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Jayadeva Uyangoda

The negotiation between the UNF and the LTTE appears to be moving towards the second round with a complex ground situation emerging. While the first round held in Sattahip was also a significant media event, it was also a well-executed public relations exercise. The message both the Government and the LTTE delegates communicated in Sattahip was that they had established a good working relationship, a sort of trust.

Three weeks after the talks, there are still no reports of any major debate that may have occurred between the Government and the LTTE delegates, except on minor issues like who will speak first at the opening ceremony or how the delegates should be addressed in the diplomatic parlance.

The first round was obviously designed to make it what it in fact turned out to be - a propitious beginning. However, the future rounds of negotiation are less likely to be smooth affairs. Issues of defining the emerging re-configuration of state power will sooner than later enter the negotiation agenda.

Events like the arrest by the LTTE of Government soldiers in the Trincomalee district and the bloody clash between a mob and the STF in Kanjirankudah in Batticaloa would no doubt put a great deal of strain on the process of cease-fire. The continuation of such events, however localized they may initially appear, will indeed test the resolve of the protagonists to Sri Lanka's conflict to stay in the negotiation process amidst complex difficulties. Meanwhile, the changing political dynamics in Colombo appears to provide a still less propitious backdrop to Sri Lanka's conflict resolution process.

The broad political gains made by the Government from the negotiation process need not be underestimated. The success in Thailand initially enabled the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration to achieve some degree of political consolidation at home. The greatest political asset which the Wickremesinghe administration appears to possess at present is the international support and goodwill generated by the success at Sattahip.

Meanwhile, in the domestic political battle for stability, the UNF administration has been facing what one may call a mini crisis of uncertainty. This crisis is essentially located in the inability of the UNF and the PA to work out an arrangement of constructive cohabitation.

The dimension of the emerging crisis needs to be openly acknowledged.

The UNF Government is indeed confronted with the unusual prospect of being unseated if the President decides to use her powers of parliamentary dissolution after December 5, this year. Attempts to work out a compromise by both sides during the past several months did not produce a meaningful outcome. At times, the hostility between the UNF and the PA developed to such an extent that the room for rapprochement appeared almost disappearing.

When the government delegation went to Sattahip for talks with the LTTE, the UNF had deployed one of its major strategies of dealing with President Kumaratunga - a move to amend the constitution by restricting President's powers of dissolution. It is not yet clear as to how the proposed 19th Amendment will stand the test of parliamentary voting.

It is also likely that the Supreme Court determination on the draft bill may suggest changes to the amendment. In any case, whether the 19th Amendment is passed in parliament or not, the PA-UNF relationship is not likely to improve in either eventuality. If it is passed, the UNF government's stability, at least temporarily, will be assured, only at the risk of the antagonism between the President and the UNF being permanently institutionalized.

If the amendment is not passed, the Government will be in a peculiarly weak position. Quite apart from the fact that it will mark an immediate political setback for the Prime Minister, it will also place the Government under the continuing threat of dissolution by a hostile President. In a way, the 19th amendment does not seem to offer a way out from the crisis. It only re-defines and exacerbates it.

The emerging difficulties for the Government are further complicated by the sharpening conflict within the SLMC, the UNF's main coalition partner. It appears that the revolt against the leadership of Minister Rauf Hakeem has reached a turning point. Nine SLMC MPs have begun to boycott parliament protesting Hakeem's stand that the Muslims should not press for a separate Muslim unit of devolution in the Eastern Province.

Hakeem declared this conciliatory position on his return from Thailand talks. But, his retreat from the earlier hardline negotiation position of the Muslim parties only angered his opponents as well as competitors within and outside his own party. The weakening of Minister Hakeem's stand within the SLMC as well as the Muslim community runs the risk of negatively affecting the political configuration that existed in the run up to Thailand talks.

Quite interestingly, the LTTE leadership too has counted a lot on Mr. Hakeem's leadership and his ability to soften the Muslim demand for a separate unit of devolution. During the phase of negotiation preparation, they held consultations with Hakeem obviously to neutralize the potential Muslim opposition to the North-East merger.

The Muslim political forces have repeatedly argued for special arrangements for their community in the Eastern Province in case the government agreed to the Tamil demand for North-East merger. In this context, the LTTE appears to have opted for establishing an alliance with the SLMC so that a joint Tamil-Muslim negotiation option on the Eastern Province would perhaps be worked out.

Hakeem's disavowal of the claim for a separate Muslim unit occurred in that backdrop. The LTTE's insistence that Hakeem should participate in the subsequent negotiation rounds as a Muslim delegate, and not as a member of the UNF government delegation, also occurred in the same context. Thus, the growing revolt within the SLMC against Hakeem's leadership is likely to have fairly serious implications.

Firstly, it can have an immediate impact on the UNF coalition's stability. Secondly, it will alter the balance of political forces that provided the backdrop for the talks with the LTTE. In fact, the stability within the Muslim polity is crucial for the country's overall political stability, including the peace process.

All this in a way makes it necessary, and even imperative, for Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to intervene in such a way that a new configuration of political forces is able to emerge sooner than later. One obvious, yet fairly difficult, path available to him is to continue with his attempt to establish a working relationship with President Kumaratunga.

It appears that the Prime Minister is committed to maintaining a constructive political engagement with the President, despite the other agendas which some of his leading Cabinet colleagues seem to pursue. The decision he has made to consult and brief the President on negotiations is an exceedingly prudent one.

As the Prime Minister seems to have realized, there is absolutely no point in further antagonizing President Kumaratunga whose constitutional authority will be politically enhanced once the UNF administration completes one year in office in the first week of December. The bottom line available to Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is a paradoxical one. Whether the 19th amendment is passed or not, the government's options for the future will largely depend on the UNF coalition's ability and willingness to stabilize itself from within as well as in its relationship with the President.

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