{"id":27267,"date":"2013-12-29T14:04:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-29T19:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=27267"},"modified":"2013-12-29T14:04:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-29T19:04:30","slug":"the-tna-trusts-the-international-community-more-than-they-trust-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=27267","title":{"rendered":"The TNA Trusts the International Community More than they Trust Themselves."},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/p>\n

N. Sathiya Moorthy<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his response to the budget debate in Parliament as Finance Minister, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has invited the TNA to work with the government for a \u2018home-grown solution\u2019 to the ethnic issue. As was to be expected, the TNA leadership, meeting in Vavuniya only days later, rejected the earlier government call for a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), one more time, likewise. Sketchy media reports have not indicated that they are opposed to talks, per se.<\/p>\n

There is nothing however to suggest that the TNA is against peace talks and political solution, per se. They and their people need it more than the rest. Post-poll in the North, the contours and ground realities have changed. It had changed once earlier after the \u2018ethnic war\u2019. None grabbed the opportunity then with the seriousness and sincerity. None seem to be wanting it now, either.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The problem with a \u2018home-grown solution\u2019 since the conclusion of \u2018Eelam War IV\u2019 is that the Government has not said anything yet about in whose home such a solution would have to grow, or would be grown. The TNA was clear that it was to be in its backyard, and nowhere else. The war-shocked Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora wanted it grown to their satisfaction, but by the international community. By the time the government decided that Parliament was where a solution should be sown, grown and harvested, the TNA had decided on the \u2018global garden\u2019.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that the TNA did not try. Shocked as much by the bloody end to the war and not in the way they had anticipated long earlier, they readily reached to clutch whatever straw that was on offer. By the time they got the straw, they wanted more of it first, and then a twig and a branch of a tree, then the tree and later the garden as a whole. Sitting in safety away from the bank of the bloodied river(s), the Diaspora watered their hopes as such. The government for its part cut the channels and pathways for the bloodied water flowed to the roots, as well.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about electoral majorities \u2013 either in Colombo or in Jaffna. Despite initial denial, the TNA would still have to take the call on re-joining the negotiations process. Their people, for one, cannot continue to live with uncertainty into eternity. They continue to swear by a political solution within a united Sri Lanka. It cannot be achieved without a national dialogue and a national consensus.<\/p>\n

There are precedents. The TNA\u2019s demand for a pre-PSC negotiated solution to be attested by Parliament can go the same way as the India-Sri Lanka Accord, the consequent 13-A, the PC Act, and other initiatives of the kind. Their sympathisers cannot draw a parallel with the passage of 18-A. Instead, they need to recognise the possibility of 18-A annulment on a later date.<\/p>\n

President Rajapaksa now has a two-thirds majority in Parliament. When he signed the Accord, JRJ had a five-sixth majority. He negotiated and signed the Accord and accelerated13-A outside of Parliament. After his time, which was not long after, it fell through, both in spirit and content, as far as implementation went.<\/p>\n

The current course, starting with the UNHRC resolutions, with predictable and uncaring continuance, is fraught with greater danger for national unity, integrity and stability than in the worst-ever 1987-89 period, when there were twin insurgencies on either side of the \u2018ethnic divide\u2019. The Tamils and the Tamils\u2019 grievances might end up being a cause and residue at the same time, to a larger threat and complexity to the nation\u2019s stability from within than in the three-decade past.<\/p>\n

The TNA trusts the international community more than they trust themselves. Sweeping poll victory in the North should have given them greater confidence to deal with issues and solutions methodically, and well within the Sri Lankan constitutional scheme. Instead, they have gone on a political offensive. The Centre that has never ever run away from a good political fight on the ethnic front over the past years and decades has only been too happy to join one more.<\/p>\n

Both the TNA and the Centre have had the immediate problems on their respective hands resolved \u2013 or, attempted to be resolved. For the TNA and their elected government in the Northern Province, it is about having to run an effective administration, which addresses the immediate concerns of their people.<\/p>\n

