Sri Lanka's elusive truce

AN AGGRESSIVE REJECTION of the Sri Lankan Government's latest offer of a temporary truce exposes the anarchist thinking of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) regardless of Colombo's own compulsions. The LTTE, never really known to look beyond its combative calculus, has instead chosen to flay the Government's ``political duplicity'' in wanting a ceasefire as a diversionary gambit. Now, politically beleaguered indeed is the Sri Lankan President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga. But Colombo's insistence on a ``mutual agreement'' as the pre-condition for a truce with the usually intransigent LTTE is hardly devious. So, it seems that the LTTE may not have wanted a respite soon after its recent success in crippling an elite wing of Sri Lanka's Air Force, while Colombo's current calculations may partially be linked to the very same reason. Official Colombo's overall objective is to draw the fascist LTTE to the table for talks on how to bring the ferocious separatist war to an end and also on how to carve out a rightful place for the minority Tamils in the country's unstable polity. Sri Lanka's sad history of a long ethnic-political war of strategic attrition and senseless violence is replete with bright ideas of ceasefire or even peace, at one level, and disturbing tales of broken hopes or promises at another inter-related level. To say this is not at all to condone the LTTE's often cynical and sometimes lethal ways of fooling the potential or actual peace interlocutors, be they Sri Lankans themselves or their external friends.

The executive presidency of Ms. Kumaratunga has been under siege in the past few months. In one sense, many of her current political troubles have been caused by the nihilist agenda of the LTTE, most recently its assault on Sri Lanka's passenger planes and not just its military aircraft as the arguably `normative' target of violence-prone separatist wrath. Yet, Ms. Kumaratunga's political woes are no less traceable to her own regalist style of placing herself above the system itself in the name of a popular mandate that she had undoubtedly secured to function as a highly empowered President. Even as the President's Bonapartist tendencies have alienated her from some key allies in her own political coalition and reduced it to a minority in Parliament, Ms. Kumaratunga tried a series of gambles including a controversially timed move to hold a referendum on the need for an ethnically equitable and politically balanced constitution.

Discernible beyond the spirited dialogue that took place between the UNP-led Opposition and the President's People's Alliance is a grim reality. The two sides, mainly representing the majority Sinhala community but also some moderate and reformed sections of the Tamil political opinion, drew a blank in their efforts to evolve a power-sharing formula that might somehow provide a transition to a future constitutional debate. This was a tall order in a debate-savvy political society, and the blame game is in full swing now. But both sides agree, however, that an end to the country's internal conflict, involving the LTTE, is as much a priority as the proposed constitutional changes with a possible core of fairness towards the minorities. While the UNP wants this core to be fashioned as part of an overall constitutional framework, the Government is eager to overcome its frustrations by co-opting the Opposition to probe the LTTE's mind.

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