Think on these things before it's too late

THE cold-blooded murder of Batticaloa district TNA MP Joseph Pararajasingham and the subsequent killing of ten Government soldiers in the North, chillingly illustrates the tangled nature of the ethnic conflict.

To be sure, we need to kickstart and get on with the peace process but we need the full and complete cooperation for such an exercise of those armed non-State actors, predominant among whom is the LTTE, which have right along shown little inclination to give peace a chance.

There is no disputing that the LTTE right along sought to engage the State in a low intensity war. It speaks volumes for the professionalism of the law enforcers that they withstood the temptation to violently retaliate to the bloody, provocative acts of the Tigers.

We urge the security forces to continue in this spirit of great forbearance because it has proved decisive in preventing the country from collapsing into a state of war once again. However, there is no gainsaying the fact that the security forces and the Police should be prepared to uphold the national interest at all times. Under no circumstances, for instance, could the geographical oneness and integrity of the Lankan State be bartered away or compromised.

Besides, our law enforcers are the protectors of the democratic system of governance. They should ensure that the democratic rights of all our citizens are sustained. We say this because all armed groups, acting outside the bounds of the law - including, of course, the LTTE - should be brought to heel and subjected to the due process of the law.

Many are certain to have differed with Joseph Pararajasingham on the issues facing this polity but he enjoyed the right to espouse the views which were usually associated with him and in doing so he was following a course which was entirely democratic in nature. His killers could be considered as having only damaged the democratic process by brutally putting an end to his life.

The Lankan political community should only be too familiar with the intractable problems which crop-up when those who are practising the ways and procedures of democracy are silenced by the force of arms.

It should be clear to all concerned that those who are brutally suppressed only increasingly take to extra-parliamentary ways of advocating their causes. Therefore, the killers of Pararajasingham have only done the Lankan polity grave harm by stilling his voice by the force of arms.

Likewise, the LTTE is rendering the ethnic conflict increasingly intractable by targeting members of the security forces and police. The past 25 years of bloodshed and the Tigers' protracted bloody militancy, which has in no way benefited the Tamil people, should convince the LTTE that there is no alternative to a political solution.

While we urge the State to continue to pursue the path of negotiating an end to the conflict on an equitable basis we call on the LTTE to give peace a chance if they are really advocating the interests of the Tamil people. For, continued war has only brought misery to the Tamil people.

Meanwhile, the international community should see the need to continuously pressurise the LTTE into getting on to the path of negotiations. The talks on amending the Ceasefire Agreement too should be launched because it is all too clear that the Ceasefire Agreement, as it stands, has failed the polity very badly.