Book
review
The ISGA according to SL -
no halfway house
ABOMINATION - About the demand
for an ISGA- by S. L. Gunasekara. Reviewed by Rajpal Abeynayake
S.
L Gunasekara likes to pre-empt the big boys, and this time his tilt
is at the would-be negotiators of the government and the LTTE if
they get to the table to negotiate the Interim Self Governing Authority
(ISGA) that now joins the long list of acronyms that have sprung
to life in the over twenty year discourse relating to Sri Lanka's
long-running conflict.
Gunasekara,
a civil lawyer (see profile) pumps up his argument against the ISGA
with legalistic citations, but then, when he cuts to the bone, he
unearths some posers that will not be liked by any would-be negotiators,
I wager, on either side.
He
writes: If as the LTTE states, the ISGA is necessary to bring the
dividends of the purported peace process to the Tamils, how is it
necessary for that purpose to rule areas like Dehiattakandiya (98.8%
Sinhalese), Padavisripura (100% Sinhalese), Bintenna Pattu East
and West (99.4 % cent Sinhalese), Gomarankadawela (99..5% Sinhalese),
Kinniya (96.1 % Moor) Addalechchenai (93.12% Moor) or Akkraipattu
( 96.3 % Moor.)
It
is of course precisely due to these kinds of population figures
that those in favour of the shared-ruled self-rule argument have
pointed out that there is something in any arrangement for devolution
of power called the "regional minorities".
Whosoever
administrates any economically viable province, it is argued by
them, has to administer the entire province which will necessarily
contain some regional minorities.
But
with S.L. Gunasekara such arguments do not cut, because he is primarily
against any idea of an ISGA because he feels (with very strong language
that's unremittingly pugnacious) that the Tigers are a bunch of
criminals.
On
occasion he calls the LTTE Tamil Nazis -- and apart from the fact
that it might raise hackles among some Jews to whom Nazis are in
a class of their own in their atrocities -- the Nazi epithet certainly
lends that much more colour to the gamut of adjectives that have
been used over time to describe the Liberation Tigers.
Gunasekara's
enumeration of the provisions of the Tiger ISGA proposals is to
be expected from a man who has written intermittently about the
lopsidedness of the ceasefire agreement, and other such issues –
such as the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, issues which have figured in
the long march that the Sri Lankan conflict has endured since those
incipient days of attempted reconciliation in the far off aeon of
Thimpu.
It
is very clear that Mr. Gunasekara feels the ISGA is a ploy for the
Tigers to sack the Sri Lankan judiciary in the North East and take
over the judicial process while taking over all control of land
and sea resources. He also says the ISGA is a patent violation of
the ceasefire agreement.
In
his own words: "While the fact of this demand being a patent
violation of the ceasefire agreement is as plainly visible as the
nose on one's face, neither the present government, nor the last
nor the so called 'International community.'''etc.,etc.,
One
does not need a nose for these things to know that the author wants
to shred the ISGA to pieces. Does he assume that the ISGA as a demand
should be considered beyond the pale that it does not merit any
sort of negotiation based upon it?
Well,
it certainly does appear so -- but he does not leave room for supposing
that all that has been asked for in the ISGA, can be significantly
watered down. Two thirds of his book is devoted to demolishing the
ISGA as it is.
But
he does say in the eighth chapter that supporters and apologists
of the LTTE as well as Neville Chamberlain-like appeasers want the
ISGA discussed. Here he makes clear that the ISGA in his mind is
not a document that can be sufficiently watered down.
His
argument in its rudiments is to say that it's an affront to the
Sinhalese people, and should therefore be ditched and destroyed.
In his own inimitable pastiche, "it is like A making a pact
with B (in an assumed conflict between A and B) for A to rape B's
mother in order to arrive at an amicable settlement of the dispute.''
With
that sentence, one does, of course, understand exactly where Gunasekara's
arguments are coming from. He sees the LTTE and its proposals as
beyond the pale, and he almost places himself beyond the pale in
the style, the aggressiveness and logic of his rationale.
It
is vintage S.L. Gunasekara of course – he represents a point
of view that almost seeking a total absolution for the nation's
sins in reversing to a total status quo ante since the LTTE's armed
action began. His book's cover is of infants macheted to death by
LTTE death squads in the Eastern Province. It's a gruesome picture.
