UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe did not look quite the cat that had swallowed the canary when he came on television on Friday night when the first news of the outcome of the Geneva meeting between the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka broke pegged on the 8-paragraph statement Erik Solheim read out at the end of an encounter that took the predictable course. As was widely expected, the major agreement was that the two sides will meet again, probably in Geneva, at end April after the Aluth Avuruddu kevun and kiributh have been duly consumed and Sri Lanka has comes out of its traditional extended holiday season. The SLMM will duly make its behaviour report on how good or bad the two parties have been.

For Wickremesinghe there was at last some respite from the many problems that have confronted him since he lost the presidential election last November. He did not lose the opportunity of focusing on the kivuma (saying) and the keruma (doing) of the winning side. The Norwegians a.k.a. the White Tigers (that was a JVP label) have been invited by President Mahinda Rajapakse to continue the facilitation. Such facilitation will be generalled by no less than Erik Solheim, now elevated to cabinet rank, who the present rulers and their predecessors including former President CBK and Lakshman Kadirgamar loved to hate. Somebody else will do the hands-on work, it has been stated but Solheim will continue to sit at the top as he did last week in Geneva.

While Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, leading the government team, declared in his opening statement that the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was not in accord with Sri Lanka’s constitution and its laws and impinged on the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, he acknowledged that certain benefits to the people had flowed from it. But there was no getting round the harsh reality that the CFA is established fact, and the way that Anton Balasingham extolled it in his opening remarks (``the CFA is a well crafted valid instrument of peace, devised with the purpose of bringing an end to hostilities an create a positive environment conducive for meaningful negotiations’’ blah blah blah) made very clear to whose advantage it was. The Tigers’ chief negotiator did not neglect to pat the Norwegians on their backs for their ``skilled assistance’’ in getting that particular piece of skullduggery through.

The bald reality was that Wickremesinghe, motivated by the driving desire to stop the war, conceded far too much to the advantage of the LTTE in 2002. He was batting on a tricky wicket with CBK on the presidential throne although he commanded the legislative majority and was running the government. The then president did not lack the will and the encouragement from her cheer leaders to trip him at any given time and given his failure to have an impeachment motion against her entertained by the Speaker of his choice, he left her the option of dissolving parliament one year after the UNF government was elected, a constitutional device she duly exercised having cobbled together an agreement uniting the anti-UNP forces to win the election she called in April 2004. While the good lady would certainly rue those moves on the chessboard from the political backwater she has now been relegated, the LTTE had gained an ace which it was obviously not going to surrender. So Wickremesinghe had his moment on the television screen on Friday night though not on Rupavahini. He had to be content with those stations that are not government controlled.

Now what?

Now what? These matters, no doubt, will be aired on the local election platforms during the coming weeks although it was unsure whether the most visible of them all, the Colombo Municipal Council election can be conducted with the rest on March 30. Friday’s Appeal Court ruling gave the UNP some hope that the legal challenge mounted against the rejection of its CMC slate may be upheld in the courts. The word yesterday was that the Elections Commissioner will ask the Government Printer to hold back the printing of the Colombo ballot papers until the courts make their determination. According to the Government Press, the usual order of printing ballot papers for such elections begin with those for the peripheries and the CMC ballots will only be taken up by about the third week of March. Hopefully, the courts would have made a final determination by then and Colombo voters will go to the polls no later than the rest.

Nevertheless, there’s a whole slew of petitions coming up in the Appeal Court about the rejection of nomination lists. It would stand to reason that there will be a common determination in cases where the grounds adduced (such as underage candidates as in the case of Colombo) are concerned. These matters, no doubt, will keep the court busy in the coming weeks.

Reports from Geneva threw up some interesting snippets to the fore such as LTTE bluster of walking out of the talks. The French news agency, Agence France Presse, which flew its Colombo bureau chief Amal Jayasinghe to Switzerland to cover the event reported from Celigny that the Tigers were ready to ``storm out’’ of the talks when Colombo insisted on amending the CFA of February 2002 as President Mahinda Rajapakse had pledged to do in the run-up to the polls. Balasingham had told AFP that he had told Colombo’s team: ``If you are questioning the validity of the CFA, then we will walk out.’’

