Editorial

Illan Kanawa

In case you haven't noticed, Mother Lanka is in dire straits. February last, Chandrika Kumaratunga, claiming that the UNF government was ruining the country, dissolved parliament. The UNF's 'destruction,' it is no secret, consisted of record donor and foreign investment in the country, a stable rupee, a rate of economic growth unprecedented since Kumaratunga took office a decade ago, and a genuine liberation of the state media - though still short of the full divestiture that we have continuously advocated.

To save the nation from the ruin of success and in truck with the JVP, which continues to claim that its model of governance is North Korea, Kumaratunga went to the polls. She led up to the dissolution by toying with the gullible Ranil Wickremesinghe as a cat plays with a mouse. Elbowed on by the Machiavellian Nirupan Sen, Wickremesinghe took the bait, learning that he was out of a job only after the fateful Gazette had gone to the printer. It would be overstating the case to claim that the UNF's election campaign lacked lustre. The reach and rancour of the alliance's media blitz was such that even an educated electorate might have been bowled over. It wasn't, and it was.

Whatever Wickremesinghe's sins might have been, he did bring peace to the country after a quarter-century of war. Not only that, but he was able to get most of the civilised world behind him, and the planet was brimming with goodwill for little Lanka. Now, the ceasefire of 2002 seems a distant memory, and we are a nation grown complacent, taking peace for granted. But we need to remember that peace is not in everyone's interest, and there is a sizeable constituency that would rather the bloodshed began all over again.

This lobby group includes the arms traders, who have fallen on hard times these past two years. The vast sums of money not being made are incentive enough for the trade to bribe politicians into belligerence. Then there are the extreme Sinhala nationalists who are ever ready to have someone else go to war to slaughter Tamils, and if necessary, themselves be slaughtered. Finally, there are the political opportunists, to whom a recurrence of war could prove to be just what the doctor ordered for eternal life.

The economic decline that Sri Lanka has seen in the past four months is something few predicted when the alliance won the April 2 polls. Indeed, one wonders whether the government could have made a bigger mess if it actually tried. The 'Rata Perata' (taking the nation forward) slogan has backfired terribly, with the alliance not having found it possible to keep any of its many lavish promises and given the people only rhetoric via the puppet state media.

Despite the JVP sitting in the government, the unions are restless and strikes are imminent, not least in the transport and health sectors. Having wrested government from the UNF through the greed that is the hallmark of her clan, Chandrika Kumaratunga has got her knickers in one mighty twist.

It has not taken her long to realise that the solution to all her problems will come through a renewal of the war. That would immediately justify the declaration of a state of emergency, enabling her to curb the media and opposition still further. It would also bring the Sinhala bigots now sitting on the opposition benches to her aid, giving her the majority she desperately needs in parliament. And it would be a nice diversion from the mess the economy is in, what is more, justifying the spiralling cost of living. Shortly before taking off on her latest jaunt to London (now the most visited Presidential destination), Kumaratunga threatened to curb the LTTE's spate of assassinations by military action if necessary.

Hot on her heels, Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, her able mouthpiece, warned the LTTE that the government's patience is running out and not to push it towards war. Fate seems to have been telling the nation something when soon after he took office, the peace pigeon he 'released' by flinging it into the air turned out to be stone dead. And to add to the tension, Mahinda Rajapakse, well known to harbour extremist Sinhala tendencies, had himself photographed peering out of a bunker - a clear signal that the government is readying itself for battle.

All this cannot have been lost on the LTTE which, goodness knows, has offered plenty of provocation of its own with a series of brutal killings of political rivals. With the ISGA shelved, the peace talks deadlocked and no prospect of progress on any front being likely, a return to war would be music to Tiger ears. We need now to wait with bated breath only for the first shot to ring out: the one thing that could save the careers of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Velupillai Pirapaharan now is war, and they both know that.

Peace has not been easy for the LTTE either, for the Tamil diaspora that does espouse a sovereign eelam is not anxious to keep giving until it hurts to keep the Tigers indefinitely in bread and water unless some progress is made towards statehood. The peace process was never leading to that, for the Tigers themselves unilaterally stated that they would settle for a federal state within a sovereign Sri Lanka, a large step down from eelam. Now, with international pressure to refrain from war, their hands are tied - and the alliance government is poised to untie them by edging towards the brink.

War would suit Kumaratunga's agenda very well. It would also suit that of the JVP, whose only hope of capturing outright power in Sri Lanka is by spreading misery. For all its bluster and war-mongering, not a single one of the JVP's 39 MPs has served in the armed forces. Their fondness for battle stems from a readiness to have some other mother's son give his life to suit their purposes. That, after all, has been the teaching of every successful communist leader from Lenin onwards.

Winning peace is an achievement at which we cannot scoff. In its haste to undo everything Ranil Wickremesinghe did, it would be idiotic of the Kumaratunga administration to undo peace. The downside of peace is that not in his wildest dreams did Wickremesinghe foresee that he would be rejected by the Sri Lankan people, who he glibly expected would stand by him even if he failed to communicate to them the relevance of his government's policies. That was not clever: we said so then, and we say so now - seldom has so poor a communicator reached the heights of politics he has.

That said, Wickremesinghe was so confident of a happy ending to the peace process he started that he never thought to curb LTTE infiltration into the capital. Indeed, neither has the alliance government. It is likely therefore that the Tigers are armed and ready to wreak chaos in Colombo should war break out again. The government and opposition will blame one another, but it is ordinary people who will suffer and die, as tens of thousands did for the 25 years prior to 2002.

The few arms shipments that have been intercepted by the navy demonstrate clearly that the Tigers have been investing significantly in sophisticated weaponry despite the truce, and that must also have been for a reason. It would not do for the services to be caught off balance just because war fits in nicely with Kumaratunga's wider agenda. After all, her mother suspended the constitution and ran the country by dictat for two years after her term expired in 1975, until she was at last turfed out of Temple Trees in 1977.

Kumaratunga is given to going on television and telling the nation that should it elect the UNP in future and get it into the mess it did, she will not step forward to put things right ever again. Well, no one forced her to dissolve parliament and sup with the devil to win power. It was of her own making: as the Sinhala idiom goes, illan kanawa. Well, as it has turned out, it is not a case of illan kanawa just for her, but for all those who elected her. Little solace that, for poor little Lanka, which must carry the cross of the Bandaranaikes a while longer.