POLITICS

PM's peace dividend and CBK's confusion

By Suranimala While President Chandrika Kumaratunga's attempts last week to sideline the Norwegian facilitators and run a parallel peace process failed to get off ground, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe went public with the peace dividends in store for the country through his efforts, announcing a Rs. 17.5 billion development package. With time fast running out for her presidency, President Kumaratunga has tried every trick in the book to derail the peace process and with it the government, but has boxed herself in with every manoeuvre, the last being the call for a demerger of the north east which had not only the Tamil political parties but even the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress coming out strongly against the move

Muslim Congress Leader Rauf Hakeem, whom the President targeted in particular over this issue, went so far as to publicly dare Kumaratunga to demerge the north east, making the entire exercise a colossal political blunder.

Politically desperate

In fact, even the much anticipated ripple effect in the south was a non-starter and the President ended up looking politically desperate in the face of an economy fast picking up and an opposition in disarray having failed to clinch a deal with the JVP, save for the likes of Anura Bandaranaike who kept promising such a deal.

And the President has now been reduced to a mere prolific letter writer to Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and other ministers on a wide range of issues, which after the initial novelty, has lost all significance with the Prime Minister and the ministers no longer even taking them seriously.

Time and again, the President has threatened the Prime Minister and several of his ministers in writing and verbally all manner of dire consequences if action on her directives are not carried out but nothing has followed, leading in most cases to the letters now not even being taken seriously. The letters are replied in a matter of fact manner only out of courtesy. Such is the pitiful state the President has been reduced to by crying wolf once too often.

In this respect, the President fired three more salvos last week, two to Prime Minister Wickremesinghe on the Wan Ela camp issue which was exclusively reported in this column and the CWE and the other to Power Minister Karu Jayasuriya on what was described as regular blackouts. In most instances the letters were based on factually false premises or blatant lies, which of course is not unusual in Kumaratunga's case.

That the President did not indulge in this practice of writing letters to her prime minister and her ministers and make them public while the PA was in office itself has now raised questions not only of her bona fides but the political motives behind such acts which reduces the dignity of the President's office, more so when no action follows.

The Prime Minister in fact sent a curt reply to Kumaratunga's Wan Ela camp letter on Thursday, August 28, educating her on the MoU with the LTTE, stating the government was acting under its terms by requesting the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and the facilitators to deal with the issue.

What really called into question the President's bona fides was the letter on the blackouts to Jayasuriya given the fact it was under her uncle Anuruddha Ratwatte's stewardship that this country was plunged into the worst power crisis in 1996 with a continuous blackout for a week and regular power cuts running into months, with not so much as a murmur from Kumaratunga, though privately she accused Ratwatte of being the most corrupt minister in her government at a discussion with the IMF while continuing to retain him as minister.

It is these factors that prompted Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to tell his cabinet colleagues last week that the President was increasingly becoming paranoid and desperate in the face of the UNF's successes and PA's failures, which advantage he said should not be lost due to infighting within government.

Uncertain ground

That the President is on uncertain political ground due to the peace talks scheduled to resume again as well as the package of economic relief announced by the government was also evident when she spoke with a group of journalists last week.

Criticising the government's economic performance in comparison to her "successes" as finance minister under the PA administration, Kumara-tunga also compared LTTE Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan to Adolf Hitler stating all dictators end up dead and she was waiting for that day in the case of Pirapaharan as well.

The bottom line is, the President is in the horns of a dilemma having painted herself into a corner by not having a consistent position on any issue, the least of all the peace process.

On the one hand, Kumaratunga realises she won't get a look into government before her tenure is up unless she hijacks the peace process and woos the Tigers but having criticised the Norwegians and the government's MoU with the LTTE, is unable to jump that bandwagon now.

And given her stance on the peace process, the merger and the LTTE, the President has alienated the Tamil people as well as the Tamil political parties, making it increasingly difficult not only for a parliamentary manoeuvre but also electoral. The hardline positions Kum-aratunga has taken also make it impossible for her to negotiate with the LTTE.

That would leave her with the option of taking the extremist line with the JVP thereby permanently sealing her fate with the minorities as well as the international community without whose support in today's context, a government under Kumaratunga will be a non-starter.

But even that path Kumaratunga is not prepared to trek, rejecting a JVP demand to oust the Norwegians and cancel the MoU - thereby making a deal with the JVP also a non-starter. And without the support of the minorities as well as the JVP, the President has not even a snowball in hell's chance of manoeuvering back a PA government.

Thus, given the conflicting positions taken by Kumaratunga, she has only succeeded in landing the PA between two stools which is exactly what the Prime Minister was impressing upon his ministers.

It is possibly to salvage herself and the PA from this hopeless position she has boxed them into that a new strategy of initiating a Finnish initiative on the peace process was looked at by the President.

The President possibly believed through such a strategy, she can oust the Norwegians to satisfy the JVP and neutralise the Tamil parties by keeping the peace process alive under her through the ex-Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, a well known peace maker.

