Conflict Resolution in Sri Lanka: The Mirage of Power Sharing

by Sachithanandam Sathananthan*

Conflict resolution and human rights "peaceniks" in Colombo are busy mouthing vacuous slogans about national "co-existence" and ethnic "harmony." These Sinhala peaceniks are promoting the belief that Sinhala nationalism is capable of, and willing to, strike a compromise with Tamil nationalism.

SPC and NACPR

The same peaceniks are silent about the Sinhala government’s war preparations. Near the end of last month, the Chief of Defence Staff appointed a Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) to "evaluate the present defence mechanism in the [Tamil-majority] north-east and make necessary recommendations to rectify shortcomings" in case of "any surprise attacks" (Daily Mirror, 29oct04) on the Sinhala armed forces by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The backdrop to the Committee’s activities is the impending defence cooperation agreement between Sri Lanka and India.

Almost simultaneously the Sinhala President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is Commander in Chief of the armed forces, floated a self-proclaimed peace initiative. She formed the National Advisory Council on Peace and Reconciliation (NACPR).

If the SPC and the NACPR appear to contradict each other, the fact that each complements the other will be clear when one reflects on a similar manoeuvre almost two decades ago. In 1986 the then Sinhala President JR Jayawardene cobbled together the Political Parties Conference (PPC).  Among the previous generation of Sinhala peaceniks, the more gullible ones fell over each other to welcome the PPC. They cheered Jayawardene for his "statesmanship." They claimed he was serious about achieving lasting peace because, they pointed out, he was at the tail end of his political career.  It was to end three years later (in 1989) when he completed his second term of office as Executive President because the Constitution limits the holder of that post to two terms only. So, the peaceniks argued, Jayawardene was no longer constrained by short-term electoral calculations.

Political Parties Conference

Some peaceniks asserted that Jayawardene, fast moving towards the end of his public life, had become conscious of his place in Sinhala history. Therefore, they imagined, he wished to leave a positive legacy of national reconciliation.

A few peaceniks were cautious. They supported the PPC because, they confessed, Jayawardene’s government was strapped for funds and so he has no choice but to sue for peace.

However, Jayawardene proved them all wrong.  It is true electoral calculations did not in fact matter to him personally; and that gave him a free hand to pursue the war.  He raised funds for that war through foreign borrowings and by printing money.

Crucially, Jayawardene harboured an idea of his place in history which was very different from the self-serving one conjured up by that generation of Sinhala peaceniks.

While launching the PPC with great fanfare, he had simultaneously ordered the Sinhala army to prepare to attack the LTTE-led Tamil National Movement.  He cynically convened and manipulated the PPC as a smokescreen to cover his military preparations.  He used the PPC also to boost his Sinhala government’s "peace credentials" both among the Sinhala working classes – who had to be inveigled to sacrifice their children as cannon fodder – as well as in international forums.  He exploited the obvious incapacity of the PPC to reach a consensus – which he must surely have anticipated – to justify the 1987 Operation Liberation to occupy Jaffna.

President Jayawardene’s idea of a positive legacy was to go down in history as the Sinhala leader who militarily defeated the LTTE and subdued the Tamil Nation – a sort of 20^th century avatar of Duttu Gemunu.

'Peace Credentials'

We suspect Kumaratunge's NACPR is a similar exercise in disinformation. As was the case of the PPC, the NACPR also includes organisations and individuals with widely differing views and starkly opposing tendencies. It is blindingly obvious to anyone with the slightest familiarity with Sinhala politics that the NACPR has been deliberately programmed to self-destruct (as was the PPC).

For now, Kumaratunga is exploiting the NACPR to boost her Sinhala government’s "peace credentials." Following in Jayawardene’s footsteps. Kumaratunga will most probably use the inevitable failure of the NACPR to similarly deceive the Sinhala masses into believing that war is unavoidable.

Like previous Sinhala presidents, Kumaratunga also suffers acute delusions of grandeur about crushing the military power of the LTTE-led Tamil National Movement.  She indulged in the medieval "victory" celebration in Colombo immediately after invading Jaffna in December 1995. We saw on national television the then Defence Minister Ratwatte (her maternal uncle) dressed in feudal finery ceremonially presenting her with a gold-embossed scroll in a silver casket announcing the capture of the Tamil territory of "Yappa Pattu" by her army. Kumaratunga received the scroll with undisguised pride in her Sinhala armed forces.  Anyone who witnessed that absurd self-aggrandisement cannot have any doubt that Kumaratunga is thirsting to enter Sinhala history as the 21^st century Sinhala warrior who finally vanquished the hated Tamil "enemy."

Colombo-based Tamil politicians

What, then, is the role of Tamil politicians from Colombo-based Tamil political parties?

Nothing in recent memory beings out more clearly their political bankruptcy than the so-called "advice" gratuitously offered by a TULF politician in his third open letter to the Leader of the LTTE. The TULF politician describes himself as "a very senior politician of Sri Lanka who has been in politics for nearly half a century".

