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by Jehan Perera

The over arching issue at last week's local government election was the peace process. The election came too soon after last December's general election for there to be any other major issues.

In the first three months of the new government's term of office, there was little or no change in the economy either for the better or worse. The bread and butter concerns of the people remained much the same. What was transformed, however, was the overall environment in which death no longer stalked the land. The election verdict, with its landslide in favour of the government, is proof enough that the people want peace above all.

True, this peace that has been achieved is far from being a complete peace or even a stable peace. In the northern capital of Jaffna are some 40,000 refugees who continue to live in refugee camps under government control, inappropriately called welfare centres.

In the Wanni are people who live in another world and who continue to be subjected to a very strict pass system by the LTTE that keeps them locked in to their highly controlled and closed system. Peace, it has been said time and time again is not simply the absence of war. It is also the full enjoyment by people of their human rights.

Besides the ceasefire agreement within which this inadequate peace exists is one that can be terminated with just two weeks notice. With years of mistrust and vested interests intervening heavily, this peace can suddenly end and lead to an even worse war than the one that prevailed before.

This is the message that the opposition parties tried to take to the people, led by the youthful demagogues of the JVP. After their defeat at the general elections, the PA seemed too dispirited to have any message at all. But the implicit message that it too took to the people was that the ceasefire agreement was a dangerous one: loss of sovereignty and all.

But now the people have spoken yet again. They may have enjoyed the wit of the JVP poster that depicted an elephant with tiger stripes. But they did not wish to be governed by such wits. After the massive electoral losses they have suffered, the opposition parties will have to reconsider their stances on the peace process. It seems that the people want political leaders who will exert themselves in high seriousness to the complex task of achieving peace.

The people want constructive responses rather than destructive ones that point not to peace but to war. By reducing the percentages of votes to the opposition, by nearly 30 percent in the case of the JVP, the people have sent a clear message that they want parties that have a peace agenda and not a war agenda.

Marginalised

All the forward movement in the peace process so far has been by the government and LTTE with the opposition playing hardly any part. The ceasefire agreement between the government and LTTE, brokered by the Norwegian facilitators was prepared without the participation of the Opposition.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga publicly made an issue of this, asserting that she has not even seen the document until after LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran had signed it. Likewise, it is unfortunate that it is difficult to see any willingness on the part of the President to co-operate with the government in negotiating with the LTTE.

Instead of rejoicing in the peace that the ceasefire agreement has sought to consolidate, Cassandra-like voices are the only ones that seem to have emerged from the ranks of the Opposition. They point to the LTTE's unacceptable forced recruitment of children in the newly accessible areas of the north-east that remain under government control.

They point to the "Pongu Thamil" rallies in various parts of the north and east that are stirring up Tamil nationalism to boiling point. They point to the previously broken agreements, emphasising the broken ceasefires rather than the broken political agreements.

So far President Kumaratunga has been adopting a critical attitude towards the ceasefire agreement. This attitude is likely to be caused by her resentment at being left out of the peace process. After all, she was the person who first invited the Norwegians in, tried to start talks with the LTTE, and who put forward a far reaching set of devolution proposals that evoked angry responses from Sinhalese nationalists. Besides she still remains the elected President with enormous powers that she finds she cannot use any more.

Viewed in the context of her own past efforts with regard to the peace process, the failure of the government to show President Kumaratunga the ceasefire agreement until after the LTTE leader had already signed was a failure to consider her feelings and her potential contribution.

Of course, the government would have had its own reasons for engaging in this course of action. One would be the apprehension that the President would delay the process in a manner that would have caused it to fail.

The cavalier manner in which the President has been delaying the appointment of the constitutional council may be a vindication of the government's lack of confidence in her. Perhaps the unprecedented fall of the Bandaranaike family bastion of Attanagalla at the local government elections was the people's answer to her apparent disregard of the national interest.

Bipartisan approach

It is evident that the best chance for peace and the strategy to reach it have been placed before the country today. Given the nature of electoral politics in this country, a bipartisan PA-UNP approach to resolving the ethnic conflict would be the surest way to ensure the success of the peace process. Ironically the much maligned constitution has created the structural basis for such a bipartisan approach. The electorate has decided that a PA president should co-habit with a UNP prime minister.

To a certain degree, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe appears to have gone out of his way to honour the President, and give her the place she merits as custodian of the people's mandate at the Presidentail Election of 1999 which he fought and lost. The President continues to chair cabinet meetings and these meetings take place in the President's office.

At the Independence Day celebrations it was noticeable that the television cameras of the government stations gave pride of place to President Kumaratunga. This is a new culture that needs to be built upon.

The President's lamentation at being left out of the peace process that she had initiated is evident in the concluding paragraph of the letter that she wrote to the Prime Minister, "My commitment to peace remains firm and constant. I wholly approve of the concept of a mutually agreed ceasefire.

On our side, as far as the Government of Sri Lanka is concerned, you and I must, in close consultation and cooperation with each other, make this ceasefire work." Certainly, these are compelling words. But to her political rivals who have heard her say one thing and then another, these may only be words.

Given the fact that there is acute mistrust between the President and Prime Minister, which also extends to their close colleagues, what is necessary is a structural arrangement that makes it possible to bridge the gap. One possibility is the signing of another memorandum of understanding this time between the President and Prime Minister on the lines of the Fox agreement that bound the two leaders to keep each other fully informed of measures taken in respect of the peace process.

The weakness in the Fox agreement was that there was no monitoring committee with the power to mediate or even arbitrate. Perhaps taking a leaf out of the Norwegian-led ceasefire monitoring mission, a local monitoring committee of highly respected Buddhist and other religious leaders who have shown courage and commitment to peace could be called on to perform this duty vis a vis the agreement between the President and Prime Minister.

At this time when the peace process is going smoothly to both local and international acclaim, the Prime Minister and the new government may feel that having a memorandum of understanding with the President is unnecessary. They may believe that it is possible to marginalise and exclude, the President and opposition from the peace process in the interests of moving forward fast. But if they are thinking along these lines, they risk making the same mistake that the former government made with respect to the LTTE.

In 1994-1995, the previous government made an effort to vindicate the election mandate that it obtained, and bring the country to peace. It failed. The objective of the previous government headed by President Kumaratunga was to marginalise the LTTE through a two-pronged military and political strategy.

The main difference between the former government and the present one is that the present government has clearly rejected any overt strategy of politically or militarily seeking to marginalise the LTTE. Instead it appears prepared to work with and through the LTTE. The lesson is that it is not possible to marginalise any of the main actors in the ethnic conflict if a sustainable peace is to be the outcome.

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