Photo: President Mahinda Rajapaksa openinig 56th anniversary celebrations of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) today evining at the BMICH.By: N. Sathiya Moorthy
Now that there is some perceptible movement on the peace front in Sri Lanka, whatever be the intent and content, it is time that right-thinking people inside the country, and the international community as a whole revisited the issues and helped keep the pace and acceleration. In doing so, care however needs to be taken to ensure that the peace facilitators, starting with Norway from outside the country and all those involved from inside Sri Lanka, learn from their own past mistakes – and set an agenda that is all-embracing, but without the potholes and pitfalls of the earlier kinds.
Sure enough, goal and pace should not come in the way of discretion and be a cause for disenchantment on either side of the ethnic divide. At the same time, no stage of interim success should be mistaken for the ultimate goal, which should remain the 'negotiated peace settlement'. Nor should such progression, or regression, be allowed to stall the peace process once set in motion.
Honest differences in opinion and perceptions are unavoidable. But there are also those on all sides whose motives do not exactly revolve around peace building. Some have their own agendas, which are inevitable products of the main strife, and which in turn end up overtaking the original issues. However, their genuineness cannot be questioned, and their fears and apprehensions from past experience needs to be addressed in full, instead.
One reason for the failure of earlier efforts at peace building flowed from perceived attempts at 'working on' one or the other party involved, rather than 'working with' them. The LTTE rejected the 'Chandrika Package', not only because of the 'contiguity clause' introduced into the 'merger debate' pertaining to the North and the East. The issue was negotiable, as all proposals and all negotiations went – and the LTTE leadership was not unaware of. Instead, it pertained possibly to the perception that the Sri Lankan Government was seeking to appeal to the Tamil masses over the head of the monolith LTTE leadership. Plain and simple, it was unacceptable. The perceptions over the CFA were no different, even at the time then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe signed it for the Government. The secrecy attending on the negotiations were understandable, but only up to a point. But for the President of the day, Chandrika Kumaratunga in this case, to feel that she was being kept in the dark did not augur well for the truce accord.
As subsequent events showed, it did not augur well also for the longevity of Wickremesinghe's prime ministerial assignment – or, that of a Government headed by his United National Party (UNP). President Kumaragunga saw shades and shadows, where none possibly existed – or, did they? Taking over three important and sensitive portfolios was her way of seeking to set the house in order – or, settling political scores.
Much of the political criticism of the CFA from the Sinhala South to day centres round a 'fear of the unknown'. The cobwebs have not been cleared, as yet. Looking back, Sinhala critics of the CFA feel uncomfortable still about the 'speed' with which Wickremesinghe 'was made to sign' the peace accord, and the way he 'acquiesced'. To them, his signing of the truce pact had been made a fait accompli of sorts – to what, they themselves could not figure out. Given the inherent suspicion of a vocal section of the Sinhala polity to the status quo in matters of political administration, their suspicion has continued to haunt the peace process.
Yet, the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa Government only added its own to the long list of 'impossibilities' by promising to eliminate para-militaries from the Tamil areas at the Geneva Talks. Whatever the intention, it was not as if the promise could have been implemented – even against the 'Karuna faction' in the East, not to mention the LTTE. As was evident, the clause on disarming the 'para-militaries' in the Tamil areas was inherently fraught with interpretations, and misinterpretations. Yet, every one was happy to have the pact signed at Geneva-I Talks. Naturally, the second round of talks would not take off. Where however the Geneva Talks paid off, it was in bringing the LTTE back to the negotiations table. Equally important, it helped the new President, his image as a 'Sinhala hard liner'. It is not as if the negotiations, both in the case of the CFA and the Geneva Rounds, should not have been held. Breaking ice and even breaking bread is one thing. Signing agreements that are not meant to be implemented, or inherently prone to convenient and not-so-convenient interpretations is another. So is the case with 'power-devolution proposals', which seek to render one section or the other ineffective in the eyes of its respective native constituency.
