by Dayan Jayatilleka
Not only did everyone expect the Tigers to go to Tokyo, they have not made any self-critical effort after the LTTE boycott, to figure out where and why they were wrong - and just what else they may have been and may yet be wrong about! There should have been no surprise. Prabhakaran started pulling out of the ‘peace process’ many months ago, with the withdrawal from the Security Subcommittee. Any cursory study of his ‘step style’ during the past twenty years could have predicted his present position and posture.

Instead the elite has clutched at the straw that the quantum of aid pledged in Tokyo would make Prabhakaran return to the negotiating table. After the LTTE’s Kilinochchi statement scornfully rejecting the Tokyo deliberations, our unintelligentsia has two more theories. Firstly, that the prompt forking out of an interim administration will bring the Tigers back into the ‘peace process’. Secondly that Prabhakaran will never go back to war, for risk of international repercussions.

How dumb can you get? There is no way Prabhakaran will be reconciled to an interim administration, however amply endowed in its powers and functions. The reason is quite simple indeed. It’s just too small for him, and just too big for anyone else in his organization. He’s not going to risk an Abu Mazen (Mahmood Abbas) factor. It’s a case of the Tiger in the manger. This is the man who dissolved his own political wing, the Peoples Front of Liberation Tigers (PFLT), having incarcerated, tormented and executed its head - his own deputy, Gopalaswamy Mahendrarajah alias Mahattayasri.

As for international repercussions acting as deterrent, what international repercussions? The Americans have a crisis in Israel/Palestine, a burgeoning guerrilla war in Iraq, unfinished pacification in Afghanistan, a dicey situation in Kashmir to keep an eye on, a possible confrontation in North Korea, a reactivated Al Quaeda. And they’re going to want the Tiger terror network (with its human bombs) on their case? Somehow, I don’t see it.

The Indians aren’t going to bail out the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration whose ‘road map’ had Delhi deleted, and whose ‘architecture of peace’ had a large piece missing - India. I’m not sure India can bail out any Sri Lankan administration, however close and friendly, in the time it’ll take Prabhakaran to pull off his blitzkrieg. (Such an administration isn’t in place anyway).

The ‘international safety net’ was the buzzword so beloved of the pro-Ranil unintelligentsia. Prabhakaran is about to wrap that safety net around our head and kick ass, if you’ll pardon the Americanism. What the ‘world community’ will do in the event of Prabhakaran over-running Jaffna and wherever else that catches his fancy, is to heave a sigh of relief that the Tigers have resolved the problem of the High Security Zones, removed all the road-blocks in the ‘road map’. The ‘international community’ will accept the fait accompli it has been brusquely presented, and after a halfway decent interval, begin to work with the Tiger Reich in the Northeast. The ‘hook’ will of course be the ‘urgent humanitarian needs of the Tamil people of the North and East’.

Come to think of it, the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration may not mind this outcome either. It has been waiting to wash its hands off the Northeast and pursue the serious business of ‘policy reforms’ i.e. privatizing the South, starving university education of funds and pushing it into bankruptcy, selling off the State Film Corporation etc. It may look upon Mr. Prabhakaran’s coming war as a surgical amputation and may be quite willing to sacrifice the Armed Forces, the Sinhalese, Muslims and non-Tiger Tamils for that ‘economical’ purpose.

Speaking of economics , we were suckered from the get-go. Our business community and professional economists played the role of brain-washers. The central argument was that because of the ‘disastrous’ war and Chandrika’s mismanagement, the Lankan economy had hit a historically unprecedented low, recording negative growth. Now the jury is in: the report by the legendary global business giant J. P. Morgan has the figures (Daily Mirror/Financial Times, June 2,2003, p1). The Real GDP figure for Hong Kong in 2000 was 10.2%, but plummeted to 0.6% in 2001. Singapore recorded 9.4% in 2000 and plunged to -2.4% in 2001. Taiwan recorded 5.95 in 2000 and was down to -2.2% in 2001. Sri Lanka clocked 6% for 2000 and -2.2% for 2001.

As far as I know, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan had neither a ‘wasteful, unaffordable war’ dragging down their economies, nor Chandrika Kumaratunga mismanaging them! Conversely, all these economies made recoveries the very next year, 2002. Hong Kong recorded 2.3%, Singapore 2.2% and Taiwan 3.5%. None of them, as far as I know, were blessed with either a peace process or the economic wizardry of Ranil Wickremesinghe and Charitha Ratwatte (which is just taking us into a round of strikes and student protests). What did happen, as some of our better read (and better) economists pointed out, was that we were victims of a global recession. But the ‘negative growth/bankruptcy’ story was peddled to hypnotize us into a process of appeasement and unilateral strategic retrenchment.

The UNF administration is already complicit in the gutting of the Tamil democratic allies of the State. It is party to the slaughter of dozens of political activists of the anti-LTTE Tamil parties, by virtue of stripping them of their means of self-defence, their state-issued weapons, while permitting the Tigers to remain heavily militarized. The latest victim is Subathiran (comrade Robert) of the EPRLF- an outspoken antifascist of outstanding courage. One wonders at the extent of LTTE infiltration into Jaffna and Colombo, the secret weapons caches, the likelihood of snipers in Colombo itself, assassinating political and military figures and causing chaos. The Wickremesinghe administration’s entire ‘peace process’ could be described (hopefully by the State prosecutor in a court of law, someday) as a setting up of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces by debilitating their morale, weakening their strategic and tactical positions, permitting and assisting the augmentation of the LTTE’s military capacity. If thatnot the role of a Judas, what is?

Of course, unlike the ‘international community’, the Wickremesinghe administration is located here - and may have to face the public consequences of its complicity in the murder by decapitation and dismemberment, of Sri Lanka. Our country.