by Wakeley Paul; originally published February 27, 2004
“WHY DON¹T YOU MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS” says Lakshman Kadirgamar to Deputy British Foreign Secretary
What does this portend?
The situation in SL sends the shivers up the affluent; the Tamils and the international community interested in continuing the peace process which was begun by the UNF and rudely interrupted by the President. Lakshman Kadirgamar, who sits at the right hand of Sri Lanka’s power-hungry president, recently asked the Deputy British Foreign Minister to mind his own business, when told that Britain is insistent that the peace process continue. Apart from the crudity of his reaction, this is a forewarning that the PA/JVP coalition is not expecting the peace process to continue as smoothly as it was progressing with the UNF
The obvious reason for that uncertainty is that both these groups rejected the interim proposals made by the LTTE out of hand, out of mind, showing no inclination to regard these interim proposals as a basis for future negotiation. If they are unwilling to continue the negotiations where they left off, the LTTE will have no alternative but to end the talks; unless the Norwegian negotiators sooth both parties with generous doses of gingelly oil. There is no basis for going back to scratch again; that would be nothing short of an aimless waste of time.
The problem with the JVP is that hates dominate their minds instead of the national interest. Ignorance seems to be their enduring quality. They have never shown a penchant for economic advancement of a nation which has never showed much of an economic pulse anyway. Their theme is ethnic domination and discrimination. They are so intellectually insecure that suppression and repression of the successful are the themes on which they survive. Democracy depends on the culture in which it grows; and theirs is poisoned.
The LTTE has made it abundantly clear at this juncture that rehabilitation is both their goal and their dream. Their aim is to shop around for a decade with a future. Even if the talks were to end, they would be content to continue with rehabilitation if the funds were forthcoming.
The President and her henchman, Lakshman Kadirgamar, flail their arms in the opposite direction. She, while piously proclaiming that she has every desire to talk to the LTTE, knows full well she has no desire to continue with the talks where they left off. She has been too sharp a critic of the LTTE interim proposals to make this possible. When the LTTE refuses to revert to starting from scratch again; she will with her characteristic peasant cunning blame the LTTE for the breakdown in the peace process. She will by this cheap tactic only succeed in rocking the nation into a deep and helpless state of inaction.
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| Pres. Kumaratunge and Kadirgamar 2003 |
It is not just aid for development that will be threatened; the whole bedrock of the nation will revert to the age-old policy of ethnic repression, distrust and disgust. She will possibly turn Sri Lanka once again into the epicenter of God-sponsored violence. Everyone and everything can pale into insignificance as against self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement. She will also wind up as a traitor to the Sinhalese people by leaving the nation dangling on a thread of devastating economic insecurity.
All these dire predictions are based on the hideous possibility that the President will win the election on April 2. There are the new forces of the monks forming their own party, which must, like osmosis, suck up many of her votes. This, however, does not erode the number of total Sinhalese candidates with a continuing anti Tamil bias running for and winning seats in the new Parliament. The nation’s basis for ethnic tolerance remains deeply soured. The veins of those who claim to be protectors of Sinhala Buddhism are laced with inferiority, distrust and a pathetic penchant to discriminate. Living among rulers with an inferiority complex is an unenviable fate. It is like being enveloped and suffocated by an incurable disease.
The Tamils seem substantially united behind the LTTE under the healthy banner headline, “Tamils for the LTTE, the LTTE for the Tamils.” They are ready to continue negotiations where they left off. Let us and the international community hope that this will be possible. Even if no immediate political solution is reached; may that most humanitarian of human tasks called rehabilitation continue in earnest. That is, and should be, our Tamil priority of the moment.