The Tamil community has the right to complain that the Government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe did not treat the ISGA proposals of the LTTE with the seriousness it deserved. Definitely, the LTTE was not known to have received a clause-by-clause rebuttal, which it deserved. But political reality of the times dictated that the Wickremesinghe Government could not afford to confer legitimacy of any kind on the ISGA Proposals, given the wide berth it sought for the LTTE – thus bringing them into the realm and ambit of 'negotiable clauses'.
Thus, outright rejection was possibly the only option made available to the Government, given the issues of Sri Lankan 'sovereignty' that the ISGA Proposals challenged through more clauses than one. 'Sovereignty', after all, is non-negotiable for any State actor, whether or not it faced brickbats from a section of the nation's polity and society. The Wickremesinghe Government ended up doing precisely that. These are aspects that all sides to future negotiations should take into account, if they at all mean serious business, aimed at a solution that would hold over the long-term. This does not rule out plausible short-term courses, but medium and long-term goals and solutions should also be in-built into the process at every stage.
Else, like with the CFA, a sense of achievement would set in, and with that lethargy. Any substantive goal and processes aimed at achieving the same would remain not even on paper. The results could be more disastrous than the original gains – as Sri Lanka is now finding for itself.
For any end-game to produce the expected results in any peace process, the intention of the parties involved has to be as genuine as the nature of their representative character. At least on this score, the Rajapaksa Government has been doing well by seeking to evolve a 'southern Sinhala consensus' through the mechanism of the All-Party Representative Committee (APRC) and the parent All-Party Conference (APC).
It is not as if predecessor Governments had not attempted such a course. But every such effort at building a 'southern Sinhala political consensus' took the predictable course of the political Opposition at the national-level sabotaging what to the rest f the country and the international community was a 'genuine attempt at peace building'.
It seems to be no different this time. With the result, the Tamils have come to confuse 'southern political compulsions' and personality clashes for a 'great Sinhala conspiracy' to deny them their due. It is another matter that the Tamils have come to confuse LTTE's demands as the collective position of the community on all issues – though much of it is not untrue, however.
It is not possible to hope for unanimity on all aspects that are now under the scanner. But there is need to ensure that all aspects as are imaginable about the distant future too are discussed and debated upon. If new issues crop up down the years and decades, the present could not be held responsible. But the future too cannot be held hostage to the present.
There is more than sectarian politics that is at play in the JVP-JHU criticism of the peace process and power-devolution packages that have been on offer from time to time. In the case of the 'Sinhala majors', namely, the UNP and the SLFP, their political animosities alone are to blame, instead. For long, otherwise, they have exhibited a shared concern for a political solution – but are also agreed on the broad contours of a power-devolution package.
From among the Tamils, however, the LTTE would now have to prove more than anytime in the past, the nature and relevance of its 'representative character'. It is both in the interest of the LTTE, and the long-term unity and interests of the larger Tamil community, spread across the North and the East, that any future negotiations with the Sri Lankan Government is conducted by a consortium of Tamil political and social interests – with the Tamil-speaking Muslim community getting its due place at the table, as it deems fit.
Taking off from where TNA leader R Sampanthan left last fortnight, the Tamil community in general and the LTTE in particular, should encourage the crystallization of Tamil political opinion that would facilitate free and frank negotiations with the Sri Lankan Government, and the larger Sinhala polity, if and when required. This does not mean a series of parallel negotiations, where nothing could be achieved. Instead, they could be on the lines that LTTE supremo Prabhakaran had initiated with other Tamil groups and the Muslim community some time ago – which even the LTTE leadership seems to have forgotten, since. For this stage to be reached, the international community has to pitch in before it is too later. The Tamil community has bound itself in knots, both from within and outside. The Sinhala civil society cannot claim such privilege of self-denial. The southern polity ever in the position of being the 'giver', it is now the dharma of the Sinhala society to ensure that lesser mortals from among them do not continue to sully the fair name of the community, one way or the other. Nor should their indifference at this crucial stage be allowed to lead to complaints of negation from future generations. Sri Lanka belongs to them all, Sinhalas and Tamils, Muslims and Burghers – their present and future generations, included.
The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi.
 today evining at the BMICH....){kind=link}
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