By Neville de Silva

Reaching for peace step by step

Opposite the diplomatic mission at Hyde Park Gardens some protestors carrying placards were urging visitors to desist from going in saying that Sri Lanka has no independence and all this flag hoisting and speeches were so much boru perpetrated on a gullible people.

While others were tucking into some tasty seeni sambol and chicken curry, the strains of Sinhala songs wafted through the open windows. Having run out of slogans or tired of repeating the old ones, the demonstrators had broken into song.

That seemed to amuse the four policemen ( fortunately not co-opted from the Presidential Security Division) who might have outnumbered the protestors had their number been trebled.

One cannot blame the British police if they had called for immediate reinforcements as the first notes filled the air. Who knows this could be a new kind of terrorism unknown to the British Bobby who is actually dumber than he looks.

Finding that terrorising people with bombs is getting to be more difficult-and rather old fashioned- perhaps the crafty Asians had discovered a more subtle form of eliminating their enemies- with their singing.

Had others heard the protestors trying to reach for some decibels, they would surely have thought of Captain Queeg and the ship Bounty- it sure sounded like a mutiny on the high Cs.

Had the protestors avoided old favourites and resorted to the more traditional like Sinhalaya modaya, they might have avoided such choral chaos. But then Sinhalaya modaya is not Mao-style self criticism and hardly sung at 10 in the morning, unless of course one is recovering after 15 rounds with Bacchus the previous night and was still punch drunk.

But had they sung this theme song even though the time of day was inappropriate, it would have been much closer to the message the protestors were trying to convey than all the placards they carried. Basically their message was an attack on the government for making concessions to the LTTE in the name of peace talks. Former President Junius Richard Jayewardene was very fond of quoting a saying about the Bourbons of France.

The Bourbons, JR would say, learnt nothing and forgot nothing.

The protestors outside the High Commission last Monday, like so many others on the internet these days, are saying that Sri Lankan governments, like the Bourbons seem to learn nothing.

Having burnt their fingers several times in discussions with the LTTE, every new government derives a vicarious pleasure by becoming a glutton for punishment. On each occasion, it is the LTTE that has stopped talking and gone for the gun. Admittedly the LTTE has its own story to tell, as Anton Balasingham does in his last book on why they were forced to break off talks with the Chandrika Kumaratunga government in 1995. If the LTTE is to be believed then the Sinhala governments betrayed them each time by not keeping to the promises they had held out. It is only those who were personally at the various talks between the government and the Tigers or who were privy to all the discussions, who would be able to say who is right and wrong or both have a right to be heard.

But the current discussions and debates going on in cyber space in recent weeks is surely reminiscent of such debates in earlier years and is representative of the mood of Sri Lankan people at home and the diaspora.

One often reads rejoinders against those who live abroad and preach how to end wars or fight them. It is of course easy to do so from thousands of miles away without having to undergo the daily rigours of a country at war or suffer the fears of those who live at home constantly alive to the dangers of that sudden and unexpected blast.

Last Tuesday at a reception that had brought together British diplomats based in Asia and diplomats from those Asian countries based in London, we had the opportunity of discussing the problems of countries facing internal security issues.

The conversation inevitably came round to Sri Lanka. It was extremely interesting to hear what foreigners had to say. Some argued that this time round it would be extremely difficult for the LTTE to abandon talks because the Tamil people, particularly in the north have great expectations. Didn't they do so at earlier talks, I asked. Yes, but the differences this time is that the government has thrown open the barriers and is providing the north with almost everything that is needed. People there have consumer goods and any development like an LTTE walk out from talks, that would result in a return to the status quo ante, would become a terrible embarrassment to the Tigers and they would lose the support of their own people.

This argument might be valid, if the LTTE was contesting an election. It is not. It does not control the people by winning their hearts but by imposing an atmosphere of fear-the same way that the JVP did in the second half of the 1980s.

That argument alone is not going to keep the LTTE at the negotiating table. There is an old saying- if you want peace prepare for war. The difference is that the LTTE is always preparing for war and when it needs to, it calls for peace until it is ready once more.

This makes it necessary for a government to act with caution, to see that it does not concede much more than the other side is ready to reciprocate with. One move must be met with a similar move so that there is a regular step by step development like building a brick wall. That is what facilitators must ensure so that sceptics on both sides will see the widening advantages.