Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama has predictably denied that the government’s decision to withdraw from the Ceasefire Agreement of February 2002 had anything to do with appeasing the JVP and the JHU. Given the voting on the budget at both the second and third readings, it is obvious that the support of these parties with a hard-line approach to the National Question is essential for the administration’s survival in parliament. This is arithmetic that President Mahinda Rajapaksa, an adroit mover of pawns on the political chessboard, well understands. As long as his government was not at risk, he ignored the rhetoric of both his red brothers whom he freely admitted helped elect him president and the Buddhist monks. The budget voting made the risk he faces glaringly obvious and Rajapaksa has done what he believes he had to do. From the country's perspective, the sad aspect of this development is that political expediency continues to subordinate the national interest.

The CFA has been a dead letter for the past many months with neither the government nor the military heeding their obligations under a deal put together by the Norwegian facilitator when Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe was prime minister during the Chandrika Kumaratunga presidency. After maneuvering CBK into a minority in parliament, the UNP forced an election it won. Thereafter it was important to demonstrate a peace dividend to the voter and that was what was done through the CFA. After many long years of war, the country benefited hugely both on the `feel good’ factor as well as from the economic spin-off. Roadblocks were removed, there was free movement to all parts of the island and people from the south began visiting Jaffna in large numbers. In the peninsula itself, decades of scarcity and privation ended. The north and the east began contributing to the national economy and Wickremesinghe, unarguably an able administrator with a vision for the country, started doing some of the many things necessary to put the nation on an even keel and on the road to realizing its undoubted potential.

But everything was not lovely in the garden. The LTTE slowly but surely began exploiting the many advantages that was theirs in terms of the hastily cobbled CFA. Provision for unarmed Tiger cadres to move into government-controlled areas, ostensibly for ``political work,’’ opened wide doors to reverse military gains such as control of the Eastern Province. Moreover, the East provided Prabhakaran a whole new recruiting ground which was avidly seized. Moving men and war material to the southern and central areas became easy in the demilitarized climate of the day and the Tigers, who have never seriously contemplated any solution short of separation to the National Question, began preparing the ground for a war at a time of their choosing. Ominously, the Trincomalee harbour was being encircled as the then ex-Foreign Minister Laskhman Kadirgamar tirelessly tried to sock into the national psyche. He also conveyed this message to his friends abroad.

The weaknesses of the CFA and the advantages it conferred on the LTTE, always intent on the separatist goal at the cost of the blood of its own people and that of the adversary, became self-evident. It is not only Ranil Wickremesinghe who can play chess. CBK, licking her wounds in the presidential palace she occupied as the country’s executive head, was not content playing second fiddle to a prime minister who enjoyed real power despite the muscle vested in the executive presidency by JRJ. She made her own moves. The first of these was the takeover of some key ministries – defence, interior (responsible for the police) and media. She then prorogued parliament and using the power of the presidency that Jayewardene clothed himself with, dissolved the legislature and called an election ensuring that the JVP would fight on her side. Her calculations proved correct and she had both the presidency and the parliamentary majority under her belt. The JVP too gained more seats than it could have won on its own steam and with it a balance of power capability.

Kumaratunga did not willingly choose Mahinda Rajapaksa as her prime minister. She also did not reckon that the Supreme Court would abbreviate her second term she had expected to extend through a self-serving provision JRJ, the twentieth century fox, had written into the constitution for his own benefit. If the Bandaranaike dynasty could not continue through brother Anura, many observers believe that Chandrika would have preferred a Ranil Wickremesinghe presidency to that of the yokel from Meda Mulana. But Prabhakaran did not want Wickremesinghe and for reasons that yet remain unclear, he facilitated Rajapaksa’s election by ensuring that a large number of Tamils in areas he controlled or influenced did not vote. Rajapaksa as president and C-in-C is now gearing to take the war to the Wanni in the coming weeks, building up to a big putsch that will surely be bloody and cause more misery for the poor on both sides of the lines. Remember it is the poor who join the army for lack of any other employment and it is the poor who are coerced into Tiger forces. It is the poor also who swell the ranks of the IDPs.

The CFA served no purpose for a long time and both the government and the LTTE knew that very well. Both sides did their own thing reducing the Nordic Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, emasculated to just Norwegians and Icelandic monitors by the Tigers following the EU ban on them, to a mere recorder of violations. But neither side wanted to use the provision to withdraw from the CFA until the question of a parliamentary majority forced the president’s hand. The repercussions were predictable. Influential international players whose friendship is important to Sri Lanka have slammed us in diplomatic language. India has not publicly shown her hand but has conveyed her feelings to the government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will not be here for 60th Independence Anniversary celebrations. Diplomats are ferreting around to find out if there are any other reasons than the JVP for what the government has done. So far they have drawn a blank.