Rajpal's Column

26th December 1999

She is born again for peace

By Rajpal Abeynayake

There is no guessing about others, but at least for a few of us spectators that's not a difficult dare to take. Certainly, if the President was talking about the past, there is every reason to believe that she was most definitely NOT genuine or sincere in her so - called quest for peace during her five year tenure in office before this speech was made.

A wounded President is entitled to her hour of soul searching ; and all right thinking persons would be repulsed by the wounds that have been inflicted on the President. Anybody's sympathies would naturally go out to her on that count.

But, that does not alter the politics of it. The politics of the problem say that Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga did little for the cause of peace during her five years in office. She did NOT hold a referendum to seek the approval of the people for the political package that was dangled before the people, particularly the Tamil people, for five years.

The constitution provided for such a referendum, but she never had the political will to take that leap of faith. Her government chose instead to steadfastly prevaricate; the opposition was consistently blamed, but she desisted from putting to a direct test to the people the only political formula that was bandied about as a manthra to solve the conflict.

The President's logic seems to have it that the bomb attack on her somehow vindicated the fact that she worked for peace. The President is entitled to her hour of emotion, plus her hour and a quarter of delusion.

But, not at the expense of the facts. Prabhakaran attacks all; and this was a cowardly attack. But, that does not mean by any twist of logic that President's record for peace is somehow vindicated by the attempt.

The President is fully entitled to be carried away by the passion of the moment — the fact that she had cheated death, and had contemplated "the dark abyss.'' She is even entitled to be carried away at her inaugural address, even though it would have been better if she had been more self -effacing and had left the emotion for a more fitting occasion such as a family reunion.

But, if she got carried away, at least those who listened are entitled to sort the fact from the fury.

President Kumaratunga cannot exactly cry out for the Tamil people, if she in her tenure had cheated them by not even attempting to deliver a political package, which was her government's only ostensible solution to the ethnic conflict. If a reverse challenge can be issued to her, can it be asked "President, why didn't your government have the resolve to opt for a referendum before the people on the political package, if the constitution provides for it?" Perhaps she felt that she would lose a referendum if she called for one.

If she had lost such a plebiscite, all that it would have proved was that she could not impose a "peace'' that the majority of the people were not willing to accept. She would have then, along with her government, had to look for peace alternatives, which are the sort of things stateswomen are supposed to do in the first place. If that was done, she would not have had to hide behind an emotional fig leaf of a speech to conceal a conscience that is probably wracked by guilt that she played politics at the expense of peace.

The only reason her government feared a referendum, was probably that she did not want to risk her political prestige on losing a referendum on her beloved peace package. If that's not politics, what is? Yet, the President is an honourable woman, right? Her inaugural speech, was quite transparently the result of the angst she felt as a result of the attempt on her life. But, has personal revelation necessarily to touch a human being for a moral reawakening? The President's born - again desire for peace is an acknowledgement that the fear of death had to touch her personally, and that the deaths of thousands of soldiers never really worked up in her this searing angst for peace? The President is only human; and the inability to grasp the nation's angst vicariously has to be granted to her.

But, for the rest of us, it seems important that the record at least be kept straight. Taking the moral and the emotional high ground in her address, the President seemed to say that she had been ''martyred'' for the cause of peace, and had been recognized by the people who delivered an electoral victory to her in return. On the strength of this vote, she with Vihara Maha Devi aplomb, seems to be calling for all — the ethnic communities, the opposition and the masses, to first herald her apotheosis and then join her for peace.

She has to climb several notches down before she squares with the people and delivers that message. This is for the simple reason that her electoral victory was far from emphatic and doesn't seem to be a vindication of anything. She got 51 and something per cent of the vote.

This was amidst allegations of rigging by independent election observers. (A poll observer, interviewed in Sandeshaya, said " the result of these polls themselves are in question.'') Certainly, it means that, perhaps, if there was no rigging, the election would have gone into a count of second preferences, an eventuality she seemed to escape by the skin of her teeth.

(50 p. c being the threshold for a second count.) There is no predicting which way the election would have gone if it went into such a count.

Any magnanimity that she seems to display should result from the humility of the knowledge that this election victory might not even rightfully be hers, and not from any patronising notion she harbours that she has to now shepherd the masses since she had been bestowed this onerous task by a besotted people.

The only correct chord she struck was probably the acknowledgement that the nation is in crisis — something that is so self evident. Either by the genuine exercise of franchise, or as a result of a stolen election, she has by quirk and kismet been asked to lead the nation to the next millennium.

She is now promising peace. If she is promising to mend her ways and be sincere now in her quest for peace, in the aftermath of a cathartic near-death experience, perhaps the nation should listen up.But if not, wouldn't we be damned to be part of some self-flagellating hymn of hypocrisy, which is being sung with lachrymose emotion even as the economy continues to nose-dive, and the stock markets are hitting an all time post poll nadir?

Inside the glass house

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