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Sri Lanka: a ray of hope of a political solution to ethnic conflict
Much attention is being devoted to the outcome of the All Parties Representatives Committee appointed by President Rajapaksa over a year and a half ago to find a political solution to the ethnic conflict… A draft proposal put out by the APRC a little over a year ago was widely hailed as a viable proposition that could provide a basis for a political
solution… The APRC has set itself a deadline of January 23 to come out with their final proposal, Jehan Perera writes from Colombo
The events of the past three weeks of the New Year have given an indication of the potential for savagery in the intensified war with the LTTE. At Buttala, the hapless victims of the bus bomb that killed 27 and injured over 60 others had been sprayed with gunfire by their attackers. The massacre of civilians in the remote rural countryside of the south evoked memories of earlier phases of the war. In the 1980s and ‘90s there were many incidents in which civilians had been brutally hacked to death in direct face to face encounters. But then, as now, the larger number of victims would be those caught up in the more impersonal but equally death-dealing conventional warfare where not only the armed combatants are the casualties of artillery firing and air bombing.
It is likely that more attacks of the kind that took place in Buttala will take place in the days and weeks ahead in different parts of the country, including Colombo. The LTTE’s strategy to resist the Sri Lankan military’s pincer attack from multiple directions into the northern territory they control in the Wanni can be expected to be two-fold. They will seek to resist the advancing units of the Sri Lankan military forces in conventional battle in order to hold onto the territory that is currently under their control, and which has given them the trappings of a separate state. The casualties in the battles taking place even at this time are believed to be higher than reported.
The LTTE’s strategy outside the Wanni will be likely to take the form of guerrilla and terror attacks that would create political and economic problems for the government. The travel advisories issued by five of Sri Lanka’s main tourist-providing countries came after the escalation of violence in the past three weeks. A fall in tourism would deal another blow to the declining economy. In addition, the erosion of political support to the government due to its inability to protect the general population from the ravages of war can compromise its war effort. There will be political pressures on the government to pull in troops from the battle front to protect civilians elsewhere.
In these circumstances, the government will need to show continuous progress on the military battle front if it is to contain the negative fallout of the costs of war. It is the promise and hope of victory in the not-so-distant future that keeps the general population behind the government. The government will face the challenge of burning its candle at both ends. If it is to defend its constituencies in the rest of the country from LTTE attack, the government will have to reduce its offensive capacity in the northern theatre of operations. On the other hand, the escalating cost of war, both human and economic, will impel the government to try and accelerate its military campaign and ensure rapid victories before the candle blows out.
Unviable option
In aiming to destroy the LTTE’s military capacity on the military battlefield, the government is seeking to achieve a rare feat in the annals of modern warfare. The political hardness of heart to bear any cost, military superiority and international support stemming from the global war against terrorism are factors in the government’s favour. Although few and far between, there have also been military successes in wars against ethnic separation. Two recent examples come from the Indian suppression of Sikh separatism in Punjab and Russian suppression of separatism in Chechnya. But both these victories were secured by countries which have enormous armies and virtually unlimited resources for the task at their disposal.
It is not surprising therefore that most countries that have been assisting Sri Lanka’s development over the past decades have cautioned the government against single-minded over-reliance on the military option. While none of them have expressed any sympathy for the LTTE on account of its undemocratic nature and terrorist attacks, they have all urged the government to propose a political solution to the ethnic conflict. However, the government finds itself in a dilemma in this regard as any movement towards a solution will require a radical measure of power sharing with the Tamil people of the north and east.
The government’s difficulties with regard to a political solution come from two main sources. The first is President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s promise to the people in his election manifesto of November 2005 that saw him win the presidency. The president promised to uphold the unitary system of governance that, in the perception of the Sinhalese majority, is the best guarantee of the country’s unity. The success of the president as a politician has been his ability to identify himself with the fears and aspirations of the ethnic majority, and to apparently share them himself.
The second source of the government’s difficulties comes from the extreme nationalist JVP which enjoys disproportionate power in the current parliament. The JVP has laid down a condition that no political solution, and not even the existing 13th amendment to the constitution, should be implemented until the LTTE is militarily defeated and disarmed. This type of uncompromising position is unlikely to be held by the majority of people. But the JVP’s advantageous position in parliament, where it is able to provide the government with its majority, enables them to impose their diktat on the government to which it is providing ideological leadership.
Political solution
In these circumstances, much attention is being devoted to the outcome of the All Parties Representatives Committee appointed by President Rajapaksa over a year and a half ago to find a political solution to the ethnic conflict. Although the main opposition parties are not represented in it, the APRC is a sufficiently representative grouping of political parties for its proposals to have legitimacy. Its chairman Prof. Tissa Vitharana has earned well deserved respect for his long years of commitment to a negotiated solution to the ethnic conflict through a viable political solution.
