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by Wilfrid Jayasuriya

Socrates: Welcome to this chat room friends. Let me introduce myself as well as the others in this room. You know me dont you? The guy who preferred to die than recant. I wasnt as bad as they make me out in the books.

Today we have Dr Nicholas Haysom, Chief Legal adviser to President Nelson Mandela and Mr Rohan Ponniah talking about the peace process, Lankapage and Colombo Page, who appear daily from cyberspace, with the hottest news about Sri Lanka, We also have Mahadenamutta from the Jataka Tales, telling us a modern Jataka story, Robert Knox who lived in Kandy during the 1600s, and Carrol Schrader, K Sivakumaran and Radha Wigneswaran, who listen to our chat in their idle moments. Lets start with Dr. Hansom.

Dr. Nicholas Haysom (NH)

Chief Legal adviser to President Mandela interviewed by Rohan Ponniah (RP) in Benchmark on Dynavision on 1st March..

NH: The creasefire agreement is a first step, isnt it?

RP: We had 3 such before which were failures.

NH: Many fail because there is no real desire for peace. They are ways of resting before the next round. I dont think the present one is such. It provides sufficient silences, deliberately left there, to provide room for the two parties to move without undermining their common interest in peace.

RP: What factors would favor success?

NH: A peace agreement between two parties must become a peace movement, in which civil society, the churches, the temples and kovils, the ordinary people of the land in their non partisan political roles revel. Peace is too important to be left to the politicians.

The second factor is that the two major political parties must be sincerely interested in peace. Peace agreements are excellent opportunities for politicians to seek publicity by posturing in various roles. They must have some common understanding of where posturing stops and participation begins.

Socrates: The President sent a 15 page letter to the Prime Minister setting out her views on the agreement. They are not favourable and refers to all sorts of issues, which it is the business of the peace process to try and settle. Airing dogmatic views and questions is to seek publicity and perform postures for which the process gives a good opportunity. Later on in our chat we will have talk about that.

N.H: If the opposition pushes the government into a position where the government feels compelled to send unexpected signals to the LTTE, this will breed a feeling of distrust and that will smash the goodwill between the two parties. So the opposition, on the Sinhala side, bears as much of a burden to ensure the success of the peace movement as the government. It must be an all party, all inclusive movement.

RP: What role should the business community play? And the media?

NH: The media, by providing communication, must ensure transparency in the peace process. There will be certain delicate negotiations which need to be kept secret, at certain times, but public confidence will be gained by exposure or transparency most of the time. This is also the way to obtain the peoples participation. I dont see a special role for business apart from being part of civil society, perhaps a more prominent part.

RP: What made Mandela a success in that most difficult of peace processes, the establishment of peace between white and black?

NH: Mandela was a sincere and a humble man, possessed by a mission. In private too he was a sincere and a humble man. These qualities made his viewpoint accepted by the people as that of a genuine, sincere and humble man. Humility is of the essence in persuading people to come out at their best.

Reader response

Radha Wigneswaran: I dont have time to follow the process reported daily in the papers and the media. Socrates gives me a summing up for the week

K.Sivakumaran: I find you column interesting but we journalists write so tha our readers can understand. But you have a mixture of politics, linguistic analysis and poetry which may be off putting.

Lankapage. JVP denies governments mandate. Feb 28, Colombo: The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna said it was a lie to say that the people had given the United National Party a clear mandate to solve the ethnic problem. The JVP said that in the December election the UNP had received only 45 percent of the votes and had only 109 seats.

Socrates: The Sinhala Urumaya got no seats at all. The JVP got 16 seats. The PA got 76 seats. That is the opposition. Together they have 97. So who got the mandate?

Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of England in the 19th century referred to Lies, damn lies and those who use statistics. Is The JVP statement an example of that? Removing road blocks or rolling out the barrel

Feb 28, Colombo: The Army in Gurunagar in Jaffna had treated seven LTTE members who had arrived by boat with tea and cake, 'Lakbima' reports. The meeting took place on Tuesday when the unarmed group of LTTE cadres spotted the Army and started conversation with them around 10.30 am, the paper says. Roll out the barrel, Well have a barrel of Fun! And end the Barrel Wadaya.

Socrates: We are going to review the weeks events. We have as our guest speaker Mahdenamutta whom we Greeks used to call M.D.Mutt. Welcome to cybersoace Mr Mutt.

Carrol Schrader: After reading the 15 page letter that Chandrika has written to Ranil and what Dayan Jayatilleke and SLGunesekera writes in the Sunday papers, I get scared. After all she is the President and Dayan got a first in political science and SL is an eminent lawyer. They say we have given everything to the Tigers and got back nothing in return. We are being taken for a ride. Like the lady who took a ride on the tiger and you know the limerick, dont you?

Mahadenamutta or M. D. Mutt (Greek form): Let me tell you a modern Jataka story. What is it about? It is about an arranged marriage, where the two families knew each other well, before the proposal was made. The young man and woman met by parental arrangement and liked to get married and the engagement took place, with little fuss but much joy.

That was because these two were the eldest in each family and the most loved in each, of all the 15 children in the 2 families. At the engagement, the dowry, a house in the city, then occupied by the girls family, was announced, together with information that the house was mortgaged. Half the value of the mortgage had been paid, and the other half was to be paid in small instalments to the Mortgage Bank for a few years, after which the house would be free and the unencumbered property of the young woman Since both man and woman was employed paying the instalment was no big deal.

Carroll: We used to talk about how men are but clay and how women make mugs out of them. So what has the mortgage got to do with Chandrikas arguments about sovereignty?

