Need for negotiations, pluralism and democracy
The Peace Secretariat views with satisfaction the recent
pronouncements of several countries in response to the forthcoming
termination of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, that a negotiated political
solution is required for resolution of the political conflict in Sri
Lanka, the Peace Secretariat said in news release.
Whilst well-meaning advice is always welcome, even if redundant, we
trust these well-wishers will register that such a perception has
governed the Sri Lankan Government since its inauguration in November
2005.
This is precisely the reason that, despite an escalation in LTTE
terrorism from December 2005, as noted by the then fully Scandinavian
Monitoring Mission, the Government promoted negations and finally
managed, in February 2006, to persuade the LTTE to return to talks,
which they had withdrawn from in April 2003.
Government gave up for this purpose its original assertion that talks
should take place in Asia rather than in Europe.
The avuncular well-wishers of Sri lanka, who had despite continuing
indulgence failed to persuade the LTTE to return to negotiations for
nearly three long years, did not then congratulate the Sri Lankan
government for this achievement.
Perhaps they knew the LTTE better than the new government did. Just a
couple of months later the LTTE tired to assassinate the Sri Lankan army
commander, using a pregnant suicide bomber, an imaginative leap that
should have been confined to the fictions of magic realism.
Despite this the Government requested further talks and duly went two
months later to Oslo, despite many elements in Sri Lanka fearing
untoward influences in Norway. However, though the LTTE got themselves
transported to Oslo, they embarrassed even their Norwegian hosts by
failing to appear at the talks.
Two months later the LTTE, having previously violated the CFA over
three thousand times in ways that could be characterized as individual
aberrations, made another qualitative leap in launching two large-scale
military offensives, in the North and the East of the country
respectively.
These seemed the culmination of a long term strategy, designed to
take military control of the North and East, and in one of them the head
of their Political Wing played a prominent role, suitably dressed for
the part in the military fatigues that he had increasingly flaunted over
the preceding period. Sadly, idealistic well-wishers failed to register
what a gross violation this was of the CFA, and the fact that it
required concerted defensive measures to ensure that such threats to the
integrity of the nation could not be repeated.
And yet, despite this, sticking to its original perception, the
Government went back to talks in Geneva in October 2006. This time the
LTTE delegation did appear on stage for one day, and was then withdrawn
by what one of the more shrewd British observers of the scene described
as the famous call from Killinochchi.
Since then the LTTE has refused to return to talks, making it clear
to the Norwegian Facilitator that they would not negotiate unless
various conditions, which charged with the times and seasons, were met.
That even informal talks were not possible was also made clear by the
LTTE to the SLMM, from which it summarily expelled several
Scandinavians,thus making proper monitoring impossible (and thus the
rulings that had made clear with what contempt the LTTE had treated the
CFA over five long years).
It was in such a context that the Government decided that its
continuing conviction regarding the need for negotiations had to be
implemented practically, instead of being confined to platitudes.
Whether meanwhile well-wishers and others tried in their various ways to
persuade the LTTE to negotiate is not known. If they did so, they did
not succeed.
So the Government began a process of discussions designed to produce
a political solution to political problems, whilst making it clear - a
fact that most other nations had emphasised through their own actions,
sometimes not even bothering to pay lip service to negotiations - that
terrorism could not be tolerated, and that the security of one’s own
citizenry was a paramount consideration for any government.
The deliberations of the APRC that was set up by the Government
continue apace. The Peace Secretariat could have hoped that a result
would have emerged more quickly, but in a pluralistic democratic setting
it is not easy to achieve consensus.
In Sri Lanka for instance, whilst much appreciating the enormous
assistance rendered over the last twenty years by successive Indian
governments, we understand that, when there is a coalition government,
there might be varying emphases which must be respected.
Some countries however, more used to dealing with monolithic
governments, fail to understand this, just as they fail to understand
that Sri Lanka has independent courts which no government can take for
granted.
The Peace Secretariat therefore, whilst hoping for quick decisions,
fully respects the enormous efforts of the APRC Chairman and
participants in seeking productive consensus. The door remains open for
any other parties to enter into discussion, but the failure of any
entity to talk should not preclude others from doing so.
In this sense, perhaps the termination of the CFA will permit even
the Facilitator to develop relations with moderate Tamil parties, the
existence of which became clear to the former Norwegian Ambassador only
a few weeks before, after a thankless few years in which he tried to
arrange discussions with the LTTE, he finally left Sri Lanka.
His successor was able to build on his final perception, that talks
with other too were desirable, and the Peace Secretariat hopes therefore
that the input of Tamils who had suffered neglect because of the
fashionable monolith of 2002 will now be taken into account by all
members of the International Community.
Discussion, tolerance for all opinions and a democratic dispensation
that allows people to exercise choice are essential if peace is to
return to Sri Lanka.
The last time the LTTE summarily withdrew from talks, its
intransigence nearly proved successful, when the then Government offered
it an Interim Self-Governing Authority in which it would dominate two
provinces and all Pradeshiya Sabhas within them without any opportunity
for the people to vote.
Unfortunately for the LTTE, the democratic response of the people of
Sri Lanka to such appeasement was a resounding rejection at the polls of
the leadership that had eschewed discussion, tolerance and democracy.
No Sri Lankan Government will return to arbitrary authoritarianism,
and it would be well if the International Community as a whole, while
promoting a negotiated settlement, also understood reality and did not
suggest a continuing commitment to a quasi-fictional world of
increasingly fiendish violence.
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