On upsetting the applecart - and after
In one way, it is eerie that Chandrika Kumaratunga did not get the support of some who she would have thought might raise a cheer on her takeover of three Ministries and on upsetting Ranil Wickremeinghe's applecart. She did not seem to get the support even of some of those who had wanted her to take drastic action, because of their long held belief that Ranil Wickremesinghe was handing the country over to the Tigers.

Then she took some action - whether it's because these people goaded her on or not is another matter. But, some of them who goaded her or said it was a bad move, and that it upset the country's economy and was certainly not the "done thing'' when the Prime Minister was out of the country anyway. From her point of view she might be almost justified to think "damned if I do, damned if I don't''.

But the reactions place at least some element of Sri Lanka's predicament in perspective. Though people here in the rather inconspicuously named "South'' of the country think that Ranil Wickremesinghe is playing risky and handing over the advantage to the LTTE, they also think -- to put it in very simple terms -- that his tenure had brought stability, peace and some promise for the future.

In the basics, it is an innate desire for peace, stability and the freedom to get on with their lives. It's also an attitude that makes for a good starting point to explore some myths and realities about Sri Lankan politics.

If even the most ardent patriots think Chandrika might have done the wrong thing this time by taking over the Defence Ministry and stanching Ranil's "sellout'' -- then, what does it mean? Do they love the economy more than they love the country?

Not so. But at least what some of them seem to realize, more by circumstances than by choice, is that sometimes all the rhetoric about the country is abstracted when their own personal reality is close to getting unsettled. When they face the prospect of bombs in Colombo and higher prices of commodities, it appears patriotism flees through the back end.

They also realize that nothing is as straightforward as it appears. Now, rumours are legion in Colombo about exactly which foreign hand "was behind Chandrika's forceful moves.'' Some bets are on India. Over a pint, they growl that "the Indians got us good this time.''

But, there is almost a schizophrenic confusion about what the people really want. They want the country, or they want the peace and the stability that goes with the peace? It's not an altogether bizarre state of confusion to be in. Similar dilemmas have faced people more intimately involved with confrontations that are even more flammable.

Yasser Arafat is the anointed hero (and poster-boy also) for Palestinian peace. In Sri Lanka, there is no equivalent for a charismatic patriot of this sort. Maybe the closest we can think of is say Denzil Kobbekaduwa! But yet, Arafat didn't like Edward Said, who was to Palestine what Dharmapala was to the Sinhala people. Said was the ideologue for an emancipated Palestinian state, and yet Arafat, who worked for peace in the trenches and conference rooms just didn't like him.

"Occidentalist'', he called him. Was Arafat selling out the Palestinian dream then by making peace with the Isrelites with Norwegian intervention? Edward Said said he was. But most Palestinians today do not think so. For them, Arafat still remains the appropriately costumed warrior for Palestinian peace, his headgear his passionate speeches and all.

Edward Said, who died earlier this year of natural causes, said the peace process that Arafat was willing to go along with was a sellout that was "creating Palestinian Bantustans'' -- small Palestinian refugee protectorates completely under Israeli dominion. Arafat, warrior turned peacemaker, was bristling. Edward Said once visited Palestine with his family, and symbolically, he threw a stone to mimic the actions of the Intifada.

When he got back to Colombia University, where he was tenured Professor, that got him in deep trouble. The Jewish lobby was baying for his blood, and it was with some difficulty that Colombia managed to keep Said on the academic roll.
But Said was the outsider. Arafat was the man on the inside, and nobody can at least accuse Arafat of not giving peace a chance in Palestine. His spat with Said was the best testimony to the fact that he did give peace a chance almost at the risk of being branded a traitor to the cause.

There are similarities in the local situation. Those who are in the country, though they might say that Ranil is gifting the country on a platter to Prabhakaran, are not so sure that any serious measures should be taken against him for doing that. The Sri Lankans in Western capitals will call for Ranil's head at any time -- but the Sri Lankan's in this country seem to think that a little stability is more important than a little risk of the country being sold to the Tigers.

Does that make these Sri Lankans hypocritical? Or does it at least make them surrendees to Prabhakran's diktat? Not necessarily so. That's like saying that Arafat was a surrendee to the Israeli designs when he tried to make peace with the Israelites in a peace process that led to the formation of the current Palestinian Authority.

Arafat must only be painfully aware that he settled for something that was not respectable by the standards of a Palestine ideologue such as Said. But, he did it in the interest of peace. He thought it was some way of making incremental progress considering all aspects of the prevailing reality.

If there is a lesson in it - it's that all who make compromises for peace, or think of other imperatives such as the economy and stability while also thinking of a respectable solution are not necessarily traitors. One more thing. They are also probably people with a keener understanding of reality than even meets the eye. They may be people who know there is such a thing as playing into the hands of the other side.

The Palestinian land was taken from them- and Sri Lanka does not need to give up most of its land to the LTTE, to identify a parallel of sorts. But that doesn't mean that having a correct position means that it should be pursued stubbornly, without compromise, from a zero sum perspective.

That's not what the Palestinians did under Arafat. Though it can be argued that there is still no peace in the Middle East, Arafat is to this day the Palestinian hero because he thought of all the bearings and ramifications of the moment and sued for peace. That's what the Sri Lankans should do unless they want to play into the hands of vested foreign powers that want a war to erupt again for their own devious reasons.

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