The Need for Negotiations, Pluralism and Democracy - 10th January 2008

'''The Peace Secretariat views with satisfaction the recent pronouncements of several countries, in response to the forthcoming termination of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, that a negotiated political solution is required for resolution of the political conflict in Sri Lanka. Whilst well-meaning advice is always welcome, even if redundant, we trust these well-wishers will register that such a perception has governed the current Sri Lankan government since its inauguration in November 2005.'''

This is precisely the reason that, despite an escalation in LTTE terrorism from December 2005, as noted by the then fully Scandinavian Monitoring Mission, the GOSL promoted negotiations and finally managed, in February 2006, to persuade the LTTE to return to talks, which they had withdrawn from in April 2003. GOSL gave up for this purpose its original assertion that talks should take place in Asia rather than in Europe, The avuncular well-wishers of Sri Lanka, who had despite continuing indulgence failed to persuade the LTTE to return to negotiations for nearly three long years, did not then congratulate the Sri Lankan government for this achievement.

Perhaps they knew the LTTE better than the new government did. Just a couple of months later the LTTE tired to assassinate the Sri Lankan army commander, using a pregnant suicide bomber, an imaginative leap that should have been confined to the fictions of magic realism. Despite this the GOSL requested further talks and duly went two months later to Oslo, despite many elements in Sri Lanka fearing untoward influences in Norway. However, though the LTTE got themselves transported to Oslo, they embarrassed even their Norwegian hosts by failing to appear at the talks.

Two months later the LTTE, having previously violated the CFA over three thousand times in ways that could be characterized as individual aberrations, made another qualitative leap in launching two large scale military offensives, in the North and the East of the country respectively. These seemed the culmination of a long term strategy, designed to take military control of the North and East, and in one of them the head of their Political Wing played a prominent role, suitably dressed for the part in the military fatigues that he had increasingly flaunted over the preceding period. Sadly, idealistic well-wishers failed to register what a gross violation this was of the CFA, and the fact that it required concerted defensive measures to ensure that such threats to the integrity of the nation could not be repeated.

And yet, despite this, sticking to its original perception, the GOSL went back to talks in Geneva in October 2006. This time the LTTE delegation did appear on stage for one day, and was then withdrawn by what one of the more shrewd British observers of the scene described as the famous call from Kilinochchi. Since then the LTTE has refused to return to talks, making it clear to the Norwegian Facilitator that they would not negotiate unless various conditions, which changed with the times and seasons, were met. That even informal talks were not possible was also made clear by the LTTE to the SLMM, from which it summarily expelled several Scandinavians, thus making proper monitoring impossible (and thus the rulings that had made clear with what contempt the LTTE had treated the CFA over five long years).

It was in such a context that the GOSL decided that its continuing conviction regarding the need for negotiations had to be implemented practically, instead of being confined to platitudes. Whether meanwhile well-wishers and others tried in their various ways to persuade the LTTE to negotiate is not known. If they did so, they did not succeed. So the GOSL began a process of discussions designed to produce a political solution to political problems, whilst making it clear – a fact that most other nations had emphasized through their own actions, sometimes not even bothering to pay lip service to negotiations – that terrorism could not be tolerated, and that the security of one’s own citizenry was a paramount consideration for any government.

The deliberations of the APRC that was set up by the GOSL continue apace. The Peace Secretariat could have hoped that a result would have emerged more quickly, but in a pluralistic democratic setting it is not easy to achieve consensus. In Sri Lanka for instance, whilst much appreciating the enormous assistance rendered over the last twenty years by successive Indian governments, we understand that, when there is a coalition government, there might be varying emphases which must be respected. Some countries however, more used to dealing with monolithic governments, fail to understand this, just as they fail to understand that Sri Lanka has independent courts which no government can take for granted.

The Peace Secretariat therefore, whilst hoping for quick decisions, fully respects the enormous efforts of the APRC Chairman and participants in seeking productive consensus. The door remains open for any other parties to enter into discussion, but the failure of any entity to talk should not preclude others from doing so. In this sense, perhaps the termination of the CFA will permit even the Facilitator to develop relations with moderate Tamil parties, the existence of which became clear to the former Norwegian Ambassador only a few weeks before, after a thankless few years in which he tried to arrange discussions with the LTTE, he finally left Sri Lanka. His successor was able to build on his final perception, that talks with others too were desirable, and the Peace Secretariat hopes therefore that the input of Tamils who had suffered neglect because of the fashionable monolith of 2002 will now be taken into account by all members of the international community.

Discussion, tolerance for all opinions and a democratic dispensation that allows people to exercise choice are essential if peace is to return to Sri Lanka. The last time the LTTE summarily withdrew from talks, its intransigence nearly proved successful, when the then government offered it an Interim Self-Governing Authority in which it would dominate two provinces and all Pradeshiya Sabhas within them without any opportunity for the people to vote. Unfortunately for the LTTE, the democratic response of the people of Sri Lanka to such appeasement was a resounding rejection at the polls of the leadership that had eschewed discussion, tolerance and democracy. No Sri Lankan government will return to arbitrary authoritarianism, and it would be well if the international community as a whole, while promoting a negotiated settlement, also understood reality and did not suggest a continuing commitment to a quasi-fictional world of increasingly fiendish violence.

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha

Secretary General

Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process