Global Peace Support Group

Never has a Lankan leader sounded so intolerantly paranoid towards the country’s academia; and never have Lankan Vice Chancellors fallen so low!

Vellupillai Pirapaharan equated even the most-minute act of non-

ompliance to a conspiracy to undermine the Eelam cause. Two years after defeating the Tiger, the Rajapaksa Siblings seem to be donning their vanquished enemy’s intolerant and irrationally-maximalist mantle.

The Abnormal North

Two years after the guns fell silent, the humanitarian and political problems of Lankan Tamils are still festering. According to a UN report, “117,888 displaced people…..are yet to be permanently resettled…. The resettled families in the North say they do not have proper dwelling places and they are at the mercy of friends and relatives for accommodat undayleader.lk/2011/05/22/a-peace-of-lost-opportunities/

A Peace Of Lost Opportunities

“….this way leads us nowhere …..to continue so has no glory”.
Neruda (The People)

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

Jayalalitha Jeyaram, Manmohan Singh, Mahinda Rajapaksa and G.L Peiris

The second anniversary of defeating the LTTE is being celebrated with quintessentially Rajapaksa pomp and pageantry.

Peace has been good to the Ruling Family. It has won all elections, obtained a two-third majority in parliament, removed presidential term-limits, enhanced presidential powers, stymied the opposition and discouraged dissent. Post-war, the Rajapaksas rule continues untrammelled (with sons and nephews being groomed to takeover from the fathers and uncles, someday).

For most ordinary Lankans though, these are not good-times. This is not mere conjecture, but is based on a new Gallup poll. According to 2010 Global Wellbeing Index, 95% of Lankans are neither happy with their current status nor optimistic about their future prospects. Only 5% of Lankans see themselves as thriving; 75% see themselves as struggling and 20% as suffering. Being an opinion poll, these findings are based not on objective facts (such as growth rates/HDI rankings) but on subjective feelings i.e. how the respondents regard their present and their future.
And in the minds of the majority of Lankans, 2010, the first year of peace, has been a time of disenchantment.

And no wonder; in the South the peace dividend remains elusive, while economic woes mount. Peace dividends cannot materialise when countries continue their war-time spending patterns, post-war. In Sri Lanka, undiminished defence expenditure (plus gargantuan waste and corruption) has gobbled-up the peace dividend. The regime’s (reported) plan to turn the Uva-Wellassa University into a military academy is symbolic and symptomatic of this ‘guns over butter’ mindset and its consequences, for people and development. As the then US President Eisenhower remarked presciently about his own country, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed” (Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors – 16.4.1953).

In Sri Lanka, the non-thriving 95% of the populace daily witness the smug-arrogance with which the thriving 5% overindulge themselves. Iniquitous inequalities, a near-staple of capitalism, are being aggravated immeasurably by the Rajapaksa proclivity towards generosity to their own and miserliness to everyone else. For instance, the regime, while unequivocally rejecting the salary demands of university lecturers, has recently doubled the allowance to senior officials of 230+ state enterprises.
For almost 30 years, rulers could blame their incompetencies and inabilities on the war (and the LTTE). Today this excuse is no more; thus the regime’s periodic attempts to propagandistically-resurrect the dead Tiger; thus its unremitting search for new enemies. This dangerous predisposition was evident in the outrageous official response to the trade union action by university dons: “President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday said that certain elements are attempting to undermine the 2600th Sri Sambuddhatwa Jayanthi….. ‘It is the duty of all Sri Lankans to foil attempts to belittle the 2600th Sri Sambuddhatva Jayanthi,’ President Rajapaksa said. The President made these observations at a meeting with Vice Chancellors of all universities…. The discussion also focused on….conspiracies being hatched by various forces who stood against the country…. The Vice Chancellors opined that the members of the university academic staff should abstain from creating unnecessary problems when the entire country is prepared to celebrate the 2600th Sambuddhatwa Jayanthi” (Daily News – 13.5.2011). ion” (Daily Mirror – 19.5.2011). The following remark by a Vanni villager indicates the grim reality which persists behind the official hype about a Northern-Spring: “The LTTE controlled the people with repressive methods. Now people are afraid to speak because of the military. The war is over, yet our problems remain the same” (Transcurrent – 2.12.2010).

While most civilian Tamils languish in want and uncertainty, a glittering, no-expenses-spared ceremony was held at the Jaffna military headquarters, to launch the Defence Ministry’s reality show, ‘Ranaviru Real Star’. Such indecently insensate actions, which add insult to injury, foster not reconciliation but bitterness, which may spill-over from words to (hopefully democratic and non-violent) deeds someday.

The triumphalist-hype which provides the lyrics and the music of this Rajapaksa peace has rendered almost invisible the reasons which created a language issue, transformed it into an ethnic problem and, within that context, enabled the rise of the Tiger. According to the dominant (Sinhala supremacist) commonsense, trying to understand the root-causes of the war is tantamount to exculpating the horrific conduct of the LTTE. In consequence, a political solution based on power-sharing has been consigned to things untouchable.

