Shades of Nazism

As the Norwegian sponsored peace process gets into full swing with the arrival of Anton Balasingham, the chief negotiator of the LTTE, the transformation of the LTTE to a political party seems to be a painful exercise for the guerrilla organisation.

The Hitler-style approach in this transformation (see page 1 picture) has to be understood in this context _ LTTE cadres marching in a show of force into cities like Batticaloa, Vavuniya and Trincomalee to hold mass rallies they call "Pongu Thamil" or the re-awakening of Tamil.

The LTTE has obviously read of Hitler unleashing his brown-shirt-storm troops to part-frighten, part-inspire the masses. Taking a leaf from the Nazi war drums "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber Alles", the LTTE ends its mass rallies with theme songs that fire the emotional chords of the Tamils.

An Indian correspondent from the Hindustan Times reported from Trincomalee, a city which the Tamils share equally with the Sinhalese and the Muslims, that the LTTE members in fact, raised their hands in a "Nazi-type salute" as they swore allegiance to Prabhakaran and the LTTE while declaring that port-city as the capital of Thamil Eelam.

However broad-minded one could be to understand the difficulty in transforming from a terrorist organisation to a political entity, the signals are that the LTTE is yet to come to grips with having to lay down its arms.

Already, murmurs are emerging from some quarters of the Tamil populace that they do not want to live under what they see as fascist LTTE rule. Those with a sense of history would not be overjoyed with the Hitlerite approach.

A win, not a mandate

The UNF's emphatic Local Government election victory was not a mandate for peace or for the MoU, despite the Prime Minister telling us that it is so. No doubt the current peace euphoria contributed despite the power cuts and the Cost of Living to the UNF victory.

Be that as it may, the principle that a victory at an election assumes that the winning party has received a mandate for a specific platform is a dangerous precedent.

This untenable rule of modern Sri Lankan politics, was established first in 1970 when the United Front (UF) coalition won a runaway victory said they had a mandate to enact a new constitution, and extended its rule thereby to seven years.

The UNP correctly introduced the instrument of the Referendum in the new 1978 Constitution to avoid that erroneous principle, but used it just once _ to extend the life of Parliament.

We exhort Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to keep to his original pledge that whatever agreement hammered out with the LTTE, if there is one, should obtain the imprimatur of the people by way of a properly worded question put to them at a Referendum. That will be the only valid mandate available to any government that subscribes to the sovereignty of the people.