M. D. Mutt: Almost the day after the engagement doubts began to assail the man. What, if after marriage, they paid the instalments but the womans family continued to live in the house? He had never been a house owner and knew nothing of house laws. He only knew that his parental family house was unencumbered. Wasnt a mortgage a noose around your neck? Why hadnt he been told about the mortgage before the engagement? He would have rejected the house and settled for a dowryless marriage!

Carrol: Like Chandrika wanting sovereignty at all costs?

M. D. Mutt: Feelings ran high and he told his fianc, of these fears and they had a sad fight. She said that her parents had told his parents about the mortgage, before the engagement. They had made a special trip to do that. When he asked his parents they denied that they had been told. What was the misunderstanding? Who was telling lies? The young man and woman liked each other very much but they were torn by these doubts and fears.

She told him that her parents had another house, which was presently rented. Her parents had given notice to the tenants and would move there and leave the dowry house free for the two of them as soon as possible. Nevertheless, he had got so righteously angered at what he considered to be deception that he wrote a letter to the intended father in law, saying he does not want the house. This was an insult, hard to bear, but the father because he loved his daughter, ignored it. The deed of gift to the daughter had already been written.

Carrol: So Chandrika wrote the letter after the deed was done!

M.D.Mutt: In spite of all the distrust and doubt the marriage took place. The girls mother wept at the wedding, saying her daughter was destined for a sad life. The mans mother, who loved him as the apple of her eye, was distraught but showed no emotion. The marriage took place because of the love that had been awakened between the two young people, even though it was an arranged marriage.

One day the young man asked his office mate, a mature man with children. Duggie, what do you know about these mortgages? See, I am getting a house with a mortgage on it. I told them that I dont want a house with a mortgage.

Duggie listened to the details and said, What if you had to buy a house or build a house, as I had to do, when I got married! We had to pinch and save to find the money and go on transfer outstation to live in quarters. You are just lucky to get a house with a small mortgage like that and a wife whose salary will more than pay the instalment. Are you mad? Mortgages are a part of life. There is nothing to get worried about.

Carrol: So sovereignty is nothing to get worried about? Can it be paid off like a mortgage?

Socrates: Sovereignty belonged to the sovereign or the king. For a long time, till Oliver Cromwell cut off the head of Charles the First (around 1630), kings were supposed to have a divine right, given by God, to rule the people. He had the power of life and death over the people and what more do you want? Lets hear Robert Knox version of Rajasinha the Second of Kandy in the late 1600s.

Robert Knox: An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon (Ed J.H.O.Paulusz) Tisara 1989.

His pride and affectation of honour is immeasurableWhen they come before him they fall flat down on their faces to the groundAnd when he bids them to absent they go backwards until they are out of his sightNay he takes on him all the Ceremonies and Solemnities, which they show unto their Gods; making his account that as he is now their King, so hereafter he shall be one of their Gods...When the King speaks to them, they answer him at every period, Oiboa, many lives. Baula Gaut, the limb of a dog, speaking to the King of themselvesAs to his manner of government it is tyrannical and absolute in the highest degree: for he ruleth absolute and after his own will and pleasure, his own head being his only counselorThe country being wholly his the King farms out his land, not for money but service

Socrates: Robert Knox was born in England after Charles the First had his head severed. He took a modern view of Rajasinha the Second and his assumption of divine right.

The talk about sovereignty was taken up, after kings ceased to be, by jurists such as Blackstone. But it is no longer a dogma we have to take seriously, though claims are made by some people to such god like status, ostensibly for the state, an abstract entity, but in effect for themselves. Lets hear Dr Nadim Ul Haq about the IMF conditions for loans and consider how far sovereignty exists in the modern state.

Dr Nadim Ul Haq,

Senior Representative IMF in an interview with Benchmark on TV on March 1st We are not dictators, we are not authoritarian, We are only making recommendations as economic analysts. We recommend that there should be public sector reform, financial reform and education reform so that Sri Lanka can implement what she promises to do when she negotiates a loan or a standby credit.

We are all happy when there is peace. Peace is a good thing in itself. We will accept that Sri Lanka can now proceed in the correct direction. But we wish to see that take place. We want you to come up with solutions that will work. That is why I speak. I speak to you now to tell everybody our point of view.

M. D. Mutt:

Are you saying sovereignty is old hat?

Socrates: There are vestiges of it. But it is not a basis for a credible claim any more, unlike in the days when people believed in the divine right of kings. Sovereignty is said to lie with the people and expressed through the democratic process. That too is only a claim, which needs to be validated from time to time. It was so done in the December 5th election.

I suppose a referendum to decide on the peace settlement, when it takes place, will be an expression of the peoples sovereignty. The British, when they entered the Common Market, after a hot debate, held a referendum, in the time of Harold Wilson, where the people confirmed the decision.

Socrates: Some of my readers like a joke to end these chats. I remember, one which seems to match these worries about dividing the country and preserving territorial integrity, that some guys voice.

One of these society ladies of high fashion named Lahiri, who had a young daughter of about three or four, a little girl of great vivacity, gave a party to celebrate the centennial of her school.

Her daughter Noel, usually was put to bed upstairs, at eight, but this day she was very much there at the party, participating with the older folk. Her mother found her a hindrance to her own jollification and finally after many attempts at gentle persuasion sent her packing with a smack on her buttocks. The party continued and at the end the mother, Lahiri, after saying her byes and cheerios remembered her child and went upstairs to check on her.

She found the four year old standing quite naked in her room, with her back to the dressing table mirror, staring at her own backside.

What arent you asleep, Baby? What are you doing, Noel? she demanded. Cant you see whats happened? said the little girl, pointing to her back. Cant you see youve cracked it?

A saying of the Buddha from http://metta.lk/ _______ The lotus will grow even in rubbish thrown away. It will delight the heart with its sweet smell and beauty. Random Dhammapada Verse 58

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