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Ceasefire Agreement and struggle for Peace

The Christian Workers Fellowship (CWF) welcomes the ceasefire Agreement between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a crucially important stage in the process towards long desired goal peace in our land. The free movement of people and goods to and from the hitherto war-torn areas has buoyed up the hopes and expectations of people in this regard.

However, as an organisation of working people with members in the affected areas as well as the rest of the country, we wish to underline the need to ensure that in all this euphoria, the democratic and human rights of speech, assembly and the right to express dissent is not downplayed in the interests of a spurious 'peace' calculated to avoid embarrassment to any of the parties to the agreement and strengthen the dominance of the party in control of an area. The right to express dissent is of the essence of freedom and this space has to be necessarily protected by both parties if we are to move towards a democratisation and genuine devolution of power to the people in these areas.

We wish to stress this as there is no mechanism provided for in the Agreement for the people either individually or collectively through peoples organisations to take up matters under Article 2.1 of the Agreement which imposes the obligation that parties "shall in accordance with international law abstain from hostile acts against the civilian population including such acts as torture, intimidation, abduction, extortion and harassment". Such kind of people's participation is absolutely essential if we are to make the cease-fire meaningful and progress in the direction of a genuine peace. Apart from the position of the Muslim and Sinhalese people, the plight of the Tamil population living in the Mullativu and Killinochchi districts which have been recognised as being under the control of the LTTE, needs to be protected with a strong presence of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) in these extensive areas. We are strongly of the view also that political parties should be free to engage in political activity in all districts under the control of the LTTE in the same manner that members of the LTTE are allowed such freedom in the areas of the North and East that are outside their control.

But above all, it becomes necessary for the Norwegian facilitator to ensure that there is a proper working arrangement between the Government led by the Prime Minister and the President who is the "Head of State, the Head of the Executive and of the Government, and the Commander in-Chief of the Armed Forces" as provided for in Article 30 of the Constitution and is directly responsible to Parliament in the discharge of these powers. There has therefore to be a willingness on the part of all concerned to engage in what the President has advocated as "consensual government" in regard to the 'peace process' especially in the present situation where the President in whom wide powers are constitutionally vested is also leader of the main Opposition Party in Parliament., "Consensual politics" will be needed too in arriving at an agreed solution of the ethnic problem which alone can put an end to war and conflict and also in pushing through such an agreed solution with the requisite two-thirds majority in Parliament and in securing the ratification of such a solution through a referendum in the country.

There is the need also to agree that talks on a negotiated settlement should commence expeditiously since allowing the ceasefire to continue indefinitely would not be in our national interest but rather be counter-productive and against the very objective of the ceasefire which is "to find a negotiated solution to the on-going ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka" that alone can lead to genuine peace in our land.

But peace is not simply the absence of war. Real peace demands the elimination of conditions that have produced the on-going ethnic conflict necessitating the democratisation of our society, a sharing of power and a new Constitution that would reflect all these changed conditions. However, there could be in fact be a strong temptation on the part of both parties to the present Agreement to continue with an extended ceasefire and concentrate on rehabilitation and economic development of the war-ravaged North-East in place of facing up to and resolving the contentious issues that would result in effecting a negotiated settlement of the national question.

Such a course would enable the UNP Government to reduce its defence expenditure and keep its budget deficit to the 8 per cent demanded of it by the IMF and also enable the LTTE to improve the appalling conditions of people living under its control. The latter could well be achieved through the reconstruction and development programme to be launched by the government in the North East. Furthermore the government's setting up of its proposed North-East "Interim Administration" could lead to this area being controlled by the LTTE either directly or through its nominees in the Tamil National Front. It is precisely in such an eventuality that the democratic and human rights of the people referred to already could tend to be downplayed or even ignored.

The struggle for the resolution of the national question and genuine peace cannot therefore be simply left to the two parties to the present Agreement but becomes necessarily a part of the struggle of the working people of the country for justice and peace in our land.

It is the working people therefore who will have to push the negotiated settlement and peace process forward in co-operation with other sections of society - a tortuous struggle in the context of obstructionist and chauvinist forces of all kinds.

The struggle for peace in our country has also been a process in which the PA Government too has played a valuable role which process has now been reactivated and taken forward by the present UNP Government. It is therefore the common commitment to the peace process by both past and present governments that has now to bear fruit in the form of an eventual peace agreement for which both the Government and Opposition will be jointly responsible. The peace loving masses of our country must through their intervention and pressure on both Government and Opposition make the realisation of peace with justice a reality in the negotiations. The Tamil community in turn must also bring their pressures to bear on the Tamil Tigers to accept such a settlement.

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