POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Cry the Beloved Country 10 Years Later

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

COLOMBO, Nov 16 2004 (IPS) - Ten years after she was elected as Sri Lanka’s first woman president, Chandrika Kumaratunga presides over a nation unable to escape the curse of being burdened by self-inflicted wounds.

Kumaratunga bears some of the blame for keeping this South Asian nation stuck in such a political climate, given the power she wields as the most powerful person in the land.

The continuing stalemate on the most fractious issue facing Sri Lanka – resolving the country’s ethnic conflict that has pitted the Tamil minority against the Sinhalese majority – reflects this dire reality.

Hopes of peace talks getting underway to end a 19-month-long impasse remains bleak, consequently casting a sense of gloom across a broad spectrum of society. The re- emergence of security checkpoints – albeit mobile ones – in the capital suggests an undertow of tension and increasing uncertainty.

Over the weekend, it became amply evident that the Tamil Tiger rebels appeared to have no stomach to deal with Kumaratunga as a partner to be trusted in order to get the country’s peace process back on track.

That was evident in the remarks made by the Tiger’s chief peace negotiator Anton Balasingham following last week’s desperate attempt by Norwegian peace brokers to get Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the rebels are officially known, back to the talks again.

”The (Norwegian) facilitators did not bring any special message from the president that may be classified as a ‘breakthrough,’ ” Balasingham was quoted on the LTTE’s peace secretariat website as having told the media.

It mirrored a pattern that the Tigers had displayed since April, when a coalition of political parties headed by Kumaratunga regained control of parliament at an election to form the government.

The LTTE has consistently pooh-poohed the overtures made by Kumaratunga to resume the peace talks, including a reluctance to consider the conditions the Sri Lankan president has highlighted as a sound basis for such negotiations.

”The LTTE has remained adamant not to accept the government’s requirement that the future rounds of peace talks should include a discussion of core issues and a final (political) solution,” wrote Jehan Perera, a columnist, in Tuesday’s edition of the ‘Daily Mirror,’ an independent English language newspaper.

Kumaratunga, in a sense, has earned such distrust given the manner in which she dismissed the 28-month-old government of United National Party (UNP), headed by her political rival Ranil Wickremesinghe.

It was the UNP that was instrumental in striking a ceasefire deal with the LTTE shortly after it secured enough seats in parliament at the December 2001 elections to form a government.

Sri Lankans rediscovered their smiles, as a result, and the air was rich with hope and optimism of rebuilding shattered lives. That mood was given a further lift when in September 2002 negotiators from the UNP-led government and the LTTE met for the first of six rounds of peace talks.

This breakthrough brought to an end the nearly two decades of fighting that had pitted the government troops against the LTTE. Over 64,000 people had died by then in this conflict waged largely in Sri Lanka’s north and eastern provinces, the area where Tamil rebels were hoping to create the separate state of Tamil Eelam.

But Kumaratunga never threw her weight behind that initiative, a fact that was writ large in November 2003 when she used the constitutional powers she enjoys as the country’s executive president to scuttle the peace process by firing three cabinet ministers in the UNP government.

A year later, she finds herself desperately needing the support of the UNP, now heading the opposition’s ranks in parliament, to reach a consensus among the main Sri Lankan political parties before reaching a deal with the LTTE.

This image of Kumaratunga as a spoilsport, who undermined the success of her political rival’s quest for permanent peace in Sri Lanka, is a stark contrast to what she stood for in November 1994 when she swept into power as the country’s fourth president with a thumping majority.

She was seen then as a symbol of hope, given that she had championed the cause of peace during her election campaign. Her presence at the head of government brought to an end a 17-year-long oppressive and, at times, brutal rule of three UNP presidents.

Shortly after her election, she initiated peace talks with the Tigers – the third such effort made by Colombo since the ethnic conflict erupted in 1983.

As significant was the message she delivered to the Tamil minority at that time – that they had been victims of unjust and discriminatory state policies. Such an apology from the head of government belonging to the majority Sinhalese community was a radical departure from the pro-Sinhalese views of her predecessors.

That Kumaratunga was unable to convert such political capital to shape a lasting peace was initially undermined by the LTTE – when it pulled out of the peace talks she had initiated and then tried to assassinate her.

Her reluctance to appreciate the need for a bi-partisan approach with the UNP for any lasting solution is as relevant. It continues to define her as she marks her 10 years in office.

She remains combative towards an opposition that matters if Colombo is to offer a face of unity to pressure the Tigers into talking peace again.

Little wonder why Tamil parliamentarians championing the cause of the LTTE are quick to dismiss hints from the government that it is on the verge of sewing together a consensus among the Sinhala-dominated political parties in the country’s south.

”Sinhala parties will never come to a consensus on a political settlement to the ethnic conflict. It won’t happen even if we Tamils wait patiently for another fifty years,” Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Senathirajah Jeyanandamoorthy was quoted Tuesday on ‘TamilNet,’ a web-zine sympathetic to the LTTE.

The Tamil rebels, according to one analyst, feel more comfortable dealing with the UNP. ”The quicker Chandrika grasps this the less pain and uncertainty (there will be) for us here.”