The
peace man cometh and brings what?
So Erik Solheim comes tomorrow. But what does he bring good news,
bad news or just the mix as before — an exploratory mission
as he has been largely out of the picture since he first engaged
in the search for peace. Not that Solheim has not wanted to remain
on centre stage.
But
Norwegian domestic politics altered the complexion of the team that
tried to carry the torch that Solheim had originally picked up as
a facilitator. Now Oslo's internal politics has again thrust him
into being a key player following the country’s election last
year.
So
whether his critics here like it or not he is going to remain in
the forefront of any attempts to revive the stalled talks and possibly
longer if he manages to convince those who seem to think that "war
war"is indeed an option to "jaw jaw".
One
does not know for sure whether it is purely coincidental that Solheim
comes at a time when also present here is Martin McGuinness who
had also played a crucial role in the conflict in his own country.
The Northern Ireland conflict had dragged for three decades or so
until prolonged negotiations and an agreement seem to have, on the
face of it at least, written finis to a sectarian dispute that has
cost the people of Northern Ireland dearly as it has our own people.
McGuinness is not just an ordinary supporter of the republican cause.
That is what makes his presence here important just now.
The
media in Colombo has reported that he was chief negotiator for Sinn
Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at the
talks that ultimately led to the peace settlement that has come
to be known as the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and reached on 10
April 1998.
What
is perhaps more important is that he was a senior member of the
IRA and he has admitted it. Martin McGuinness has been described
in various ways, depending on how extreme your Protestantism.
If,
for instance, one was of Ian Paisley's frame of mind then McGuinness
would be spoken of in the same terms as the LTTE's Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Even today the ageing but still fiery Rev Paisley would see McGuinness
as nothing more than an IRA thug who should never have been let
loose on the streets.
To
date Paisley refuses to believe that the IRA has indeed given up
violence and more importantly put "beyond use" the arsenal
of weapons that had allowed it to challenge the British Army and
kill and maim their arch enemy, the protestant community. The protestants,
faithful to the last want to continue their union with Britain and
reject independence and union with the Republic of Ireland.
There
are those who believe that McGuinness was a member of the IRA's
Army Council, the powerful body that makes policy for the IRA. McGuinness
has on occasion been labelled the “IRA’s godfather of
godfathers”. Those labels are largely academic now as McGuinness
is one of the good guys that spearheaded the talks on the Republican
side that led to the Good Friday Agreement, helped along by the
skilful manoeuvring of the extremely tricky talks by former US Senator
George Mitchell who chaired the negotiations.
Those
who fret over delays, slow progress or no progress in such negotiations
may not be aware that the first formal talks began on 7 October
1997 with eight major political parties participating. What is little
known is that bringing these eight parties together was in itself
a major triumph for those who did not give up in the face of acrimonious
disagreements and verbal clashes. It took three years of talk and
give and take to bring the eight parties to the negotiating table.
When
decades of suspicion, fear and perceived discrimination lie at the
heart of a nation divided, it is no easy task to wipe that slate
clean with a few brush strokes. It takes painstaking and careful
negotiation to even bring the warring parties together, let alone
sit down and talk sense. This is why Martin McGuinness’ presence
here at this crucial juncture when attempts are being made to restart
the stalled discussions, is so important. McGuinness presents the
public face of a man with the gun who has indeed exchanged it for
a different kind of weapon — the right to be elected, sit
in an assembly and legislate on behalf of the people of that war-torn
part of beautiful Ireland.
He
is a man who has seen both sides of the face of Republicanism at
close quarters. After all, like one of Prabhakaran's commanders,
McGuinness had been a senior commander in Londonderry in the 1970s.
Later,
following the power-sharing executive that was established in terms
of the Good Friday Agreement, he was Education Minister in Stormont
in 1999 until the power-sharing arrangement with David Trimble,
leader of the Ulster Unionist Party as First Minister, collapsed
over the IRA’s refusal at the time to surrender its weapons.
But
all that is now so much water under the bridge. On 28 July last
year the IRA announced that it was entering a new era in its relatively
long history of militancy and terrorism. It announced that it would
relinquish violence.
It
said “all IRA units have been ordered to dump their arms”.
The transition from the bullet to the ballot was in the instruction
that went down to all IRA members that were still committed to the
pursuit of violence as a means to achieve political goals.
The
IRA statement said that all members had been instructed to assist
developing of purely political and democratic programmes through
exclusively political means.
Here
was the critical shift. It conveyed not only the changing complexion
of a group that once advocated and indeed carried out terrorist
acts but also the acceptance of democratic and therefore pluralistic
politics as the means to political ends.
The
presence, therefore, of McGuinness and Solheim at the same time
surely signifies the two sides of the same coin. The former IRA
commander’s task, if that word might be permitted, is to indicate
to the government and the political parties in the south that flexibility
and compromise are necessary concomitants of a peaceful resolution
of the conflict. At the same time he needs to show the LTTE that
violence and terrorism cannot be the answer, for he stands as a
representative of the path of violence that was tried and failed.
He
is a symbol of the face of hope and peace not of terror, not any
longer. Solheim, on the other hand, is the man who has to glue the
McGuinness lesson into the collective conscience of both the government
and the LTTE. The current parliamentary antics of the Tamil National
Alliance is certainly not the best lesson to be learnt from democratic
politics. Dancing to pulled strings does not represent the triumph
of democracy but the debilitation of it.
The
transition of the IRA has a great lesson for all of us. Resolution
and reconciliation could come with understanding and compromise.
Power sharing must result in the renunciation of violence. Have
we the collective courage to chart the course that the vast majority
of the Irish people wanted and our people hanker after?
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