The Northern government may not have the actual powers, promised under the Constitution, as it exists now, to resolve many or any of them. Yet, they would have \u2013 and still have \u2013 and opportunity to hear them out. Ahead of government-formation seldom had the TNA leadership at the national-level taken pains to be with their people even after the LTTE that they too dreaded was out of the scene.<\/p>\n

Every morning, the government finds itself tied in more knots than the previous night. It is not only on the ethnic front \u2013 which has been reduced to \u2018accountability issues\u2019. It is also about the inevitability of anti-incumbency factors, attaching to charges and issues of corruption, nepotism and all other forms of maladministration that no past government in the country \u2013 or, elsewhere \u2013 had escaped after such a long and continuous innings.<\/p>\n

It is unclear if in President Rajapaksa\u2019s invitation to the TNA, there is anything more than that meets the eye. On the one hand, is it only a bland and periodic invitation, which the TNA too has come to conclude (rightly or otherwise) as a deflecting tactic, also to wear them out? Or, does he have something substantial to offer the TNA on issues that they both had addressed in the post-war era, but not after \u2018HR issues\u2019 and the UNHRC began gaining greater prominence than may have been intended?<\/p>\n

From the TNA side, they will have to decide if they want to go back to the negotiations table, even if as a route to the PSC and Parliament? If so, are they ready to confine themselves to the power-devolution issues that they had discussed with the Centre soon after the war? \u2018Accountability\u2019 issues, if at all, should have mattered the most at the time to the TNA, but did not. They cannot go back to the negotiations table with new discussion-points, and keep adding numbers and details ad nauseum.<\/p>\n

There is nothing that the government can do but to talk to the TNA, if it is serious about resolving the ethnic issue, and ending the \u2018accountability\u2019-related concerns on all sides and of all stake-holders. There is nothing that the TNA can do but to carry Parliament with it, if their intentions and efforts have to carry credibility and continuity on the ground. For both sides, the past is the proof to the present \u2013 and on to the future, too. They, more than others, need to realise and acknowledge it as such, and as much.<\/p>\n

The world has played ping-pong with Sri Lanka and countries such as Sri Lanka. The UNHRC once having voted on Sri Lanka, post-war, it should have rested there. It was not to be. The UN, where it recommenced all over again not very long after, had been formed to find political solutions to political problems \u2013 and restore permanent peace, thus. The UN, instead, sent Sri Lanka to the UNHRC, which in a way got created to find permanent problems out of permanent solutions, and destroy peace.<\/p>\n

There have been template-models to wars and war-victories. The LTTE over three decades and the armed forces through a much shorter span, proved that improvisation \u2013 and improvisation alone \u2013 helped. There cannot be however template-models for peace. They too need improvisation and localisation. \u2018Accountability issues\u2019 are no different.<\/p>\n

The template-model derived from the European experience of an unforgettable and unforgivable past cannot be codified and improvised upon to contemporary conditions, for enforcement elsewhere, too. The victor-loser equation in Europe, like the majority-minority component elsewhere, needs to be remembered and suitable alterations made.<\/p>\n

At the end of it, goals and not processes should matter. The world should tell Sri Lanka, what the goal is. Not the why of it and the how of it. That Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans should be allowed to work out through the local scheme and system. In doing so, they would have also considered and employed ground realities to given conditions. Lest, it should all fail. In the process, Sri Lanka too could have failed \u2013 itself \u2013 as never before, and never after!<\/p>\n

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi)<\/em><\/p>\n

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By N. Sathiya Moorthy In his response to the budget debate in Parliament as Finance Minister, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has invited the TNA to work with the government for a \u2018home-grown solution\u2019 to the ethnic issue. As was to be expected, the TNA leadership, meeting in Vavuniya only days later, rejected the earlier government call …<\/p>\n

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