Balasingham had said that the ceasefire was ``not just a document between the two parties. Five Nordic countries monitoring the ceasefire are involved. The international community is involved. We can’t just tear it up.’’ The plus side was the willingness he expressed during the interview to take up contentious political matters later.

Mrs. Ferial Ashraff, equally fluent in English, Sinhalese and Tamil, had the better of an exchange with Balasingham in the talks when she had asked the chief Tiger negotiator what they proposed to do about child soldiers. ``Are you concerned about Muslim children?’’ Balasingham had responded to which Ashraff had simply replied, ``I am concerned about all children, be they Tamil, Muslim, Sinhala, Burgher or any other.’’ IGP Chandra Fernando had taken the opportunity of reminding Nadesan, the LTTE’s police chief, that he remembered him from the time that he (the IGP) was ASP Jaffna and Nadesan was a constable working in the Jaffna Division of what was then the Sri Lanka Police.

Insights from Austin Fernando

Some insights into Ranil Wickremesinghe not taking President CBK into confidence over the CFA until it had been signed by Prabhakaran and himself, had been thrown by former Defence Secretary Austin Fernando in a chapter he had written for a book edited by Kumar Rupesinghe, Sunetra Bandaranaike’s first husband, who now heads a Norwegian funded conflict resolution outfit here. The book was launched last week when Dayan Jayatillake who teaches political science at the Colombo University, made an interesting speech saying that the US was responsible for getting the LTTE back to the negotiating table. He said that NIcholas Burns, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs had sent the Tigers a strong message through Solheim that any reversion to war would result in the strengthening of both Sri Lanka’s democracy and military.

Jayatillake, once a Premadasa confidante who briefly served in the EPRLF controlled North Eastern Provincial Council as a minister, returned to Colombo from Washington where he was on a sabbatical at the Johns Hopkins University to throw his weight behind the Mahinda Rajapakse campaign in its final stages. He has remained here since, contributing to government think tanks on Colombo’s strategy on its approach to the LTTE. Some inner circles expected him to be part of the government team to Geneva. He had apparently declined an invitation and is expected to fly off to Australia this week to complete his PhD thesis at a University there.

To get back to Austin Fernando’s thoughts on why President CBK was kept out of the CFA loop by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, we quote from his just-published essay which, significantly, TamilNet excerpted for positing on its website:

On not taking President Kumaratunge into confidence during the pre-CFA period, Fernando writes: "The CFA was a stepping stone for a political and negotiated settlement. However, the CFA contents were not divulged to the President beforehand, though she was the Commander in Chief, Head of State and Head of the Cabinet. With the political culture all parties have inherited, these cohabitation problems were inevitable. The justification to "hide" may have been the fear that she might derail the process for political expediency. Her later actions (i.e. takeover of three ministries inclusive of Defence on November 3, 2003) proved how correct this assumption was."

Commenting on the current Sri Lanka Government’s approach, Mr Fernando says,

"The latest demand in Southern Sri Lanka is to redraft or review the CFA in order to attain peace with the ulterior motive of controlling the LTTE by strengthening the CFA. The experience with the LTTE shows that they are obstinate to such moves as their attention is limited to a clear cut objective, for which one individual takes responsibility.... ...Their demands are firm, and any attempt to revise them will be faced with similar difficult demands from the LTTE. Therefore, any change should be thought of only at a formal negotiation according to the CFA and that too very cautiously."

Interestingly, Tamil press, quoting Thamilselvan, reported on Saturday that the LTTE would soon begin talks with minority Muslims. These reports however were not clear on whether such talks would be before or after the next Geneva round from April 19 to 21. Other reports said that a plus point in the just concluded negotiations was agreement by the LTTE for Muslim representation at future talks though there was no hard confirmation on whether this had been agreed.

