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| Playing
politics with tsunami It was a fact that the LTTE suffered losses. Even if it was not officially acknowledged, numbers have exceeded 1200 fighting cadres. Worst hit are the Sea Tigers, their naval arm. They lost Chelian, their second in command. The Sea Tiger capability has been badly dented. Then, as the waters receded the speculation rose that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, its Sea Tiger leader Soosai, its intelligence chief Pottu Amman, its political chief S.P. Thamilselvan were swept away with the tide. Last week, these rumours came to boiling point. State-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation claimed Chief of Defence Staff and Navy Commander Vice Admiral Daya Sandagiri had told it that the whereabouts of Prabhakaran were unknown. This led the radio to announce that Prabhakaran was missing, possibly dead, quoting Sandagiri as the source. The next day, one newspaper ran a story that two expensive coffins had been sent to the LTTE-controlled Wanni by road. It (not the coffins, but the story) took everyone for a ride. Read together with the previous day's state radio account, Prabhakaran was pronounced dead. The world was told how the Sri Lankan media (both state and private) had joined to report the demise of the 'Sun-God', who apparently has no magical powers over water. Prabhakaran, like all elusive guerrillas, has been pronounced dead many times over. But, like it or not, he carries on. The first rumour, soon after the Boxing Day tsunami, was that he died inside a church by the coast when its roof collapsed. The second, he was drowned in a bunker. The two stories did prompt a response from the Wanni jungles of the LTTE. That was how it came to pass that the LTTE leader placed his signature in Tamil on a statement where he sympathised with tsunami victims in the South. Like the tsunami waves, the story of the death of Prabhakaran gathered speed as the week began. The retraction by state radio soon after they found they could not substantiate the story was missed by most, and the newspaper that reported the coffins being sent to the Wanni had no follow up other than to follow up on some other stories reported by the world and local press of an old man who was found in the post-tsunami rubble, saying the story was untrue and had taken everyone for a ride. There was a deafening silence on their own story that had caused a 'sensation'. At President's House, none other than President Chandrika Kumaratunga was a victim of this new tsunami-story wave hitting all parts of Sri Lanka, India, and the world. She called for her Chief of Defence Staff and Naval chief Daya Sandagiri and she yelled to him, "what are you doing - haven't they found the body of Prabhakaran?" Navy Commander Sandagiri must have initially thought his Commander-in-Chief was being sarcastic, for he was the man associated with the first report by SLBC suggesting that the rebel supremo had probably died. Then, he realised that she was serious - dead serious. Commander Sandagiri began a search for the body of Velupillai Prabhakaran, as the tsunami-like story was causing havoc all over. Glasses were being raised at Colombo's clubs by members refusing to disbelieve the story. New versions were turning up. The common question being asked, however, was, "why is he not showing up then?" Prabhakaran's erstwhile deputy Karuna was one of them to ask this question. At the Defence Ministry, the hierarchy was equally convinced that the man most Sri Lankans love to hate, the man responsible for two decades of misery for the Sinhalese, Tamils and the Muslims alike in this country, was now in the dustbin of history. The only silver lining of the tsunami devastation, they said, was this. Newly appointed Defence Secretary Asoka Jayawardene was also convinced. He told the DII (Directorate of Internal Intelligence), the boys who monitor the work of the LTTE, that they should devote more attention to reports on Prabhakaran's death. It seemed that even if they could not defeat him militarily, they should get to know about his demise through a national calamity, soonest. One thing these Government Intelligence top brass could have easily done was to check with an expatriate Tamil Fund Manager who is reported to have actually met Prabhakaran after the tsunami hit Mullaitivu. This was reported in this column last week. His identity is easy to establish - it is not a top secret as such. He has already given interviews to the local press as well about post-tsunami relief projects. Whether this Fund Manager who has invested in a lot of Sri Lankan business ventures, gave US $ 5 million to Prabhakaran is probably not the issue now, it is to ascertain whether Prabhakaran survived the tsunami. In Colombo's diplomatic community, however, there was less excitement. They had made inquiries after the first rumour, and had been assured the man is alive and kicking. The news will become public soon. That is when Norway's Foreign Minister Jan Petersen, who arrives with a significant entourage, visits the Wanni. They will arrive in Colombo on Wednesday. Also in the delegation are Norway's International Development Minister Hilde F. Johnson, Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgessen and Special Envoy Erik Solheim. Petersen and party who are coming with aid are due to have a meeting with Prabhakaran. Already diplomatic contacts are under way. The search for Prabhakaran's corpus apart, the search for political unity in the 'south' of Sri Lanka has been as daunting a task. Not for years since Sirima Bandaranaike contacted Dudley Senanayake before she signed the Sirima-Shastri Pact in New Delhi, or J.R. Jayewardene offered co-operation to Ms. Bandaranaike in the aftermath of the 1971 JVP insurgency, has there been any glimmer of bi-partisanship