PENINSULA, AND THE PARADIGM SHIFT

Does the president's visit to Jaffna where he will open power plants and launch unprecedented infrastructure projects, signify a paradigm shift in Sri Lankan politics? It probably does.

The arduous process of political 'solutions' can wait. The administration has taken the direct route. There will be electricity, goods and services and work for the people of Jaffna, and the rest of the Northern Province.

If by itself this isn't a paradigm shift, then what is? It appears that there is an abiding political philosophy behind the work that is now being launched in Jaffna, by the hand of the president.

This was partly articulated in the Independence Day speech, when it was stated clearly that there will be no administrative units in this country based on ethnicity. 'BASED ON ETHNICITY' is the operative part of that message.

There seems to be little doubt that there will be a home-grown political arrangement that will be hammered out with the leaders of the Tamil minority of this country. But until then, it is paradigm shift in politics in place, to avoid the polarizations that would inevitably result from unnecessary ethnic based politicking, and deliver results directly to the Tamil people particularly of the North and the East.

Who is complaining? Certainly not the Tamil people of Jaffna who are seeing for the first time in decades, accelerated development of the proportions that they never dreamt would occur in their lifetimes.

Does that sound an exaggeration? It does not. When under the jackboot of that maniac Prabhakaran, the Tamil people were aware that they had been set back by centuries.

There is another reason for the reference to a paradigm shift in the new politics of the peninsula and of course by extension, the province. The old order is changing fast.

The lessons in politics and governance imparted by the American Empire no longer obtain. There are new realties where the Asian economies are on the ascendant, and the old order in trading and global economic exchanges is undergoing a rapid transformation.

When faced with this reality, Sri Lanka can afford to be proud. Pride means collective pride. It does not mean the suppression of the minorities, it just means one country and one people -- and ergo, a collective pride. Yesterday Dr. Susantha Gunatilleke writing in these columns had referred to the Portuguese historian Queroze referring to the Sinhalese who thought that they would never kowtow to the foreigner as they had a notion that they were essentially a cleaner and better lot.

To hark back to that epoch can be dismissed as supremacist, triumphal even. But on the contrary, it is a matter of reclaiming a heritage that made this island's people self-sufficient, and self-motivated.

So, the rough contours of the political paradigm shift that is now taking place can be seen in starkly visible and very tangible terms. A people must come into their own, in order to be free in every sense, particularly in economic terms.

The story of South Korea and Malaysia for instance, unfolded on the same lines. The dominant culture of a country has to come into its own, for all sectors of the community to keenly feel their own sense of belonging.

This may sound ironic, but it has been the common reality. However, the paradigm shift in local politics is now being misread in the usually suspect Western liberal quarters, as some kind of betrayal of the minorities.

This is for the most part because the new paradigm in politics does not suit the Western thinking of these impossibly rootless intellectuals. Simply put, they cannot relate to what is happening. Events seem to be overtaking them -- in a sense, leaving them behind. Good. More confirmation that real changes for the better is taking place.