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| Sunday, 8 December 2002 |
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Editorial |  |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 1 429239 / 331181 Fax : 94 1 429230 Solution With the successful conclusion of the Third Round of Peace Talks between the LTTE and Government in Oslo last week, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Front can claim to have steered this country to heights never before achieved in fifteen years of effort to end the ethnic war. The announcement in Oslo that both sides had agreed to a 'federal' solution to the conflict and the demands of governance of a multi-ethnic society has surely taken most Sri Lankans by surprise. Not many could have forecast that just the third round of talks would have moved the peace-making process this far after decades of ethnic supremacist statehood, insurgency, repression and war. In so pushing the peace process forward, the UNP, which heads the ruling coalition is redeeming itself historically. After all, if the current UNP-led regime has taken the country to new heights in peace-making, it was the previous UNP-led regime that dragged the country into the depths of ethnic hatred, concentration of power and political and military violence. And it is but fitting that the other political party that has equally contributed to our national crisis - perhaps laid its foundation with the 'Sinhala Only' law - the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, should, at the head of the People's Alliance, share political power in the Sri Lankan State as that State moves toward a transformation and an ending of ethnic domination. Having presided over immense injustice and social suffering because of their actions and inaction these past several decades, both parties owe it to the Sri Lankan people to now preside over the unravelling of the crisis. Indeed, there is ample evidence indicated in successive voting patterns and also in public opinion surveys that the vast bulk of the people, Tamils, Muslims, Sinhalese are tired of war and wish to see all major political forces collaborating to bring about peace as early as possible. The agreement in Oslo regarding a 'federal' solution only serves to highlight another problem in the national body politic: the problem of inter-party hostilities and the failure of political collaboration. Even as both major parties have, for long, exhibited a penchant for bitter inter-party contest they have practised a remarkably complementary policy of majority ethnic domination over the smaller groups. They have even vied with each other in providing for ethnic exclusive needs and suppressing other ethnic needs in the process. In recent years the congruence of policy of both parties has shifted away from ethnic domination and marginalisation towards inter-ethnic accommodation. Today both the SLFP-led PA and the UNP-led UNF are solidly behind the search for a durable peace on the basis of an elaborate structure of shared power between communities. But while there is a congruence of policy, what is tragically lacking is the active co-operation between these two major political forces. The commitment to a federal solution implies the re-structuring of the Sri Lankan polity in a manner not previously seen in the colonial as well as post-colonial period. More than anything else, the required constitutional reform, itself, requires substantial political collaboration between the two major national political formations. The other principal political forces that make up the State-related political Establishment also need to be drawn into the peace process in a more constructive way. The plurality of our multi-ethnic society and, the political movements that represent the difference ethnic interest groups can only be genuinely acknowledged in a process of national discussion that draws in as many groups as are ready to share power. Thus, the agreement on a 'federal' solution brings peace ever closer while, at the same time, pointing to the challenge to seek an inter-party accommodation that is the only way to build that federal system. |
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