Editorial

28th January 2001

Colombo calling London

Sri Lanka's call on Britain to ban the LTTE has so far met with a deafening silence. A nation that rails against the Irish Republican Army, and then dispatches its forces to combat "beasts and terrorists'' represented by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Milosevic, strangely falls mute where the LTTE is concerned. The LTTE, which has eliminated leaders of Tamil organizations such as the TULF, TELO, EPRLF, PLOTE by the score, is not fit for the label "terrorist'' by the contemporary Blairite reckoning of British labour it appears.

A ban on the LTTE will undoubtedly disrupt the technical and organisational structure of the LTTE, as London is the hub for most of its financial, logistical and organizational activities, which are channelled through the group's front offices in the capital.

The British also seem to want to smother the bad-blood generated by giving the LTTE a free reign in London, by offering their good offices and being part of the Sri Lankan peace process. These British overtures as peacemakers have repeatedly been turned down in Colombo's Foreign Office.

The issue of banning the LTTE which has obtusely been kept in the back-burner by the British, has correctly been put in the front-burner by the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry. It has now been brought into world focus in a way in which the British will find it difficult to justify respectably, without doing right by the Sri Lankan government and the majority of her people.

But, having said that, it would have been theoretically easy to surmise that the British will ban the LTTE forthwith. But, there can be no such guarantee, because it is obvious that the Foreign Minister's call is weakened by the fact that Sri Lanka's domestic policy is bordering on chaos. The utter mismanagement of the war effort and the domestic economy, and the callous disregard for the fundamentals of democracy such as free and fair elections, the independence of the judiciary, media freedom and the impartiality of the police force, has earned us near pariah status in the club of international democracies. The rising rate of crime stimulated by political patronage to the underworld, and now the last straw which is the sliding rate of the rupee against the world currencies, have virtually taken us from being developing nation to banana republic teetering on the brink.

Every one of these failures in the economic and the civic structures of the country is a chapter on bad governance in the contemporary political account book of the Lankan state. These are the reasons that this government has been reduced to passive by-stander status, while the International Monetary Fund walks up pukka sahib style, and in quick-draw virtually orders that our currency be floated. All this is why the Foreign Minister's call for the banning of the LTTE by the British, which we support, doesn't carry the brio that should be attached to a call that is made by a democratic legitimate government. All of which says that the sooner this government puts the reverse gear full - throttle on its break-neck transformation of Sri Lanka from paradise isle to basket case, the better it is for all of us. Enlightened leadership is the need of the hour. Luxury palaces can wait until this country acquires the basic democratic institutions and structures that allows for human dignity, and for an economy that wears a human face.

The Political Column

Editorial/ Opinion Contents