A draft proposal put out by the APRC a little over a year ago was widely hailed as a viable proposition that could provide a basis for a political solution. While it would not go so far as to explicitly propose a federal solution, the proposal indicated that the political solution had to go beyond the confines of the present unitary constitutional framework. This has been a longstanding demand of the ethnic minorities who seek a power-sharing solution to the ethnic conflict. The APRC has set itself a deadline of January 23 to come out with their final proposal.
A fortnight ago there were media reports that President Rajapaksa had attempted to influence the APRC’s deliberations by thrusting a proposal of his own on it. This could have been due to the president’s anxiety to keep within the limits set out by the JVP which views any new political proposal outside the framework of the existing highly centralised and unitary political system with disfavour. According to unofficial reports the president’s solution was for the full implementation of the 13th amendment that established provincial councils within the framework of the existing constitutional framework plus administrative measures to implement Tamil as an official language and recruit more Tamils to the government service.
The proposal for the full implementation of the 13th amendment rings hollow as a solution to the ethnic conflict. A basic feature of the 13th amendment, which made it a compromise between the competing forces of ethnic nationalism, was the provision for the temporary merger of the northern and eastern provinces, which has been undone. The two other basic weaknesses of the 13th amendment, even if it is fully implemented, are that it does not devolve financial power but leaves this at the discretion of a finance commission, which is appointed by the president. The 13th Amendment also permits the devolved powers to be arbitrarily taken back, as happened in the areas of health and education, and not to devolve powers at all, as happened in the case of police powers.
It is important for national unity that the hope of a just political solution to the ethnic conflict should remain alive, especially to the Tamil people. If the government is genuine about the president’s proposal for the full implementation of the 13th amendment, even as it presently exists, this can be supported as a first step in a long and slow journey of devolution of powers to the regions. But it cannot be a solution to the ethnic conflict. The indication that the APRC will accept the president’s proposals as an interim measure, until its own more comprehensive proposals get concretised into a political agreement that can be implemented, suggests a pragmatic approach. It keeps the hope alive that the APRC will be a part of the solution, and not be a part of the problem.
Jehan Perera is media director of the National Peace Council in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He can be reached at: jehanpc@sltnet.lk
What if we loved our kids
more than our cars?
by Syed Saiful Alam Shovan
WITHIN just one generation, the lives of children throughout the world have changed radically, with just one indication among many being that so many children are now driven to school rather than walking. The same change that occurred in the United States has also happened where I now live, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Even though car owners are very much the minority, children’s freedom has been greatly curtailed by those cars. Those whose parents do have cars are driven everywhere; those whose parents do not, unless they are very poor, are escorted by adults and strictly prohibited from playing outdoors. It sometimes seems the only children in the city who have the opportunity for wholehearted pleasure, and who have confidence and skill in negotiating the streets, are the slum children.
One could, of course, sit back quietly and watch these changes, reflecting that surely it isn’t as bad as it appears or that something else will come along to make things better or that children perhaps don’t need to play outdoors or meet and interact with strangers or get to know those of other social classes or learn how to get around on their own. It is easy to be defeatist and say who am I to fight such changes? And there are those who feel the changes are inevitable, because the only response is to curtail cars – and that is a ‘freedom’ or enjoyment we could never part with. It isn’t that bad, people may argue; in some parts of the world children have access to parks and playgrounds, and while structured sports for children may not deliver all the benefits of street play, it is the best we can do in the modern world and surely nobody wishes to give up the benefits of modernity.
We too, here in Dhaka, watched the changes and despaired. Later, I found inspiration in reading David Engwicht’s Street Reclaiming; we bought sports equipment to give to the children on the street where our office is – a ‘residential’ neighbourhood with homes, NGO offices, a private university, a pharmaceutical company, a car repair centre and a fair amount of traffic – and made signs to put in the streets with such messages as ‘Love us, let us play.’ The kids took the sporting equipment and played on the roof of their apartment building; the signs seemed likely to turn rusty in our office.
Then one day, a few months later, a couple of my colleagues came into my office and announced that on that very afternoon they were starting a cycle training programme. A what? We have been working to promote cycling, and fighting with transport officials on the issue of cycle rickshaw bans in Dhaka; in the process we have collected a good number of small, folding bikes. Out came the bikes. We bought a few more for little kids, and taped paper with the message ‘Cycle training’ over our old signs, and put up a banner, and later made a large sign showing Einstein on a bicycle – an amusing choice, I had to think, in a Muslim country – all to make the car drivers pay attention, slow down, and yield a lane or two to the kids.
