They say that the Sinhalese are incurable gullibles to believe that the Tigers are going to settle for a negotiated settlement. They say the Sinhalese are gullibles in the tradition of the village idiot, the "pingona,'' all mustachioed and cockeyed. What's galling is that those who thus guffaw may have more than a valid point. The Sinhalese are collectively high on the narcotic ("ganja?) of peace. When they come back to reality, they say - they, meaning Tilak Karunaratnes the Champikas etc - the Sinhalese are going to do so with a thunderclap.

But there are gullibles and gullibles, and when you think about it, it is not only those who think that the Tigers are going to settle for a negotiated peace who are the village idiots. There are some gullibles who seem to think that the Tigers are getting ready for the kill - and that they will attack tomorrow - no, yesterday.

There aren't several ways one can put it, but thinking in this way is a form of gullibility too. It is a gullibility that is based on the premise that what happened three times before (four times, five times…. I have lost count?) surely has to happen again.

It is something like an "association of ideas''. There is an idea that the LTTE was impetuous, and treacherous, when it reneged on the peace talks with the previous Sri Lankan administrations, and launched attacks without warnings - in one instance taking the lives of hundreds of policemen in the East. Such an idea about the LTTE is probably quite correct.

But, this is now being associated with the fact that the LTTE has been caught red-handed transporting arms to the North East during the current peace interim. It is also being associated with various other factors such as the recent incidents that took place in the North East where some LTTE cadres almost swallowed cyanide because of some sort of confrontation with the Air Force. (This is easily associated with the Thileepan cyanide episode which led to the breakdown of the peace process after the signing of the Indo Lanka accord.)

So the general take is that the LTTE is going to do yet again what was done before. But, the LTTE is predictable in other ways too. The LTTE has always wanted power - raw naked power, to put it in the racier way.

With previous peace attempts, the accent being on core issues etc., the Sri Lankan government could not relate to (leave alone empathize with) this power need of the LTTE. This time, whether anybody likes it or not, the Sri Lankan government has been given a fait accompli. Or alternately, the Sri Lankan government has handed the Tigers a fait accompli.

This fait accompli is a ceasefire agreement in which the Tigers have got a lot of the power they always wanted. There is more power here than Prabhakaran ever squeezed out of the barrel of a T56. Just two days ago, the LTTE has announced customs duty on certain goods which are "transported to Thamil Eelam across the border from Sri Lanka''(!) The LTTE is charging taxes in almost the entirety of the North and the East, and it is the LTTE writ which runs in places as far afield as Vavuniya and Kaluvankerni. The LTTE may be running parallel police stations in some areas, but it is the LTTE police station which often gets to settle the civic disputes because the Sri Lankan police has abdicated that authority to it. Of course, these are not things that you are likely to hear from Bradman Weerakoon.

The LTTE runs police stations and manufactures Jubilee arrack, and the LTTE has vast economic plans, owns farms, and the LTTE's writ runs because they are now charging taxes and customs duty. So a separate entity if not a separate state exists in reality, with all the trappings to boot.

This is what the LTTE always wanted when previous peace negotiations were underway.

Previous negotiators on the Sri Lankan side may have wanted to grant the LTTE some measure of power, but none of them really seemed to get the idea that the LTTE wanted power at the exclusion of all other political entities in the North and the East. The best example of that is when provincial council elections were to be held for Jaffna and the North during the Premadasa peace outing. Ranjan Wijeratne, then a political czar in his own right, insisted that the EPRLF and others should contest the elections while the Tigers insisted that there is no case for the EPRLF which should be debarred. The Tigers in fact contested the right of the EPRLF/ Tamil National Army to bear arms. All Tamil paramilitaries should be disarmed before the elections, the LTTE said, but Ranjan Wijeratne would have none of it. War broke out soon, and Wijeratne was assassinated. Today, the Tigers need not bother about asking Tamil paramilitaries to be disarmed. That's already been done by the ceasefire agreement. Beats me, why everybody was puzzled that Prabhakaran signed the draft of the ceasefire agreement.

The Tigers have now got exclusive control over the North East, legally and legitimately through the ceasefire agreement, and there is no point the Tigers wanting to reduce any of these gains by going for formal peace talks. At least not in a hurry.

The news yesterday was that the LTTE wants to arm its political offices because some sort of rather mysterious enemy has attacked two of these offices - in Mutur and in Kayts. Once the LTTE arms its political offices in this act of "self defense'' the LTTE would have gained almost total de facto control over the North and the East without so much as firing a shot. The LTTE is going to sacrifice all this in a hurry and go back to war? And perhaps lose control over some territory, hapless as the Sri Lankan army may be - and face all added difficulties that have been posed through 9/11 etc, in terms of raising funds and launching a new military campaign? The LTTE has been known to be irrational in its audacity, but what the LTTE wants is total dominance over the North and the East at the exclusion of all other political entities. The LTTE doesn't make any bones about this position, ever. Therefore, this being the only instance that the LTTE is in this position of power, it wouldn't matter whether it was reached through a military campaign or by sleight of hand. It will be gullible to think the LTTE wants to wage war now. Maybe that might happen one and a half years later, when the LTTE wants to make this de facto position de jure and universally accepted.

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