But this bid to sidetrack the government as well as the Norwegians was a non-starter from the word go with the former President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari not prepared to deal exclusively with President Kumaratunga.

Ahtisaari, a reputed international peacemaker, is a member of the Club de Madrid, an outfit of former heads of state and government and founder of the WIDER organisation which funded Kumaratunga's research while in London.

Lone ranger exercise

Ahtisaari's visit to Sri Lanka was kept a closely guarded secret by the President's office with the Prime Minister not even informed and the government as a result steered clear of the visit, making it a lone ranger exercise of Kumaratunga.

It was the organisation's local contact, Ram Mannikkalingam who finally informed the Prime Minister's Secretary, Bradman Weerakoon of the visit of Ahtisaari, by which time it was too late to fit in an appointment with Wickremesinghe or with peace negotiator Milinda Moragoda.

But Ahtisaari did meet with Moragoda's uncle, Dr. Lal Jayewardene, who it was that organised Kumaratu-nga's research funding through WIDER, at the time. He also met with the Norwegian Ambassador Hans Brattskar and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.

It however would not have taken long for Ahtisaari to realise he could well be a pawn used in a political chess game for narrow ends with the prospect of being pitted against the Norwegians and steered clear of partisanship.

In fact having done some soundings, Ahtisaari's Private Secretary too made contact with Bradman Weerakoon and requested a meeting with the Prime Minister for the former Finnish President but the meeting never materialised due to the time factor. However, just hours before Ahtisaari left Sri Lanka's shores, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe telephoned him and exchanged courtesies and agreed to a meeting during his next visit to Sri Lanka.

In contrast to Kumaratunga's confused strategies, the government was sticking to its peace agenda as well as the economic programme, not deviating in the face of opposition, thereby showing consistency.

Thus while the President was occupying herself with letter writing and cat and mouse games, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was busy putting a relief and investment package together for the people as a peace dividend which is to culminate with the budget where Finance Minister K.N. Choksy is expected to announce a salary increment in the range of Rs. 1250-1500 per month, an increment he is expected to propose will be effective for three consecutive years.

Furthermore the government's economic policy committee also finalised a Rs. 17.5 billion development package for small scale infrastructure rehabilitation and upgrading in addition to generating employment to graduates and other categories in several sectors including the garment industry through special quota allocations for factories employing new workers. In addition, Rs. 1 billion was also allocated for roofing in all districts.

The exact breakdown of the allocations made was revealed in a memo sent to the Secretary, Policy Development by the External Resources Department and is reproduced below:

Small Scale Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Upgrading Project (SIRUP1)

According to the loan agreement signed between JBIC and GOSL on March 26, 2003, the following are the areas identified for funding under the SIRUP1 project.

* Community water supply and sanitation

* Water supply (projects under the NWS and DB)

* Rehabilitation and restoration of irrigation schemes

* National highway bridges reconstruction and upgrading programme

* Provincial education improvement programmes (Central Province)

The table of allocation of funds as identified in the SIRUP 1 project is reproduced on this page.

Formidable showing

With this development, a people friendly budget and the peace talks set to resume shortly, the government will be in a position to put up a formidable showing at the provincial councils poll as opposed to the confusion prevalent in the PA after the failure to clinch a deal with the JVP.

In effect the message would be that the government is offering economic prosperity, stability and the prospects of peace without body bags of youth going to the villages whereas Kumaratunga's and the JVP's panacea is a controlled economy, eviction of the Norwegians and the prospect of going back to war.

Thus, the prospects appear to be bright for the Prime Minister in the overall context helped along in no small measure by Kumaratunga though there are problems yet to be sorted out.

What is causing concern at Temple Trees is the infighting in government which is threatening to reach serious proportions largely due to the prevalent committee system where ministers at times are unaware of crucial decisions reached.

But there have been instances differences of opinion have arisen even after cabinet decisions are taken and this was one issue Finance Minister K.N. Choksy took up at last week's pre cabinet meeting, targeting Health Minister P. Dayaratne in particular.

What had Choksy irked and vexed was criticism by Dayaratne of a cabinet decision to purchase Rs. 1.7 billion worth of equipment for the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Hospital in Peradeniya in a statement to this newspaper. Choksy's contention was that Dayaratne was involved in the entire decision making process but did not object, instead choosing to do so through the media.

Similar sentiments on different issues were expressed by other ministers as well and the Prime Minister finally said once a cabinet decision or policy is taken, there should be no criticism of it.

"The time to do so is before the decision is taken at cabinet," the Premier said. He also said the government's policies are now showing positive results and it would be a pity if public attention is diverted from the positives to the negative infighting.

In the final analysis, the Premier is moving to deal the people the economic benefits of a peace process and truce which for all its warts has held for over 18 months while the President is making every effort to derail the process with the sole objective of perpetuating her power.

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