The first day we arranged for some friends to come cycle; almost nobody from our street showed up. Curious children and sceptical adults watched from their balconies. Later, a neighbour told us that people believed we couldn’t be offering free cycle training without an underlying motive –which they took to be that we were planning to kidnap their children. How effective the media has proved in frightening parents out of allowing their children freedom of movement or opportunity to play! If only we could compare the likelihood of children being harmed by being kept under lock and key to the likelihood of being kidnapped. But the woman who told us this was brave, or had a better feeling towards humanity, and brought her children, and reported to her neighbours, and the numbers began to increase. We advertised the programme (for free) in newspapers and through handbills, and children and adolescents (and even adults) from different parts of town began to come, and a regular group of children showed up for the inestimable pleasure of riding a bike with other children.
Other organisations have started similar initiatives, though on small fields rather than on streets. Less than a year has passed, and we hope eventually people will realise the good sense of converting quiet streets into temporary children’s playgrounds. In the meantime, other stunning and unanticipated results have occurred. Prior to the programme, no children on the street knew each other, having always being escorted by parents, usually by car; now many friendships have developed.
One of our volunteers, Topon Shikder says: ‘We have created a platform which allows children from different apartment buildings to get to know each other, breaking the isolation which existed, in which everyone lived their separate lives. So now if someone is in trouble – is sick, or there is no male around – they can turn to each other for help. And of course the kids love it, they keep asking me, “give me a bike, give me a bike, when is it my turn?” It’s wonderful to see their excitement.’
We have slum children helping to run the programme and fix the bicycles; like it or not, if you want to ride, you have to interact with these kids, and interact they do. A couple of child servants who have no other opportunity for recreation sneak away to join and revel in being treated the same by our staff as the rich neighbourhood kids. The children who repair the bikes have gained confidence as well as new skills, marching about with great authority; twice a week a few of them eat lunch with our office staff. During school holidays, children from the street come to our office to borrow bikes, usually in groups; it is now perfectly normal to have children moving around as freely as if it were their office.
Another of our volunteers, Muminul Islam says, ‘Street children – those who pick rags or papers, or sell peanuts at the nearby lake, to make a little money – often wander to our street to watch, and stand with their mouths almost hanging open. So I send one of our kids with a bike to ask the child if he wants to ride for a few minutes. I can’t express how happy they are! Sometimes afterwards they get so excited that they come up to me and grab my hand, calling me uncle or brother, and thank me profusely.’
I wish I could say that the adults on our street have also thanked us warmly for the initiative, and that drivers slow down, or avoid entering our dead-end street altogether so as not to disrupt the children. Most adults, including the parents whose kids participate, are delighted; when they see drivers racing on the street, or honking loudly at the kids, they complain about how uncivilised they are. But other adults tell us we should take the programme elsewhere, and one woman – a paediatrician –complained that it’s hard on drivers because ‘we have to slow down;’ others ask why we take so much space (blocking one or two lanes of a three-lane street). Our volunteers shake their heads in wonder – it really seems that people love their cars more than their children, they say.
What we are giving to the children at one level seems so minor – the chance to ride a bike up and down a stretch of road, while passing drivers blare their horns. On the other hand, we are giving them the freedom to leave their homes unescorted, to gain a new skill, to form friendships, to interact with different kinds of people...and to have fun. Perhaps, if things go well, if we are able to continue and expand, we will even succeed in communicating our key message: cars should not be allowed to destroy the joy in children’s lives. Perhaps, people will see that children don’t have to grow up trapped in cars and behind TV, helpless and dependent, growing up in fear of strangers and of the world around them. Perhaps, they will come to see the harm in the mentality that has developed, in which any sacrifice of children’s natural state seems preferable to restrictions on cars. For it must be a sick society indeed that can, and does, and continues to, love its cars more than its children.
Just one more year! Good
riddance to George W. Bush
What kind of mess will the next US president inherit, exactly 12 months from today?
asks Rupert Cornwell
Arabia is the land of illusion and desert mirages. And as he jetted last week from kingdom to sheikhdom, to be regaled with feasts and falcons, jewels and ornamental swords, George Bush might have imagined that all was well with his presidency. But this, his longest and most ambitious trip to the Middle East, will surely be remembered –– if it is remembered at all –– as a gaudy, irrelevant footnote to a presidency that has long since failed.
Today [January 20] is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Bush’s eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this president the view could scarcely be bleaker.
Is he the worst president in US history? Bush faces stiff competition from the likes of James Buchanan, who watched as America slipped towards civil war, or Warren Harding with his corrupt administration, or Herbert Hoover, who failed to halt the slide into the Great Depression, or, more recently, Richard Nixon, the only president to be forced to resign. But in terms of dogmatism, incompetence, ignorance and divisiveness, Bush surely compares with any of the above.
His first, albeit far from most important, bequest is seemingly inevitable defeat for his own party in November, ending almost 30 years of Republican dominance since Ronald Reagan took power. As David Frum, a one-time Bush speech-writer, put it the other day: ‘I fear the Republicans are heading to an epochal defeat, 1980 in reverse. Every gain we have made since then has been wiped out since 2002.’
