Rajpal's Column

21st May 2000

LSE connection and the miscalculation

By Rajpal Abeynayake

Censored Censored Censored Censored, even by the arriviste censor Mr. Rubesinghe, are in such stark contrast to the way he has lost out in terms of the realpolitik of international relations.

Everybody in Tamilnadu now seems to want to step over each others' toes, almost, to condemn Prabhakaran — Karunanidhi included. For a man whose likeness appears next to the Virgin Mary in many parts of the state, this is a public relations disaster of epic proportions.

Prabhakaran though he has the sympathies of the pro minority Western liberal value system, has been ditched by all the powers that mean anything today in the big bad world. Inderfurth, India and Israel have all in one way or the other refused to touch him with a bargepole. That's why Prabhakaran cannot do an East Timor, and probably why he would wish he did a better course in international law/ international relations parallel to his considerable military training a la Eastwood.

From among the world's media, Prabhakaran's best coverage comes by default. The Sri Lankan government has been so aggressive in its censorship, that internationally the Lankan state has become a laughing stock. ( Refer a Washington Post column that was devoted entirely to the issue of Draconian laws, while the military campaign of the LTTE was relegated to the background.)

This clumsiness on the part of the Government has driven journalists to vilify the government, and by default at least to be soft on the Tigers. But, Prabhakaran seems to have not realised that he cannot wrest back the international hearts' and minds' initiative, with a few journalists who have warmed up to him, and that too because the other side's media handlers are buffoons.

Despite his brilliance in military strategy, Prabhakaran seems to be in a situation in which the Sri Lankans (including the foreign Minister ) can say "let the tempest roar, let it rage, we shall overcome.'' ( Churchill's words — at a time when in one week, Nalin de Silva, two newspaper editorials and a Buddhist monk on TV quoted Churchill as if he was a man who originally was on 'our side'' anyway.)

Basics of international law dictate the principle in simple terms that no territory can be declared a nation unless international recognition is forthcoming. How come this plain verity was lost, then on V. Prabhakaran? A question that would be particularly galling to him, at a time when almost everything else could be within his reach in the near future, except this component: the admission card from the international club of nations.

In some ways that would not be very pleasant to any LTTE strategist, the situation in the Foreign Ministry press room last Tuesday almost graphically portrayed the discomfiture that the LTTE must be in these days. Kadirgamar, articulate, and dapper despite the dialysis, red-handkerchief on his lapel, addressed the entirety of the foreign press corps in a way that Clinton's handlers would have envied. He struck all the right chords, and at times waxed about The London School of Economics, George Frernandez and the Sri Lankan left connection. He used words like "cognizant'' which were obviously derived from the law, until this writer almost forgot it wasn't a court and asked him about "remedies.'' While Mani Shankar Ayer became caustic, and Karunanidhi sort of seemed to fly off the handle in that part of the sub-continent (and Inderfurth was getting oh so technical in New York), Kadirgamar was subtle, temperate and refinedly slick in Colombo at a press conference. With that act, the FM seemed to have the international press corps in a thrall.

Now, how could the international pavilion of political elite, led by Oxford educated Clinton, followed by LSE Fernandez , sit back and let this fellow traveller be consumed by a hot-headed militarist with a yen for Dirty Harry? (Granted that Prabhakaran may still be saying, "make my day Punk.)

Simplistic, true, but yet, representative of the larger miscalculation that Mr V P seems to have been guilty of. That's more ironic, considering that it is Prabhakaran who has put Sri Lanka on all the world's internet news sites worth watching, and considering that never before in the history of journalism in this country had 64 journalists descended here to cover one conflict.

More ironic, also, considering that the political discourse is almost entirely in terms of a reactive response to what is being done north of Vavuniya. All the thunderclaps heard on national television, ranging form the Hela Urumaya political debate to whether the elections should be held, to the discourse on censorship and whether censorship is for a collateral purpose — is all reflex, and directly induced by matters decided north of Vavuniya, on the Palmyrah trail. And yet.

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