In an opinion piece in the respected "The Hindu’’ newspaper particularly strong in South India, Colombo Correspondent V.S. Sambandan provided an insight to the Tamil Nadu influence on the Sri Lanka problem by pointing out that the next round of Geneva talks will be around the same time when the Tamil Nadu will elect a new State Assembly. "How the LTTE plays its cards could be linked to this critical external dynamic’’ Sambandan said.

``The current talks are different from the six rounds held between September 2002 and March 2003. Seasoned negotiators point to a particular pattern in the past. The LTTE veers away from the track when a convergence of views between the two sides for a solution within a united Sri Lanka seems possible. The pullout from talks is invariably followed by a period of strain — in all instances save the latest one, outright war — after which negotiations restart.

``This has been the pattern through the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement, the Premadasa parleys, the Kumaratunga devolution debates and the Wickremesinghe peace talks. As the Rajapakse Government starts its peace talks, it is also critical that there is continuity in the key political concepts of the Kumaratunga-Wickremesinghe peace talks.

If Ms. Kumaratunga’s Government set the stage for far seeking devolution of political powers, Mr. Wickremesinghe’s administration successfully managed a commitment from the state and the LTTE to "explore federal models" for conflict resolution within a united Sri Lanka. Mr. Rajapakse, through his "practical measures," hopes to bring about a solution to the decades-long ethnic conflict. In doing so, it is critical to factor in the successes from the past and utilise the institutional knowledge that is available within Sri Lanka’s political and administrative machinery,’’ this comment noted.

``The Geneva talks represent a small, hesitant step away from a relapse into war. Rather than count hits and misses, what is important is to set the Geneva developments against the larger prospects for peace, and more critically, the nature of the evolving peace. The one consistency in Sri Lanka’s elusive search for peace is the recognition that a solution lies in politics — war without bloodshed.

``While it is critical that this political engagement process between the Government and the LTTE should continue, it is equally important that the long-term gaze remains set on a lasting political solution that will bring decades of bloodshed to an end in which all its people share a common nation-state with dignity.’’

The return of SB

SB Dissanayake’s emergency from jail, or rather the Merchant’s Ward of the Colombo National Hospital created a flutter in some UNP dovecotes when Mahinda Wijesekera introduced the feisty politican who has played many roles in many parties including the CP, SLFP and now UNP as the ``UNP’s future leader.’’

The Business Standard which everybody knows is run by Sarth Amunugama ranked SB as its "Personality of the Week’’ saying that CBK did her bete noir a big favour by making him look like the underdog in Sri Lankan politics.

Understandably, SB fired several verbal darts at CBK from whom he once enjoyed blue eyed boy treatment. The writer of this interesting journalistic piece predicted that "history may repeat itself and the second coming of SB may, like the first coming, be attributed to the Bandaranaikes.’’

The writer (Amunugama?) says that Ranil Wickremesinghe, like CBK before him, would no doubt be apprehensive about his own future as a party leader.

"Karu is already relegated to history having missed his chance to grasp the leadership. SB’s promise to start organizing the Grand Old Party from day one must send the shivers up the spine of its present leader who can only fall back on its dictatorial party constitution that he created for his safety.

``Many UNPers are already saying that come 2010 the Presidential Contest will be between Mahinda Rajapakse and SB Dissanayake.’’

Hitchcock in Geneva

Still with the Business Standard, its trenchant front page Colombo Confidential column dubbed Rupavahini Chairman Newton Gunaratne as Hitchcock in an obvious allusion to Guneratne’s penchant of making a fleeting appearance on the television screen in the same way Alfred Hitchcock used to do in his suspense thriller films.

The writer of a saucy paragraph (still Amunugama?) commented that the Rupavahini boss was surprisingly not on the big media contingent covering the Geneva meeting. He was wrong. Television viewers saws Gunaratne appear fleetingly on the screen asking Rohitha Bogollagama who had spoken in English to repeat what he said in Sinhala.