in the politics of Sri Lanka. The tsunami tragedy saw some cosmetic appearance by the party leaders at a National Day of Mourning on December 31, and then it was back to basics. The opposition UNP blaming the UPFA government for hogging the relief work despite the national nature of the calamity. If it had to be a then second string British MP Liam Fox who had to bring together UNP's Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Kumaratunga some years back - despite half a century of Independence from the British - to have a common approach to the LTTE question, the meeting this week between Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga, was also prodded, to a great extent, by the international community. Wickremesinghe had been complaining to the visiting foreign dignitaries and the foreign ambassadors based in Sri Lanka about the UPFA government's handling of the relief work. The gravamen of his arguement has been that the President's Secretariat has tried to centralise the complex issue of national re-construction, sidelining civil society, NGOs, and even the opposition in a bid to make political capital out of the national disaster. At the meeting, Wickremesinghe repeated most of this to the President. He pointed out that even her coalition ally, the JVP, was complaining that she was not handling the disaster relief work properly. The JVP had been under a different accusation of trying to score political points by hi-jacking the tsunami relief work in the southern coastal areas, but it too was indeed complaining of the President's questionable committees that were running the 'show'. President Kumaratunga responded by saying that her government had incorporated many of the issues raised by the UNP in the task of national re-building. Wickremesinghe read from the UNP's point-by-point proposals on what the government should do. He then emphasised the need to re-build the lives of the people before putting into place any grand long-term designs for the future. He said that the small hotels needed support to re-build, and that the houses of the affected people should sprout pronto, arguing that when there is life among the affected, the nation will automatically spring to life itself. He emphasised the need to ensure that aid went direct to the affected people rather than get blocked in government pipelines, and promoted the intervention of NGOs and civil societies in the exercise. He pointed out, as he had told the visiting dignitaries and ambassadors that it were the village system - the viharas, the churches, the local community leaders, who were first at the scene during the tragedy, not the government, and that it was these functionaries that needed to be involved in the national recovery from the tsunami. President Kumaratunga explained what her government was doing. She said that her trusted point-man Mano Tittawella would come up with the grand proposals for re-construction by next month, while her trusted point-woman Tara de Mel was carrying out the relief chores. Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar then asked Wickremesinghe if he or any UNPer had told foreign ambassadors that they should link foreign aid to the peace process (an issue also referred to in this column last week). President Kumaratunga followed it up saying "yes, yes, I was also wondering about it", to which Wickremesinghe said that he did not link emergency aid to the peace process. In the meantime, questions persisted about the Presidential Committees appointed to handle the country's biggest natural disaster, and the calibre of those appointed to run it. The UN gave a slap in the face when it said that it has appointed PricewaterCooper, the well-known international accounting firm, to do the accounting of "every cent" that is being given as tsunami aid, a terrible indictment on the powers-that-be who have allowed bribery and corruption to be a way of governance in Sri Lanka. Within the committees, the squabbling has already started. Cat-fights have begun. The JVP, an ally of the UPFA government has called for the widening of the scope of these committees saying on-going efforts were "not enough". It has listed the areas which need to be given priority attention - collection of data; planning committees; relief committees; human resources (local and foreign); to co-ordinate local and foreign aid; building national opinion - and the setting up of a separate auditing and accounts section. The President's Office has remained silent for too long now on how it plans to audit and account for all this money coming in. The JVP has also called for members of the Armed Services and Police, professionals and even businessmen (presumably not just the ones who have been appointed so far) to be in these seven committees it proposes. Clearly, the President has to expand and embrace others. This is a national disaster, not a PA disaster. She is already accused of vacillating on the passing of the Sri Lanka Disaster Counter-Measures Bill of 2002, and have done nothing except to hog the Ministry in charge of National Disaster during the cohabitation period with the UNF government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. That draft bill for the "establishment of the National Council for Disaster Management, the National Disaster Management Centre; the preparation of Disaster Management Plans; the declaration of a state of disaster " etc., was locked in parochial Sri Lankan politics. That bill had under section 25 (f) of that proposed law the word "tsunami" in it, described as "seismic wave" as one of the meanings of what a "disaster" is. The country's engineers proposed this law, and the Legal Draftsman's Department had the law ready. But the bickering politicians were not ready for the tsunami that eventually hit us. |
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