If this is a cat-fight, how will it end?
The burning of Prabhakaran's effigy by Karuna loyalists in Batticaloa was reason for analysts in the Sri Lankan South to gloat. But the more significant turn in events was that the Tamil National Alliance was forced at least temporarily, to give up campaigning in the North and the East.

Colombo's biggest headache was the possibility of a massive TNA surge at the polls on April 2. This was seen in apocalyptic terms. If the TNA would be in a position to determine the balance of forces at the Sri Lankan centre, that would be much more damaging to the Sri Lankan polity than any kind of LTTE pre-eminence in the field of battle.

If so, was the whole Karuna coup a matter of coincidence? Why would Karuna decide to turn against the powerful and deified Prabhakaran, just days before the Sri Lankan elections were to be held on April 2? Was Karuna being encouraged by certain forces that wanted the whole TNA juggernaut to collapse, minimising the possibility of a TNA presence that could determine the majority in a Sri Lankan parliament?

Colombo's pre-eminent pro Western liberal elite have for a long time now been predicting chaos after an April 2 election. But, the unsaid factor in all these warnings is that they in fact mortally fear an Alliance government. Their unsaid fear is that their own comfortable niche-reality as peace vendors would be disturbed by a change of rule. This peace elite will face among other things a drying up of funds for their peace support activities, which will mean a general downturn in their peace spurred lifestyles. This cramping of their style, including perhaps a severe curb on foreign travel signals to them an impending catastrophe.

But other intervening realities continue to surprise not just these peaceniks, but they also surprise to the rest of us who have no terrible stake the Western liberal version of peace for Sri Lanka.

One aspect of the Karuna coup was the fact that Prabhakaran's de-mystification became complete. The Observer's Ajith Samaranayake quoted this column as being right in saying that Prabhakaran de-mystified himself by holding the now well known press conference in Kilinochchi in April 2002, sometime after the ceasefire agreement was signed. But the Karuna coup now makes Prabhakaran not just a de-mystified general, but also a contending warlord.

How things will turn out in the end is not something that even the most determined Cassandra can foretell. But, at least there is a version of events that is different to the apocalyptic scenarios that are being painted by Colombo's liberal pro Western think-tanks.

There is a possibility that Karuna's breakaway was the upshot of a last determined strike by an aggrieved party -- and might that not be the Indians? It is by now known to anyone except the totally disinterested, that the Indians thought the Interim Administration proposals were the last straw as far as the LTTE was concerned.

The ISGA was essentially a Norwegian brokered baby, and had the backing of the Western liberal peace mafia that included the Americans. The Indians thought the Tigers running around administering a third of the country just South of the border was the nadir in terms of what they have had to put up from the upstart LTTE.

But it is also now known that the Indians did not support an election in Sri Lanka. Even their most elementary analysis told them that a hung parliament would ensue and that the LTTE will then be able to manage the affairs at the Sri Lankan centre by exercising their leverage in parliament.

But, Chandrika Kumaratunga though she was met with several entreaties from the Indian side, had other priorities and she decided to call for polls. The Tigers seem to have pulled it off again.

Then the Karuna tsunami struck. Now, the TNA electoral groundswell is being threatened by a giant tidal wave of dissent against the LTTE leader in which he is not just demystified but is also being vilified, taken apart and burnt in effigy by some of his own cyanide carrying cadres. In essence, the unthinkable has come to pass.

Though this has caused at last some of the analysts here to go on the gloat and do cartwheels, what's necessary is an objective analysis in terms of what is in store for the country now.

What's being seen perhaps is the Indian antidote to trouble. The Indians defined the ISGA proposals -- and the whole Wickremesinghe - Prabhakaran peace process as an American engineered Norwegian backed Western supported effort to destabilise their own backyard and wrest the strategic advantage in Sri Lanka. They couldn't countenance this, and the Karuna coup may or may not be a case of the Indian empire striking back.

The current Indian power elite has experience in changing set ways and accepted realities. It was only in the remembered past that India was in a similar electoral bind that Sri Lanka is experiencing now. There was election after election, and Prime Ministers were appearing and disappearing like jokers in a card trick. There was Desai, Gujral, Rao -- the lot. Then, when Vajpayee challenged the long prevailing Congress orthodoxy, everybody saw a Hindu extremist sectarian catastrophe in the making. But, now India wants to have Vajpayee for keeps because he defied all the naysayers by turning the Indian economy around.

In Sri Lanka, who can tell how it will all go from here? But, a Vajpayee like change of gear is a different sanguine rendition of reality here. It is not necessarily my personally favourite version. But an "extremist'' Sinhalathva combine that defeats pro Western subversion but turns the country around as in India, is a vision that some people have in mind -- and certainly they are not the pro Western liberal Cassandras to whom any such possibility signifies the worst nightmare of their lives.

Back to Top

Back to Columns

Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved.