Archives

Bread and Circuses by Cicero

Politics as pantomime we called it last week but should it have been pantomime as politics? Of course an element of theatricality can never be separated from politics and parliaments anywhere offer the choicest pieces of theatre. However never before has politics been played out as high farce or low comedy as it is happening in contemporary Sri Lanka. While parliament is living up to its description of a bear pit Cabinet meetings which should aspire to the highest reaches of confidentiality seem to be enacted in the glare of the flash lights and accompanied by the loudest possible media hub-bub.

The confidentiality of Cabinet meetings has been breached before but it was only during President Chandrika Kumaratunga's tenure from 1994 onwards that everything which occurred in Cabinet began hitting the Sunday newspaper political columns. She then accused Minister Mahinda Rajapakse of being the source a charge which was hotly denied by the Labour Minister as he was then.

Today although under a different dispensation the tradition continues (a dubious achievement for the free media which seems to be occurring under both PA and UNF governments) and as it has always been the case it is the President who is its chief butt. So Mrs. Kumaratunga does have a point when she claims that Cabinet meetings have become occasions to bait her these days.

This is obviously not a situation which can continue for long and things will not be helped by the President's action in taking the fight into the enemy camp. Her Polonnaruwa speech which paradoxically enough took place at a modest meeting hall parading itself in Sinhala as the White House even while Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was meeting the occupant of the White House really put the fact into the fire. The much-awaited confrontation between the President and her Cabinet Ministers did not take place last week since she did not attend the Cabinet meeting but things cannot hang fire like this for ever.

Several Cabinet Ministers are obviously bitter with the President for her remarks whereas the President herself has her own axes to grind with some of them whom she sees as renegades. The result can only be the mangling and mauling of that exotic concept 'co-habitation' although the beatific postures struck by the President and the Prime Minister on public occasions such as at the BIMCH last week might temporarily dissipate such perceptions.

Now comes the decision by the Central Committee of the SLFP chaired by no else than the President to start a campaign of agitation against some of the things which have occurred under the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Government and the LTTE. The party's media spokesman the liberal-sounding Dr. Sarath Amunugama had to strike something of a painful contortion to make a distinction between the peace process which we are fervently told the party supports and the MoU which we are told is the devil's own handiwork but obviously any such agitational campaign can only contribute to the heightening of communal tensions particularly when the JVP's Wimal Weerawansa appeals to the President to use her powers to abrogate the MoU.

The Government cannot be unmindful of the fact that these developments are taking place at a time when the peace process has again seemingly returned to its track. The first ever meeting between a Cabinet Minister and a senior LTTE leader which took place when Minister Milinda Moragoda met Anton Balasingham under the Norwegian umbrella in London was no doubt a major breakthrough which should pave the way for the talks in Thailand. While the President herself has been urging that the talks should be expedited what is not so easy to predict at the moment is what the nature of these talks would be.

Will the talks centre on the LTTE's insistence on an interim administration headed by itself or will it go into the area of substantive issues or the Kumaratunga-Kadirgamar prescription as it has been dubbed in some quarters? But whatever issues may be taken up it is quite clear that both parties will have to come to grips with major problems if the talks are not to peter out as it has happened so many times in the past.

In this context the main new story in the 'North Eastern Heralds,' a new newspaper edited by J. S. Tissainayagam formerly of the Sunday Leader makes interesting reading. It says that the nature of continued international support for the Government's peace efforts would depend partly on the 'constitutional arrangement for regional autonomy the Government can offer the minorities. Quoting Asian diplomatic sources the newspaper says in its first issue released at the end of July that financial backing from donors for reconstruction and development in the northeast will be determined largely on the basis of the structure and powers of the interim administration.

Against such a backdrop the Government will find itself in a spot if the SLFP and the JVP mount an anti-MoU campaign with the Sihala Urumaya too getting into the act as it demonstrated last week with the joint press conference given by former MPs Tilak Karunaratne and Champika Ranawake. The Government has however two consolations. One is the now quite apparent division between the Leader of the Opposition Mahinda Rajapakse and the former Opposition Leader Anura Bandaranaike. While Mr. Bandaranaike as usual is treading on everybody's corns (he has even taken up the American President accusing him of vote-rigging) Mr. Rajapakse has captured the moral high ground by taking up the position that any question of who the SLFP's presidential candidate will be at this point can only irrevocably damage the party.

The other point is the position taken up by the LSSP and the CP through its Youth League spokesmen who addressed the press last week that the SLFP has no proper stance on the peace process.

What is ironical here that it was the LSSP and the CP along with the Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya led by Vijaya and Chandrika Kumaratunga which supported the Indo-Lanka Agreement mooted by President Jayewardene at the cost of personal lives including that of Vijaya Kumaratunga who was killed on the eve of being anointed the leader of the three-party alliance ironically called the USA (United Socialist Alliance). Today, however, President Kumaratunga finds it politically expedient to oppose the MoU by invoking the flag and country while the older left parties brought up in the school of Leninist self-determination are more amenable to a solution involving autonomy to the Tamil regions.

That then is the state of play. The Government while it watches the peace process returning to its track is mindful of the pressures building up against it.

It also cannot be unmindful of the fact that the LTTE is using the present ceasefire to consolidate its administration in the North and East as evidenced by the high-profile role played by its "Police" force in the case of the Madhu killings even as it has been announced that it might abandon its practice of charging taxes. In this situation of mixed responses and confused signals the best reaction might appear to be what Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has taken up.

He will not be unhappy if the negotiations between the two parties are delayed if the guns will continue to be silent. It is obviously a case of thanking the deities for small mercies.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager