Editorial

Editorial

From nowhere to somewhere

Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar made the right noises at Friday’s PA press briefing, playing his accustomed super-diplomat role by toning down the belligerence of other opposition personalities, not excluding the president, to the on-going peace negotiations. Hopefully, the picture he presented will be the reality and the rest of what has been said by other PA spokesmen only rhetoric. If the bottom line is that the PA will not obstruct or attempt to scuttle the process, widely considered Sri Lanka’s last chance to break out of her war-scarred misery, there is greater promise of the eventual success of this attempt to forge a durable peace.

The former foreign minister has always been a close confidante of President Chandrika Kumaratunga who has time and again leaned on him for good counsel. It can be reasonably assumed that he cleared his brief with his party leader before saying what he did on Friday. Although the president has on previous occasions been known to do a volte face on various subjects, most notably on her stance towards Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe after she won the 1999 presidential election, days after narrowly escaping the LTTE’s attempt to bump her off, we must hope that in a matter as serious as ending the war and getting the beleaguered economy back on track, the national interest will precede the political advantage.

The prime minister has repeatedly stressed that the process his government has embarked on is not going to be easy and there will be setbacks along the way. The LTTE certainly is not helping to smoothen the process. The Tiger strategy appears to be to get as much as they can as quickly as possible and to hell with the difficulties of the government that must eventually sell any settlement to the southern constituency. Last week’s arrest by the LTTE of seven soldiers near Trincomalee is one case in point. The Scandinavian cease-fire monitors seem to regard the incident, days before yesterday’s high profile prisoner exchange, as a clear violation of the truce agreement. But the LTTE for reasons best known to themselves have chosen to be most unhelpful.

Kadirgamar is right that the talks should not be allowed to drag on indefinitely on peripheral matters without addressing core issues and we are sure that the prime minister understands this better than most. But it takes two to tango and the LTTE appears intent on a long drawn process, extracting major concessions along the way. Two regular contributors to this newspaper has in this issue drawn pointed attention to some very pertinent matters and it is to be hoped that the government and the international community takes note of these factors fuelling real fears among many thinking people in the country who, for good reason, are deeply suspicious of the Tigers. This is not surprising given their past perfidy. But as Professor G. L. Peiris has repeatedly said, building trust after nearly two decades of a brutal war cannot be a speedy process. The fact that there is no quick fix is a harsh reality that the country must accept and live with.

The government is now preparing the ground for raising external assistance for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the war-torn districts. While donor goodwill is abundantly manifest, there is an understandable reluctance from some countries to commit funds until they are sure the peace process is stabilised. While they appreciate that the process will gather fresh momentum if the people have a taste of the fruit of peace, they would naturally not be unmindful of past failures. This is where the diplomatic skills of ministers like Peiris and Milinda Moragoda must come into play. Just as much as Kadirgamar did in his day, they have been working hard at their task and the first results seem hopeful.

Unfortunately, some of the pre-requisites for maximum foreign support for rehabilitation and reconstruction are still lacking. While Kadirgamar’s statements have helped clear the air somewhat, there is yet no firm assurance that the PA and the UNF will march to a common drum - that is the national interest - as far as the peace process goes notwithstanding agreements such as that drafted by Britain’s Liam Fox which is now barely remembered. Although the UNF claims that it has the numbers to push through the 19th amendment, the PA is equally vocal that it will hold its ranks sufficiently to deny the required two thirds majority. That would mean that the president will continue to retain the power of dissolving the legislature after December 5. That’s something she is quite capable of doing if she sniffs the whiff of a chance of winning the election that follows. No soothsayer is needed to say that such a contest will be all about selling off the rights of the Sinhala people to the LTTE.

These, as much as the LTTE’s single-minded determination to extract the last ounce of advantage for itself as the process rolls out, are all factors that will make peacemaking that much more difficult. But if the peace dividend is abundantly manifest during what might be a slow and tortuous process, we may be getting from nowhere to somewhere.

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