EDITORIAL

The Fruits Of Peace

Search your memory back to the hazy beginnings of the war for Eelam, and you will recall that from the very outset, Sri Lankan society has been polarised between the hawks and the doves. At the outset of the Tamil insurgency, the violence was seen largely as an issue of petty crime, something well within the reach of the police. As militancy escalated on both sides, applying the ‘fight fire with fire’ principle, few Sinhalese — least of all, Sinhalese politicians — thought of the burgeoning conflict in political terms. It was a ‘law and order’ issue, and would be ‘dealt with’ as such.

July 1983 put a stop to all that. The week that will forever shame the Sinhala race upped the ante without limit, escalating the violence on both sides. In one fell swoop, the LTTE learned that the Sinhalese government would react exactly as it thought a Sinhalese government would: by seeking to stamp out the symptoms while pouring manure on the disease. As for the Tamils, it was the birth not only of the diaspora, but also of a romantic quest to get even. In that genesis lie the causes of the conflict inherited by the UNF government a year ago.

Compared with the PA, the LTTE’s attrition against the UNP was infinitely greater. Numerous ministers, a president and a leader of the opposition were brutally slain. President Kumaratunga is still bitter about the attempt on her life, which so very nearly succeeded. Her blind eye must remind her daily that the LTTE are no saints. Yet, in putting the violence of the past aside and settling down to an agenda leading to peace, the challenge lies largely in putting past bitterness aside. Old wounds heal slowly.

There is today a perception that the electorate is not as willing to forgive and forget as Ranil Wickremesinghe and Velupillai Prabhakaran are. To be fair, the need to put past differences aside was articulated by Wickremesinghe well in advance of last year’s general election. In fact, in the run up to the election, both Sajith Premadasa and Naveen Dissanayake clearly stated that peace was more important than vengeance, indicating unambiguously that bygones should be bygones: they had forgiven.

Just as in the early 1980s however, today too, Sri Lanka is polarised. There are those who believe that the course on which the UNF has embarked could lead to an honourable and constructive peace, and those who think it is a sell-out. Leading the former group, the UNF government points to the achievements of the past year: the fact that no one has died in anger; that normalcy has been restored; that the LTTE has renounced a separate state and offered to work towards a federal system; that the economy looks like it is on the rebound.

The critics of this process however, with equally as much conviction, point to the plethora of negatives: that the LTTE continues to operate and establish new ‘police’ stations and courts of ‘law’ in its territories; that the government affords LTTE leaders helicopter transport; that political freedoms are denied to rival groups such as the EPDP; and that the Tigers continue to arm and train even as the government talks of peace. Clearly, all this is utterly unacceptable. The question is, how should the government seek to curb Tiger excesses?

For 25 years we tried war. We crippled the economy in the name of ‘defence,’ and gave rise to a new breed of citizenry who controlled every politician of significance: the arms dealer. Despite 60,000 lives lost, we failed miserably. By the time Chandrika Kumaratunga handed the Defence Ministry over to Tilak Marapone on December 12, 2001, except for Jaffna, the entirety of the north and much of the east was in LTTE hands. There was a de facto Eelam.

So long as the war lasted, its proponents claimed that it was being prosecuted only in order to bring the rebels to the negotiating table. Well, now they are at the negotiating table. Now, the more hawkish element in our society says we have yielded too many concessions to the Tigers and should, instead, “negotiate from a position of strength.” Nothing could be more ridiculous, seeing as we have been negotiating from a position of weakness for a quarter century.

How could the government negotiate from a position of strength (assuming it is not) without once again waging war? Is this what the people of Sri Lanka want? It is certainly what the arms dealers wish for. The question is, whose kids will go out there and fight? Chandrika Kumaratunga’s? Nope, they are living it up in the comfort of Great Britain. Anuruddha Ratwatte’s? Not a hope: the up and coming plutocrats are busy beating up itinerant musicians in Colombo’s nightspots. The warriors of the war they advocate must be drawn from those too poor to do anything else, the impoverished, undernourished rural youth of Sri Lanka. They are, and have been, fodder to the Tigers’ cannons for 25 years, even as Kumaratunga and Ratwatte cynically sent them to their deaths.

Rather than looking only to the negatives, Colombo’s hawks would do well to look also to the positives. There is a world of difference between 2002 and 2001. We now have a society that does not live in fear and suspicion, facing daily roadblocks and checkpoints. We have a glimmer of hope. Above all, not one precious armed-serve life has been taken in anger this past year.

The challenge before us now is to bring the LTTE into the mainstream, not just of politics, but of civilised conduct. Tigers cannot be tamed overnight. It is a process of winning respect and dispelling suspicion. It is necessary for the LTTE and the Tamil folk of the north and east once more to begin to trust Sinhala intentions. In dealing with them, we must remember that we have hardly been saints, and the rhetoric of the hawks among us must give them pause. Just imagine the jeopardy they would be in were they to disarm and dismantle the apparatus of war and statehood they had built up over so long; they would lay themselves open to destruction overnight, just like the JVP in 1992!

This newspaper is not an apologist for the government’s agenda for peace, or the excesses of the Tamil Tigers. It is our hope however, that the end (viz. peace) will indeed justify the means. Having said that, there can be no gain saying that Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is running a grave risk in putting all his eggs in the peace basket. People cannot eat peace. Even as he focuses on peace, it is only to be expected that his ministers will focus on development. That, sadly, seems a futile hope. With the sons of some ministers running amok making a fool of Ranil Wickremesinghe, and with a good few ministers with their fingers firmly in the till with impunity, the hope for the UNF being able to fly its flag aloft for much longer is not high.