He also makes the more than valid argument that the LTTE is persecuting
its enemies even as it is asking for an Interim administration for
itself to govern the affairs of the North and the East.
His
point that murderers cannot be allowed to govern even a half inch
strip of territory is more than abundantly clear; it's an ideological
position which in fact does not have to technically be told in a
book because it is plain in one sentence.
It
can be posited that his position is the antipode of those who say
that compromises and adjustments could be made; that even the worst
murderer can be made malleable by negotiations or can be made to
arrive at a reasonable arrangement that had the off-chance at least
of putting an end to a problem that seems to be without end.
Gunasekara's
position will certainly be at odds with those who say that the Sri
Lankan army was unable to deliver the coup de grace to the Tigers,
which therefore necessarily means that the government should come
to some sort of arrangement with them, however unpalatable it may
seem. Gunasekara argues completely out of that frame of reference.
His
is a zero sum position that says: if they are murderers and criminals,
it is no way to solve the problem with their cooperation. He might
as well have said there is no point talking to the Tigers at all
- period - - about anything at anytime. I'm not sure he does not
say this, at least implies it, but the bottom line with this book
is that either a reader agrees with him, or he doesn't.
You
could say if you are for nicety that his book does not believe in
a nuanced argument - - or you could just say that Gunasekara thinks
one does not give an inch to LTTE or their sort no matter what –
even if it's the collective national agony of mutual self-annihilation
and slow death. Certainly he offers a very clear choice - and you
can either agree with him, or not. The book is priced at Rs. 300
and is available at Vijitha Yapa Bookshops.
S.L.
- a voice refusing to be smothered?
PROFILE
When inaugural peace talks between the Sri Lankan
government, Tamil rebels and Tamil political parties were held in
the Bhutanese capital of Thimpu, S. L. Gunasekera was sent along
with Mark Fernando, both at that time upwardly mobile legal eagles,
to be a part of the negotiating team.
Gunasekara
was also previously assigned a secret file on violence in the North
while serving in the Attorney General's Department, and then, when
runaway political ambitions of the LTTE were manifest, S.L. was
able to put his experience to good effect. Gunasekara leads a nationalist
movement aimed at helping Sinhalese victims of the civil war and
soldiers fighting it.
Gunasekara,
a civil lawyer who lives in his well-appointed digs in Colombo 8,
is identified by the LTTE sympathizers and sometimes by a larger
swathe of liberal minded Tamils and Sinhalese as a hawk of quite
unrelenting proportions.
A
former Editor of the Davasa, Mr Gunasekara is a bi-lingual who has
nevertheless been faulted by the hard-line Sinhala lobby for accidents
of birth, and other incidental upshots from a sheltered life lived
as a scion of an urban and urbane family with a public school background.
S. L. was educated at S. Thomas' College, Mt Lavinia, and he was
born a Methodist. He claims agnosticism now.
Gunasekara
has been uncompromising in career and conviction, to the point where
he has refused silk as a lawyer, and also sacrificed his parliamentary
seat when the SLFP changed its stand on the issue of devolution
of power.
He
was a founder of the Sihala Urumaya, a precursor of the current
Jathika Hela Urumaya, but he then resigned from this outfit as well,
claiming that a Taliban like rump had taken over the party.
He
went on to found the Sinhala Jathika Sangamaya which has not still
found the resonance of the JHU, which makes Gunasekara what he referred
to himself in a press interview once as "a voice in the wilderness”.
However,
Gunasekara carries on an activist campaign to redress grievances
of terrorist-affected families in Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu
Trincomalee, Ampara and Polonnaruwa districts. He has written four
previous books on the Sri Lankan conflict, with titles as colourfully
terse and poetic such as 'Wages of Sin' and the 'Tragedy of Errors'.
The other two are 'Tiger Moderates and Pandora's Package', and 'The
Indo Lanka Accord - An Analysis'.
The
son of late Justice E. H. T. Gunasekara, judge of the Supreme Court,
S. L. naturally gravitated towards the law. It's a career that he
does not necessarily adore, often saying that its hurly burly and
unmentionable ways are not quite endearing to his temperament. But
he has had no such hesitation jumping headlong into the political
whirl, in which he has been known to be as pugnacious as his personal
trademark style portends : gravelly voiced, quip-prone and utterly
uncompromising. He lives like his book - you may or may not agree
with him, but his politics stays the way he wants it.
- R.A |