Political Column

Political Column

Truce offer in war of presidents
By Our Political Editor
More than three months in office as President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is now learning the niceties of statecraft which his predecessor Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga never exposed him to. As Prime Minister then, he was more a figurehead basking in the glory of the ceremonial trappings of his office.

He was neither a party to nor kept informed of the peace process Ms Kumaratunga then executed. He was not privy to matters of national security and was never invited to sit in the Security Council. He was not among the inner coterie of close advisors nor sounded out on crucial issues.

Last Friday, the man whom Ms Kumaratunga shut out from political exposure except make him Prime Minister under pressure, was earning plaudits over his handling of the Geneva talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). His selection of a delegation, meticulous planning with a series of orientation seminars and personally monitoring the talks from an Operations Room at Temple Trees in Colombo had paid dividends. In essence, whilst making what is a significant gain, no quarter was given to the LTTE.

The eight-paragraph statement released by Norway, the peace facilitator, after two days of talks, gave the crux of the issues discussed and decisions reached in just two sentences. The first - "The LTTE is committed to taking all necessary measures to ensure that there will be no acts of violence against the security forces and the police."

The second - The GOSL (Government of Sri Lanka) is committed to taking all necessary measures in accordance with the Ceasefire Agreement to ensure that no armed group or person other than Government security forces will carry arms or conduct armed operations."

In other words the LTTE has assured before the Government of Sri Lanka, Norway and the international community there would be no more acts of violence against the security forces and the police. Until Norway's International Development Minister Erik Solheim clinched a deal for the Government and Tiger guerrillas to talk in Geneva; the LTTE had blamed attacks on armed forces and police on the civilian public. But after the formal announcement in January, this year, that Geneva would be the venue, all such attacks stopped. So it became clear it was the LTTE which was carrying out the attacks masquerading as civilians. And now, it has pledged not to do so.

In return the Government of Sri Lanka has declared it is "committed to taking all necessary measures in accordance with the Ceasefire Agreement to ensure there is no armed group or person other than Government security forces will carry arms or conduct armed operations." One need hardly say that any sovereign Government feels it is incumbent upon itself to ensure no armed group or persons other than those authorised to carry arms or conduct operations.

This is whether a ceasefire is in operation or not. That has been the policy of successive Governments during four years of ceasefire. This is notwithstanding reports that some paramilitary groups have been at work though the Government has not been accused of any collusion with them. Hence, this sentence is a mere reiteration of a formal position of the Government.

This is in marked contrast to the hype and hyperbole in the days before the talks. The Government delegation was told ad nauseum that the LTTE's total thrust would be to demand that paramilitary groups be disbanded. Another was that the LTTE wanted the High Security Zones (HSZ) around military installations withdrawn on the grounds that civilians could return to their homesteads. In fact the head of the LTTE delegation, Anton Balasingham raised issue over these two matters. But contrary to all the expectations, the Government did not budge.

On Wednesday night, after the first round of talks had ended, Norwegian facilitators had cautioned Sri Lanka delegation leader, Nimal Siripala de Silva there were indications of a possible LTTE walkout. That is if their demands were not accommodated or the issues they raised addressed satisfactorily. The news reached President Rajapaksa at the Operations Room. "If they want to walk out, it is their business. We will then tell the whole world our side of the story and get back to Colombo," he instructed the delegation. There was no bending forward to appease the LTTE like during previous rounds of peace talks by the then United National Front Government.

There were, however, a few minor snags and some disappointments too. But, President Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka Freedom Party stalwarts now campaigning for the local government elections seem to have won a bonanza. They are preparing to say that the policies enunciated in Mahinda Chinthanaya were clearly spelt out at Geneva and the LTTE did not win any concessions.

They want to say this was not the case when the United National Party was in power when concessions, some of them endangering even national security interests, were granted both at the negotiating table and outside it. Our Defence Correspondent gives a detailed account of the two days of talks on the opposite page.

But the week was not devoid of other preoccupations for President Rajapaksa. My revelations last week about former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga's telephone conversation with President Rajapaksa were to have its sequel. That was the conversation in which, among other matters, Ms Kumaratunga wanted a shortfall of less than ten persons in her large security detail filled. She was advised by President Rajapaksa to get her Secretary to write to the President's Secretary and have the matter sorted out. An irritated Kumaratunga hit back and a verbal duel began.

Within hours of The Sunday Times hitting the streets last week, another conversation ensued between Mr. Rajapaksa and Ms Kumaratunga. It was last Sunday morning. The call had been made by Mr Rajapaksa over a different matter. A furious Ms Kumaratunga locked horns on a number of issues. Unlike the earlier conversation, most of the exchanges, for obvious reasons, cannot be printed. But Ms. Kumaratunga did not stop at that.

She telephoned our sister newspaper, Daily Mirror to make some hard hitting remarks about Mr. Rajapaksa. She pledged not to give up the leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and lamented she was not asked to give advice to the Sri Lanka delegation to Geneva talks. She denied allegations of corruption against her but asserted that President Rajapaksa must "come clean" about allegations against him in the Helping Hambantota project. She branded the Rajapaksa Government as a "family incorporated company" and claimed all decisions were being made by them.