But his "advice" revealed staggering political naivety. He helpfully explained that "whatever we demand, the concerned parties must be in a position to concede." That is, Tamil nationalism must demand from Sinhala nationalism only what the Sinhala nationalists may be willing to grant.

Tamil parliamentarians have carried on this begging-bowl politics for at least five decades. The Tamil politicians in the Ilankai Thamil Arasuk Katchi (ITAK) – also known as the Federal Party (FP) – requested for only those "concessions" they thought may be granted under the 1957 Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam (BC) Pact. Sinhala nationalists replied with a well-aimed kick at the Tamil begging bowl; they tore up the Pact soon after it was concluded and, in the following year, unleashed Sinhala mobs during the July 1958 anti-Tamil Pogrom.

Tamil parliamentarians came back with empty begging bowls several times over the subsequent five decades. Each time the Tamil political beggars tried to mask their powerlessness by cynically manipulating Tamil sympathies with the time worn "we-trusted-them" sob story.

Their treachery went deep. In 1976 Tamil politicians in the newly formed Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), which included the former ITAK, vigorously promoted the TULF’s Vaddukkoddai Resolution calling for the creation of an independent State of Tamil Eelam in the NorthEast Province (NEP). Tamil people overwhelmingly endorsed the Resolution at the 1977 parliamentary elections. But TULF politicians once again betrayed Tamil national rights. They were seduced by the wretched illusion of power when their party emerged from the elections as the largest Opposition party in the Sinhala Parliament; and so they turned their backs on the Tamil electoral mandate. The TULF parliamentarians abandoned the Resolution. They alleged it was unnecessary because, they claimed, the new Sinhala Prime Minister JR Jayawardene was "above" communal politics and could therefore grant "concessions" to Tamils.

But Jayawardene, as Executive President under the 1978 Constitution, greedily concentrated political power in the hands of the Sinhala State and rejected power-sharing with the Tamil people. For good measure he orchestrated the anti-Tamil Pogrom in 1979, oversaw another Pogrom and the burning of the Jaffna Tamil Library in 1981 and unleashed the 1983 Holocaust against unarmed Tamil men, women and children.

The supine TULF parliamentarians, in keeping with their pitiable begging-bowl politics, meekly followed Jayawardene’s order not to demand an independent inquiry into the burning of the Jaffna Library. That was not the first time Tamil politicians condoned acts of cultural genocide by Sinhala nationalists. In the early 1960s Sinhala officials, probably from the Archaeology Department, took away the priceless relics of the last King of Jaffna, Sankili, which had been on display in the Jaffna Fort. In the true tradition of political beggars, the ITAK parliamentarians and all other Tamil politicians did not raise one word of protest against this anti-Tamil cultural vandalism.

The subsequent history of military repression of the Tamil people is well known. From Jayawardene’s 1987 Operation Liberation to Kumaratunga’s 1995 to 1999 "War for Peace," the brutal invasion of Jaffna and the grotesque mass graves of innocent Tamils constitute the uncompromising Sinhala reply to Tamil political beggars.

But politicians of Colombo-based Tamil parties continued to beg. Throughout Kumaratunga’s "War for Peace," the TULF parliamentarians repeatedly voted with her People’s Alliance (PA) government. They helped the Sinhala State to finance its military campaign against the Tamil Nation in the NEP between 1985 and 1989 and always voted to pass the PA’s military budget.

Indeed, a senior TULF parliamentarian took great care to ensure that the Sinhala army’s "victory" celebration in occupied Jaffna in December 1995 recognised the collaboration extended by Tamil politicians. He insisted that a Tamil (Nandi) flag must be raised together with the Sinhala Lion flag to acknowledge the joint PA-TULF "victory" over the Tamil nation!!!

And they are still begging.

All this underlines an important fact. Colombo-based Tamil politicians are terrified that victory for the LTTE-led Tamil National Movement would comprehensively expose their collaboration and drive them into the political wilderness. Obviously they will attempt by fair means or foul to prevent being exposed and marginalized by the Movement.

So these Tamil politicians have very carefully qualified the LTTE’s status as the sole representative of the Tamil people. They accept the LTTE as sole representative ONLY for the purpose of negotiations with the Sinhala government. The implication is clear. After the LTTE does the spadework, the Tamil politicians, being the lawfully elected parliamentary representatives, expect to take over. By then, they hope, the LTTE may have very little strength left to resist since the Sinhala government and its foreign backers would have disarmed and emasculated the organisation during negotiations as required in the 2003 Tokyo Statement [Clause 18(j)].

Tamil politicians seriously believe they can cover up this naked treachery with duplicitous calls to "see our people back to normal life during our lifetime."

