards democracy, its fair to consider that the terrain held by the LTTE could be democratised and made functional after decades of anarchy. This, as a wag quipped, is 'open season' for problem-states to return back to the fold. In the interests of such a return to normalcy, the negotiators could be accommodative while being cautious.

Here we grow again

Sri Lankans are a happily sceptical lot. Having been serially promised Shangri-la, they are now immune to proclamations of good-times that always turn out to be pledges held out for false dawns.

But it will still be horrid on anybody's part - a little ghoulish -not to note in this season of renewal, the Sinhala and Hindu New Year, that there is five per cent growth of the economy. If this is a flash in the pan, it comes at a good time at least, when there is good cheer hope and a sense of resurgence.

This may sound however, as if it's a nauseating nod at the clich. Renewal and hope - these words, if they are uttered ritually, could sound hollow at the best of times.

But, it's a bit of insanity to pass up what looks even faintly like an opportunity. Neo liberal capitalists have looked at growth as the manthra for the good life. Their handmaidens in the elite blue-chip companies have prayed for a government of capitalist friendly buccaneers.

But such robber barons were never elected at recent polls. In their place is a government that is middle-of-the -road, but yet, not woolly-headed socialist. It's under this dispensation, against all of the forecast odds, that a five per cent growth is being noted by even the most resistant of statisticians.

This could rationally and in the normal course of events mean only one thing, which is that one does not need a government of fire- breathing capitalist dragons to spur the country's growth rate. If a middle-of- the road government presides over a five per cent growth rate, it should normally mean that the doomsayers were wrong. There is a distinct possibility for a growth of capital under a government that was feared to discourage and shoo away the investors.

The issue is about conventional wisdom. It was the conventional wisdom which held that only a certain type of government could encourage growth and create wealth. But capitalists are impatient, and capital doesn't wait.

Venture capitalists convert every disadvantage into an advantage, and the disadvantage of having what is seen as a straight-talking government on the ethnic issue for instance, has been converted into an advantage. This is of having a government in power that is authentically representing the voice of the majority community.

It used to be an obscenity to say that any government was close to the aspirations of the majority community, but now it is distinctly not so. Is it not crass majoritarianism but simple democracy that a government that represents both strands of thinking - majoritarian and otherwise - is in power.

It's easier for capitalists to deal with this kind of authenticity. For the first time it appears as if their graphs, their diagrams and their floor charts are based on the real situation on the ground.

In this situation, capitalists of all persuasions are going for broke, which is why there is an upturn in the growth indices.

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