The Hindu : Thailand, a brief pause?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 09, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Thailand, a brief pause?

By V. S. Sambandan

COLOMBO Sept. 8. "History is past politics, and politics is present history" — E.A. Freeman (Methods of Historical Study, 1886).

When the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rejected the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Agreement, it also shut the door firmly on a politically inclusive approach to conflict-resolution.

India's "coercion" is what is often attributed to the failure of the accord. Deeper still runs the much-ignored mismatch in political expectations that has derailed all the attempts at negotiation. The clearest enunciation, till date, of what the Tigers look for as a political framework comes in the explanation why the ISLA was turned down.

On October 26, 1988, Anton S. Balasingham — LTTE's chief negotiator for the talks in Thailand — said clearly that the Indian model was unacceptable. "The Indo-Lanka Accord fails to situate the essence and mode of our struggle as a national struggle for self-determination. Instead, (it) places the struggle entirely on a false premise reducing it to a simple problem of a discriminated minority group in a pluralistic social formation.''

The rebel group's dismissal of an inclusive solution also came out in that document. "The pluralistic social theory is deliberately utilised to reject the concepts of nationality and national self-determination, which are fundamental to our political struggle. We emphasise that a meaningful and lasting solution to the Tamil question can only be achieved by recognising the rights of our people, most importantly, our people's right to national self-determination.''

The LTTE's outright rejection of the 1994 devolution package, which wanted to give greater powers to the regions, read along with the unrelenting position adopted at this April's press conference, are pointers to the fact that Thailand could only mean another pause before the Tiger pounces again.

The saga of the conflict will be incomplete if the deep political rivalry between the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party is ignored. For, this divisive southern politics which, two decades ago, fanned the militant phase of the Tamil approach to conflict-resolution, has been on for five decades. In its own way, the southern power struggle continues to keep the Tigers at work.

When the first attempt at a negotiated settlement, the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam pact, was signed on July 29, 1957, the then Opposition, UNP, took to the streets in protest. Its leader, J. R. Jayewardene (who later became President), led a long protest march from Colombo to Kandy.

This defiance by the Opposition parties of the day continued through the decades, the most telling examples being the SLFP's opposition to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and the UNP's cold-shouldering of the draft constitution prepared by the SLFP-led People's Alliance.

In the current run-up, there has been a seeming taming down of opposition, but several important caveats have been placed by the SLFP. Now that both the parties have a direct stake in the island's governance, the key to positive outcome from Thailand is in effectively insulating the peace efforts from the shrill rhetoric of political power-seeking.

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Thailand, a brief pause?