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From 'war' to jaw

That the government is determined to go ahead with negotiations despite the LTTE provocation is patently obvious.

It's even more obvious that the LTTE is aiming at provoking the army into retaliation. It's an old game, being played now with a new intensity.

The latest variation of it is for the LTTE to claim that the government is trying to dodge the talks by not agreeing to provide transport between the Wanni and the Eastern province. This adds some hilarity to the situation, as the claim is being made to the background noise of Claymore mines going off under army transport buses.

Two British civilians have been injured in the melee, and somebody should try telling them that it is the LTTE that prefers war to peace. But with some postponement perhaps, the talks would take place with the now familiar lead-up of mine blasts, shootings etc., all of which have been calculated to make state decision makers lose their cool.

One motive of the LTTE however is to provoke the government into abandoning the talks altogether. It's wishful on their part to believe that the ritual of provoking the government could have any negative effect on the government think-tanks.

No sane state functionary is prone to suddenly losing his marbles, because the LTTE gets into its killing-fit. But this cannot mean that there is insensitivity to the lives that are lost, and the insecurity that is created each time the LTTE decides that it should arrive at the negotiating table from 'a position of strength.'

A foreign commentator had written that every time the LTTE wants something, the organisation speaks the only language it knows, which is violence. It's good that foreign correspondent are acknowledging this reality even though we feel the world is becoming more cynical by the day.

It's a peculiar brand of audacity that must be inducing an organisation to disturb the peace with Claymore mines, just days after it had been banned in its most significant centre for international maneuvers Canada the country in which the largest number of expatriate Tamils live.

On the one hand, it appears that world governments are mollycoddling this brand of miscreants, by trying to goad them onto the negotiating table even when they are on a spree of A.A.D. attack assassination and destabilisation.

But, there is also a positive aspect to this pressure, as the LTTE clearly has designs on avoiding the talks. By playing truant, the organisation is upping the ante, and these are tried and tested antics for a brand of operators who are becoming increasingly predictable in their modus operandi.

Those who deal with the LTTE from every part of the world are now wiser to the LTTE's anarchist tactics of brinkmanship by violence.But yet again, the LTTE came a cropper, as there is nobody either nationally or internationally willing to dance to that tune of the attention-seekers in the Wanni.

Commissioned to work

The Constitutional Commission (CC) impasse has been addressed, in the Presidential move to appoint members to some of the Commissions which comes under the broad umbrella of the CC.

This move may have elicited some expected responses. But, the courts of law of this land have not pronounced on this Presidential decision, which was a reaction no doubt to the enormous pressure on the Executive to get the Commissions to go back to work.

The courts, if asked, may view the issue in the backdrop of the general atmosphere of pressure and public opinion that prompted the Executive to seek a way out of the imbroglio. The Commissions are meant to be of an independent nature, and there is hardly any doubt on that score.

But a dysfunctional or barely functional system of Commissions do not in any way bring us close to achieving this objective of freeing the state bureaucracy from the tentacles of party politics.

So its bizarre in a way that the only way to get the Commissions working again may have been to break the limbo of dysfunction, by making direct Presidential appointments which were of course not how originally these appointments were intended to be made, for very good reasons.

The outcome shows what gridlock can accomplish.

When political parties are locked into indecision, the net effect is that the system is disempowered and everybody knows about the tussle between the TNA and the JVP to appoint the one remaining member of the CC. The President has spoken now and his way of solving the problem will of course naturally be seen in various different ways by those who would bring the move under all forms of close scrutiny.

Obviously, the original noble intent of constituting the commissions as independent bodies was thwarted almost from the inception of these institutions, which were constituted by hurried constitutional amendment. The CC idea was stillborn in this country, and the latest episode certainly seeks to remedy the dysfunction by making an adjustment that takes into cognizance the fact that the Commissions had veered far from their originally intended independent moorings.

It will be interesting to know what the courts of law of this land have to say about the matter, if and when the courts are called upon to pronounce upon this latest development.

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