Tamil analysts opposed to the LTTE-led Tamil National Movement have added their spin to bait the trap set by the Tokyo Statement. According to them, Kumaratunga’s "problem" is setting up "an interim administration dealing with the problems of rehabilitation and reconstruction in the northeast…but with adequate safeguards to ensure these interim structures are not made permanent: hence her need to combine interim and permanent solutions to the ethnic problem at the talks."

These Tamil analysts are bending over backwards to appreciate Kumaratunga’s supposed dilemma. They want to convince Tamils that Kumaratunga is genuinely trying to reach a final political settlement with the LTTE. They are attempting to deceive Tamils that continued support for the LTTE’s position of first negotiating the Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) will certainly delay and perhaps fatally undermine a final political settlement. Treachery against the Tamil National Movement takes many forms.

Another common form of treachery by anti-LTTE Tamil analysts is to parrot "two issues," namely "the peace process" and "democracy and governance." Both are part of the cynical disinformation dished out by successive Sinhala governments for 20 years, from Jayawardene’s 1984 All Party Conference (APC) to Kumaratunga’s 2004 NACPR. The sly aim is to hoodwink the Tamil nation into believing that "democracy and governance" are substitutes for national rights.

National rights

During the same two decades, the central demand of the Tamil National Movement has been, and still is, national rights. That is the most important issue. But anti-LTTE Tamil analysts deliberately ignore them for a very obvious reason: the LTTE is the sole defender of Tamil national rights. Their devious moves to make Tamil national rights superfluous are hopeless manoeuvres to discredit the LTTE and to drive a political wedge between that organisation and the Tamil Nation.

The Norwegian government, and the foreign governments behind it, nicely complement the Sinhala government and Colombo-based Tamil political parties. Norwegians (and their foreign sponsors) know very well that there is simply no Sinhala political space to introduce a federal system. The Sinhala right-wing forces control the major Sinhala political parties, the bureaucracy, the armed forces and the judiciary. They will not allow the Sinhala unitary State to be diluted since that will reduce Sinhala political power and correspondingly increase Tamil power.

Very influential sections of the Sinhala Buddhist clergy enjoy enormous State patronage. Predictably they are implacably opposed to any shift in the balance of political power in favour of Tamils.

The prospects for power-sharing are made infinitely worse by the political ambition of every senior Sinhala leader. Each one is greedily eying the Executive Presidency and its unrivalled powers. It is utterly utopian to hope that a Sinhala president – either at present or in the future – would voluntarily share State power with Tamils.

Indeed, Kumaratunga appears to be preparing to hold a referendum to amend the Constitution to allow her to seek office as President for the third time. If that does happen, she would be contemptuously flouting political conventions. It will prove beyond doubt to Tamils that constitutional provisions and safeguards to protect their national rights can easily be rendered null and void through a referendum approved by the majority Sinhala population. In other words, a future federal system cannot guarantee Tamils their national rights.

The Norwegians and their foreign backers surely know all this and probably more.

Why, then, have Norway and other donor countries requested the LTTE to formulate a federal alternative? Have they assured the LTTE that they can compel the Sinhala government to accept federalism? Have they made toothless guarantees to underwrite an eventual political settlement?

If so, they are transparent ruses to draw the LTTE into negotiations and then to demand that the organisation must decommission weapons as a condition for continuing negotiations.

Indeed, disarming the LTTE is the strategic objective. The peaceniks, Kumaratunga and her Sinhala government, the Colombo-based Tamil politicians and the Norwegian government (together with the donor governments) all are scheming in their different ways to achieve that objective. The political machinations of these four major anti-Tamil forces to disarm the LTTE are collectively called the "peace process."

Stalemate

The meaning of the "stalemate" in the "talks" must be understood in this context. It means the anti-LTTE forces have clearly failed to either entice or compel the LTTE to disarm. The Sinhala government has failed also to corner the LTTE and force it to re-start the war through repeated and extreme provocations, of which the Karuna Affair is the recent and most blatant one.

In other words, the LTTE has caught the Sinhala government in a peace trap. The organisation has most of the NEP under its control and is building parallel political and economic infrastructures. The longer the ceasefire lasts, the stronger LTTE becomes politically and economically. It is in the interests of the Tamil Nation and its vanguard, the LTTE, to prolong the ceasefire.

In contrast, Kumaratunga and her Sinhala government know they have to engineer the resumption of conflict sooner rather than later to contain the growing power of the LTTE-led Tamil National Movement. So the preparations for war have started in earnest in Colombo. The other three anti-Tamil forces are colluding with Kumaratunga.

The question is: What will the Sinhala nationalists do to trigger the next phase of war?

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* The author received the Ph D degree from Wolfson College, Cambridge and is Founder-Secretary of The Action Group Of Tamils (TAGOT), Sri Lanka. He was recently Visiting Research Scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University School of International Studies. He is a film producer. His documentary film "Suicide Warriors" (1996) on the role of Tamil women in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was commissioned by Channel Four Television, London. His feature film "Khamosh Pani / Silent Waters" (2003) won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland.

Email: tagots@hotmail.com