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Republic
at crossroads What has been thrust into the nation's focus in recent months, especially by the leaders has been the contentious issue of whether a Joint Mechanism (JM) should be established to pass tsunami relief money to LTTE-controlled areas. As we pointed out last week, the official assessment of the damage caused to the areas under LTTE control amounts to a mere 10 per cent of the total tsunami destruction in Sri Lanka. During the Kandy Development Forum earlier this week, the President concentrated her speech on this 10 percent and the need to forge ahead with a Joint Mechanism to pass funds to this 10 percent of the tsunami-affected areas. Undoubtedly, this 10 percent is not to be ignored. But what about the plight of the remaining 90 percent? They hardly had a voice at the Development Forum -- there was no one to speak of their travails. That was why we suggested a day trip to the tsunami-affected coastal belt for the 100 plus foreign delegates who attended the Forum. A trip to see to the welfare of the farmers in the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa regions would not have been a bad idea instead of their being holed up in the salubrious hill capital of Kandy right through. Yet, in the end the international donor agencies did what they are best at -- pledged funds. And it has been hailed as a great aid donor meeting, because all this money was pledged to us. Much of it in outright grants. The aid pledged has also helped the country tide over some of its past sins in bad management through debt-relief payments. But nobody is going to tell us what strings are attached to these grants and debt-relief packages. And there were no lessons to be learnt on how to account for all this money. Under such circumstances, how much of a free and sovereign Republic Day could we really enjoy? Meanwhile, the Joint Mechanism proposal is being played very close to the President's chest. Rumour has it that the JM draft has three tiers -- a National Committee, a Regional Committee, and a District Committee. The LTTE will be in all three of these Committees. And so, an organisation that only this week reiterated that it does not accept the sovereignty of the Republic of Sri Lanka, will be represented on this National Committee as well. Effectively, this means that the LTTE will not only have a say in matters relating to areas under its military control in the North-East, but also Matara, Hambantota, Galle and Kalutara. It is crystal clear that the LTTE now sees the opportunity to bring down the UPFA Govt. by demanding the JM and creating a rift between the President and their arch-enemy, the JVP. What reciprocal gestures they are making is not known. The President seems to have a kind of blind faith that this mechanism would be the beginning of the LTTE's entry into mainstream politics. We can understand such wishful thinking, but in the real world, that is not how it is done. The LTTE has a responsibility to justify this quid-pro-quo. Otherwise, it looks like a kind of 'kappan' the Govt. is offering to keep the peace at all costs. The JVP has come up with a reasonable proposal to break the log-jam. It suggests that the TNA (even if it is the voice of the Tigers) as the elected representatives of the people of the North and East, be represented in the JM. This would mean that the JVP is not against the JM per se, but only oppose the LTTE's participation. In Kandy, the President said that for the first time there is equal participation by the Govt. and the LTTE in handling a situation. The President's use of the word "equal" could have been avoided. If one is to attribute some goodwill to the LTTE's intention of entering mainstream politics, there is no outward indication of this. They accept Sri Lanka Air Force helicopter rides and are given Sri Lankan passports to go to foreign lands through the airport they once bombed, but do not accept the sovereignty of the Republic of Sri Lanka. It is indeed one of the strangest separatist guerrilla battles in world history. We are now witnessing a proxy war going on in Trincomalee between the JVP and the LTTE. Left unattended, this could well be the beginning of a much larger theatre of conflict, which could easily spill over to the rest of the country. Not a happy augury as the country prepares to celebrate Vesak. |
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