A glimmer of a new national identity?

How tantalisingly close are we to the formation of a National Government?

A precursor to this question should be the one that asks "what is a National Government?" There in no answer in the definition books of students of political science, and there is none that could be proffered by the wide assortment of political pundits who disgorge their learning regularly in the public print.

A definition therefore has to be arrived at, or hastily improvised. Could a party in power, and a party in opposition form a National Government by closing ranks on all issues of national import? Such an arrangement would not satisfy any rigorous definition of National Government.

But such a voluntary arrangement is a de facto proposition for a National Government.

Perhaps the proponents of National Government would not want this loose arrangement for working out a national consensus. They would demand more rigour, which would stipulate numbers and shapes of Cabinet and the names of holders of high office.

As said elsewhere in an interview in this week's issue "it doesn't matter who draws the caravan, as long as we are in it." That sort of National Government would be government by power of selfishness. It would probably violate the spirit that animates the concept of National Government in the first place.

But, the logic "if we are in the caravan we do not mind who draws it" is not entirely unimaginative for a state that has bled due to an aching lack of consensus politics in the past. Last week's events would probably confirm that there is no politics that totally rejects the concept of self love.

We are told that a National Government is favoured by the United National Party if the premiership and the opposition leadership are both parcelled out to the cohabiting entity - - which is the UNP.

This would be expedient government more than it would be National Government. But, at a time when there is a near tectonic shift in the approach to war and peace, a National Government driven by any motive force seems to be an accomplishment.

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Wanni noises

We are not exhibiting the pictures here of the Mutur returnees, or the troops that regained Sampur. But the tectonic shift is apparent in the national condition. A palpable feeling is that the troops have been re-moralised. That fact has an infectious optimism that goes along with it - - and this optimism has infected remote and generally inaccessible parts of the body politic, such as the UNP's smoke-filled rooms of political decision making.

It may be that no entity wants to be left out of this upsurge of national feeling. As it's said almost in cliche', success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.

This palpable success of the troops has many doubters who want to nod in assent. The National Government move seems to be one in that general direction.

The LTTE's threat of war after Sampur is comic in its timing. This is the first time perhaps in the recorded history of a conflict that a threat of war has come after the war has been declared.

The LTTE declared war by its devilry in Mavil Aru, and by attacking Sri Lanka Navy boats that carried upto 800 sailors. A war threat coming after a proper declaration of hostilities seems to indicate that the LTTE is living inside a time warp.

But, the LTTE's vocalisation is more odious than the aggression itself. We carry elsewhere on page four, civil society's own reaction to the LTTE threat. These recent events have to make it clear to the international community that the sounds of war are emanating from the Wanni warlords. In Colombo, the President has been calling for peace, but in the Wanni, the reciprocation comes in the form of a call to arms.

Rattling of sabres is not the currency of any guerrilla worth the stripes on his flack jacket, but this is a nadir for the LTTE. It's a nadir in terms of its military performance, and it's a nadir in terms of its articulation in the face of the fighting.

Threatening an entire people with dire consequences, is not the hallmark of any liberator, and we daresay Saddam Hussein did not do that. This talk of genocide is probably a sign of a Tiger losing its psychological moorings almost as fast as it is losing its familiar physical space in the form of territory forfeited.