There is a tiny snag though. Subsequent to the electoral-drubbing it received in Tamil Nadu, the Congress government is busy rethinking (or repackaging) its Lankan policy. The stridently anti-Rajapaksa attitude of the new chief minister, Jayalalitha Jeyaram, will further encourage this recalibration. The Congress Party’s Tamil Nadu debacle can be attributed, in part, to voter-anger over Delhi’s indifference towards the plight of Lankan Tamils, not just during the war but even afterwards. A change in India’s Lankan policy – or perhaps a show of it – thus may happen, because the Congress cannot afford to suffer the same fate in Tamil Nadu at national elections. The Darusman Report has given Delhi an ideal stick to prod Colombo with. When Foreign Minister Peiris went to Delhi requesting Indian assistance at the upcoming UN Human Rights Council sessions, the Indians had read him the riot act, according to an official source: “There is a lot of concern in India [over the pace of political reconciliation] because, after all, the conflict ended two years back. If they don’t take measures in the domestic domain there is bound to be pressure from elsewhere” (quoted in The Hindu – 19.5.2011).

In response, Minister Peiris, predictably, used the TNA-pretext; he “assured that after six rounds of talks, Colombo and the Tamil National Alliance were moving towards ‘substantial issues’” (ibid). In reality the talks with the TNA is another time-and-space-buying exercise, like the APRC. The best proof of the Rajapaksa-mala fide is the offer of a Senate (dominated by the Sinhalese) in lieu of devolution, as the ‘political solution’. Incidentally, the UNP’s excellent decision to back any UPFA-TNA agreement would make it a little harder for the regime to extricate itself via its usual charade.
No peace dividend; no political solution: the post-war conduct of the Rajapaksas indicate a mindset unresponsive to voluntary internal reforms, be it on devolution, good governance or human rights. This leaves us with a conundrum – is external pressure the only way Sri Lanka can be prevented from remaking old mistakes and retrogressing into past-nightmares?

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Govt. Yet To Decide On US, Indian Conditions

The government of Sri Lanka is yet to decide on the conditions and measures presented by the governments of US and India to External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris. However, the Rajapaksa administration is under pressure to make its move fast to build its relations with the international community.
US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert O Blake during his visit to Sri Lanka recently has informed Peiris along with the US ambassador in Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis that Sri Lanka had to follow the measures outlined by the US in order to garner its support.

G.L. Peiris and Robert O. Blake

In his message, Blake had outlined several conditions and measures to be adopted by the Sri Lankan government in order to address the allegations of human rights violations leveled against the country and to safeguard them.
Among the measures to be adopted outlined by Blake were the implementation of the proposals made in the interim report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and a political solution to the ethnic issue. It is also learnt that former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka had also figured during the discussion. Immediately after receiving the message, Peiris had informed about it to the decision making members of the government.
Peiris had also informed them that the US official had informed that the Sri Lankan government had to agree to the conditions outlined in the message if the government wished for US support to overcome pressure on the country from the international community.
The government however, is facing a quandary in deciding on whether to agree to the conditions and secure the support of the US government or to ignore the document and continue to face the pressures of the international community on rights issues. Be that as it may, the conditions laid down by the Indian government during Peiris recent visit to the country are also similar to those laid down by the US government.
Senior government members are looking at finding the best way to make both the American and the Indians happy without creating any controversies in local politics. According to a government minister, the US and Indians seem to be working together on the Sri Lankan issue.
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No Progress In Talks Says TNA

Rauff Hakeem

Muslims Criticise Government -TNA Talks
The TNA continues to maintain that while the discussion with the government on finding a political solution to the ethnic issue has not shown much progress, it is yet in the preliminary stages.
The Muslim community meanwhile has called for a separate dialogue with the government to find solutions to the ethnic issue.
The TNA has already held  several rounds of discussions with the government on issues faced by the Tamil community and are currently discussing finding a political solution to the ethnic issue.
The Muslim politicians have now commenced making statements on the non inclusion of any Muslim representation in the government’s move to find a political solution that would affect all minority communities in the country.
The SLMC has requested the government for the party to be allowed to participate in the discussions between the TNA and the government.
The TNA however, has said that before the SLMC is allowed to participate in the discussions between it and the government, the TNA and the SLMC needed to hold a discussion.
According to them, the SLMC and TNA  have to arrive at a consensus before sitting down with the government to discuss a political solution agreeable to the minority communities.
The UNP meanwhile said last week that the government has failed to hold discussions with the Muslim leaders in the country although several rounds of talks have been held with Tamil political leaders.
UNP Western Provincial Councilor Mujabir Rahuman speaking at a press conference observed that the Rajapaksa administration has not paid attention to the Muslim community in the country.
The government is currently holding discussions with the representatives of the major Tamil political party, TNA, on devolving power and resolving the ethnic issue.
Rahuman also charged that the Muslim political leaders in the government  could not be considered the proper representatives of the Muslim people.
The councilor expressed his regret at the silence maintained by the Muslim Congress that claims to represent the Muslim community.
Be that as it may, the government has remained silent to the Muslim request and seems to have left the matter to be resolved by the two minority communities.

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