The necessary struggle for consensus

"If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst." - Thomas Hardy - "In Tenebris".

It's a grand time for real and pseudo political analysts, particularly those who claim to have some expertise in Indo-Lanka relations and the ramifications of Indian foreign policy.

The recent visit of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to India at the invitation his counterpart President Abdul Kalam of India, the news that trickled out about that visit and the contents of the Joint Statement by India and Sri Lanka at the end of the visit, are ideal grist to the mill of these analysts and some.

There are many and varying interpretations given to the visit and its outcome from that of an outright failure by those who are opposed to the government and style of President Rajapaksa, while those who are overly supportive of Rajapaksa describe it as a complete success.

There are many who have concluded that India is trying to wipe its hands clean of involvement with current developments in Sri Lanka, particularly that of playing a more significant role in the peace process.

Others see the Indian approach as being one of pragmatism, given the current political conditions in India, with the Union Government at the centre having at least one coalition partner that is wholly pro-LTTE and a State of Eelam carved out of Sri Lanka.

With Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru being synonymous with modern India, I prefer to recall the opening lines of his famous address to the Indian Parliament at the time India achieved independence from the British Raj.

Stating that India was keeping its tryst with destiny, Nehru said it "was not in full measure, but very substantially".

Not claiming to be an expert on the South Block and the carefully worked out foreign policy strategies of India, I would repeat that President Rajapaksa's visit to India was not a success in full measure, but that it did achieve success very substantially.

With guns at the ready

For those who expected India to come to the help of Sri Lanka with guns at the ready in its fight with the LTTE's terrorism and blatant violation of whatever is left of the Ceasefire Agreement, the outcome of the visit was a total failure.

But the problem lies with those who have such a simplistic understanding of what the Indian response would (or should) be and a lack of knowledge of both India's and Sri Lanka's understanding of the very nature of the LTTE and its politico-military strategies.

In the immediate short term India has indeed thrown the ball right into the Sri Lankan court. Both countries agree that a solution should be first worked out by the Sri Lankans themselves.

In this lies the core of the need for consensus among the political parties functioning beyond the control or influence of the LTTE.

It is a forceful reiteration of the policy of President Rajapaksa that there should be a clear consensus reached in the South as to what is to be offered to the LTTE. This consensus has to be arrived in the context of being aware of the LTTE's practice of rejecting whatever is offered.

One would find that the search for consensus is the most difficult of all matters that are urgent for a solution of the ethnic crisis, which today is nothing but an euphemism to a separate State of Eelam.

As each day passes the need for this consensus keeps getting more urgent. It cannot be achieved by means of political slogans. It is even more difficult to be found in the rigid positions taken by some political parties, which place supposed ideology above the need for a settlement of the crisis.

A ghoulish satisfaction

The consensus that is needed is even more difficult with those who keep making calculations of how one's own political party could benefit from a supposed commitment to consensus building. These are parties with a commitment to hypocrisy.

Those that overtly agree to support the Government's search but no sooner a major attack by the LTTE takes place jumps up to blame either the leadership of Mahinda Rajapaksa or both the JVP and JHU for what has taken place.

Such parties and leaders display a ghoulish satisfaction or pleasure at the numbers killed or maimed, by being able to blame it all on the JVP or the JHU, two parties that are not in government but those that helped in the election of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the fifth Executive President of Sri Lanka.

It is a strange logic that drives them to declare that the JVP and JHU are responsible for the increasing violence, and even demand that the members of these parties go to the front to battle with the enemy.

It is strange that such political ghouls are not ready to name the LTTE as the perpetrator of most of the violence, which even the Co-Chairs of the Tokyo Conference have understood very clearly.

This is nothing but the satisfaction at being proved right in the self-fulfilling propaganda warnings by the UNP during the election campaign that the election of Mahinda Rajapaksa would lead to war and the resumption of body bags being sent to village homes.

Such ghoulish satisfaction notwithstanding, it is necessary for the government to push ahead with the search for consensus, as to what it will bring to the negotiating table if when and where the LTTE agrees to come for discussions as a prelude to serious negotiations to resolve the conflict, or even as a means of bringing about changes to the Ceasefire Agreement to make it more meaningful.

The spurious debates

It is time to give up the spurious debates on political nomenclature, and the never ending but futile debate about the type of government. It's worth recalling here the words of Alexander Pope:

For forms of government let fools contend, Whate'er is best administered is best.

At the same time the public yearning for peace should not be an excuse for continued appeasement of a tiger whose appetite cannot be satiated other than by a grand helping of Eelam.

Scoring political points in the South, whether as radicals, nationalists or patriots cannot take us ahead. There must be the readiness to be honest in the actual measure of devolution that will be on offer to the Tamil people together with the constitutional guarantee of equality for all of our peoples.

Democracy must prevail with political pluralism at its core. It is on this that consensus has to be reached, with sufficient flexibility both on the part of the Government as well as the other political players and sections of civil society that are true stakeholders in the search for a genuine and honourable peace to all.

They should all agree that whatever is agreed to is that which is best administered, irrespective of labels attached.

The search for consensus is certainly not easy. It is among the hardest goals to achieve in a hugely divided society that has still not fully shed the burdens of feudalism, colonialism and pseudo nationalism.

Yet the search must go on if peace is to be reached. It is only with a strong, hard, penetrating look at the worst that there could be hope of reaching the consensus needed today.