Asserting that she had no intention of quitting politics, Ms Kumaratunga said she had a bigger role to play for Sri Lanka. Last Monday, aides told President Rajapaksa about Ms Kumaratunga's tirade against him. "I will not get into a public mud-slinging match like her," he told one of them. But the next day, an emissary, whose identity Rajapaksa advisors want to keep a secret, wanted to see the President. He gave an appointment and met him. The man described as a close confidant of Ms Kumaratunga had a lengthy conversation. He left no doubt he had arrived at Temple Trees to broker a truce between President Rajapaksa and Ms Kumaratunga.

The peace offering - he could have the leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in return for patching up differences. The visitor said she may have said things at the heat of the moment but did not mean them. "I have no greed for the party leadership. I am the President of Sri Lanka. I am not going to snatch it from anyone. If she wants to keep it that is left to her," Mr. Rajapaksa told the visitor. He pleaded for a compromise but Mr. Rajapaksa was unmoved.

But President Rajapaksa had taken serious note of Ms Kumaratunga's request for a probe into allegations of corruption against her. Senior officials in the Presidential Secretariat say the President is giving serious consideration to a possible probe into some of the allegations since Ms Kumaratunga herself wants it now. What form such a probe would take is yet to be determined but officials were formulating the issues that should be gone into.

In the opposition UNP camp, there was a minor victory they received from the courts, which granted a stay order on the Colombo Municipal Council election, and a finding that the Elections Department Returning Officer had overreached his authority in some aspects of rejecting the entirety of the UNP list.

The party was questioning why the learned Solicitor General had to appear on behalf of the Elections Commissioner. Their twin argument on this point is that a) previously in such cases only a senior state counsellor appeared, and b) that the Commissioner is an independent party in these cases, and should rely on a private lawyer to represent him.

The Attorney General's Department argued back saying that this was an important point of law in relation to the Local Government Law, and that it did not affect only the UNP, but even the PA (at Gampaha and Gampola where their lists were rejected).

In any event, the AG is now going to appeal to the Supreme Court on the Court of Appeal interim-order in favour of the UNP, and the legal battle will now take place up there.

But as the party struggles to fight another day, the internal conflicts continue. Much of the week was spent with the Mahinda Haradasa-Milroy Perera Committee probing the fiasco of how a supposedly underage candidate was included in the list, and even worse still, how the name of a veteran Municipal Councillor, T.M. Sanghadasa, was tippexed and the name of Colombo Central MP Mohamed Maharoof's secretary was included.
It is now known that the list had been handed over by a senior lady staffer at 'Siri Kotha', the party headquarters, to a group that included the secretary of Colombo East MP Milinda Moragoda. The group had borrowed some tippex from a security guard, taken the list to a nearby temple - and then handed it over to the party's authorised agent M.H. Mohamed for his signature.

But as the list contained some patch of oil on the top of the sheet of paper, believed to have been from some small clay pots at the temple, Mohamed had refused to touch it, thinking it was some mumbo jumbo oils with which he is probably familiar because it figured in the President Premadasa impeachment motion when he was Speaker. That's another story though.

The Moragoda-Maharoof power-play in the UNP's CMC list saga is at the centre of the UNP's present troubles. The Haradasa-Perera report, The Sunday Times learns has put the blame squarely on the two Colombo MPs and in view of the adverse findings against them, a formidable section is clamouring for drastic disciplinary action against them.

This section is also blaming the party leadership of succumbing to pressure by the "big bad boys of Colombo". Thilanga Sumtahipala, who also vied unsuccessfully for the Colombo Mayoral slot met party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe in Anuradhapura on Monday and asked him why he was deprived of a chance to serve Colombo's rate-payers.

Sumathipala who telephoned The Sunday Times this week, to deny that he ever met President Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother, Basil in the company of Colombo's Deputy Mayor Azath Salley (as reported in these columns)on the eve of nomination day to discuss a deal with the government - a matter Azath Salley also vehemently denied - asked Wickremesinghe why the party leadership decided to name a Mayoral candidate only for Colombo, and asked what vision the 72-year-old ex-Mayor Sirisena Cooray had for the city of Colombo.

Meanwhile, the UNP has appointed a Campaign Committee headed by deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya, and inclusive of P.Dayaratna, Gamini Jayawickrama Perera, S.B.Dissanayake, Gamini Lokuge, Hamakumara Nanayakkara, Amara Piyaseeli Ratnayake, N.V.K.K.Weragoda and Tissa Attanayake.

The party, which controls the bulk of the local councils following its victory in 2002 soon after its parliamentary election triumph in December, 2001 is facing a serious challenge to retain them.

The fact that the JVP is contesting separately may be the only redeeming factor for an otherwise uphill task for the party. And the manthram oil notwithstanding, the draw of S.B. Dissanayake might just give them that edge to push them over the threshold.

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