That, it should be noted, is a Republican speaking. But Frum’s evidence is overwhelming, from the president’s consistently abysmal approval rating, to the 70 per cent of the population who believe the country is ‘on the wrong track’ (a level not seen in two decades, and that before all-but-certain recession began to bite), to the 51 per cent of Americans who identify themselves as Democrats. By contrast, just 36 per cent of Americans call themselves Republicans –– the widest such margin in two decades. Even on the Republicans’ signature issue of national security, Democrats are at level pegging. All other things being equal, it is hard to see them losing in November.
In politics, of course, all other things are not equal. The chances of Bush ordering military strikes on Iran may have receded, after last month’s report by the US intelligence community that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. But some other foreign calamity, a lethal domestic terrorist attack or even a scandal could reshuffle the electoral cards.
Pace the result of last night’s primary in South Carolina, the Republican with the best shot at victory is John McCain, the veteran Arizona Senator and a candidate with genuine appeal to independent and centrist voters. He has a chance precisely because he doesn’t come across as a standard-issue Republican. But if elected, even he will have to set about cleansing a political version of the Augean stables.
In Greek mythology, Hercules washed away that mess by re-routing the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Whoever takes the oath of office next 20 January will face a similar task in repairing America, both at home and in the eyes of the world. By almost every yardstick, the country is in a worse state than seven years ago –– a state virtually unimaginable when the new century dawned.
Bush cannot be blamed for some of the difficulties. On illegal immigration, among the biggest concerns to voters, the reform he proposed, offering a legal path to citizenship, was sensible. Alas, by 2007 he was too weak to push it through.
Much the same goes for the economy. Presidents are the first to claim responsibility for the good times, but in fact have little power to influence events. The recession that now looms is not his fault; if anyone is responsible, it is the once-lionised former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, and the central bank’s over-lax policies in the aftermath of 9/11. The accelerating downturn also proves how, contrary to assertions, the business cycle has not been abolished by the wizardries of hi-tech econometrics.
That said, the Bush era leaves its own nasty odour. Corporate cronyism has been rife. Globalisation and cuts driven by ideology have turned the wealth gap between rich Americans and the rest from an embarrassment into an obscenity. Since 2001 the real income of ordinary Americans has stagnated.
And the mind-boggling losses suffered by such pillars of the financial establishment as Merrill Lynch and Citibank, followed by humiliating foreign bail-outs, suggest something is fundamentally amiss with capitalism, American-style. Like Enron and WorldCom, these colossal financial shipwrecks will forever be associated with Bush’s tenure.
A cartoon last week in The Washington Post caught the mood of laissez-faire drift. ‘Anything interesting happen while I was gone?’ asks a voice from Air Force One as the president’s plane flies over Manhattan on the way back from the Middle East. Below, a giant sign dangles from the skyscrapers of America’s financial capital: ‘USA –– Now a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Foreign Investors’.
Of even more immediate concern will be the surge in inequality that affronts America’s inherent sense of fairness. Nowhere is this more evident than in healthcare. As Bush has fiddled, the sickness of the existing system, which leaves a sixth of the population without coverage while consuming a similar share of the country’s entire GDP, has become near terminal.
Even more corrosive has been the damage inflicted on the US system of governance. This president may have blithely ignored mainstream science, pretended global warming was not happening and only belatedly grasped the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. In one domestic activity, however, Bush has not tarried: that of perverting and undermining the constitution in the name of expanding the president’s power to fight his ‘war on terror’.
To that end, what everyone else considers torture has been sanctioned, the basic legal right of habeas corpus has been denied to designated ‘foreign fighters’, illicit eavesdropping on US citizens has been authorised and fear-mongering has been turned into a political strategy. Somehow, the next president must restore Americans’ faith in their own institutions.
In foreign affairs, the story is the same. The Iraq invasion may not be the greatest foreign policy blunder in US history. But it is among the greatest, utterly discrediting the country’s intelligence services, hugely straining relations with key allies, handing a massive strategic victory to Iran and stretching the country’s military close to breaking point.
Belatedly, the president has learned the virtues of diplomacy, and his troop surge has at least reduced the violence in Iraq. Even so, he has bequeathed a no-win dilemma to his successor. It is too late for victory. His successor must decide how to withdraw US forces without plunging the region into new chaos.
In the meantime, familiar issues such as the Israeli-Arab conflict have festered amid years of neglect, which this one trip to the region will not expunge. Soaring Bush promises of a democratic Middle East now sound like a bad joke, as Washington again embraces the ruthless autocracies it knows. US policy in Pakistan is in ruins, Osama bin-Laden is still at large and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. Not only has America lost confidence in itself, but a great tide of anti-Americanism washes across the Muslim world.
And that may be the greatest challenge of all facing a president Obama, Clinton, McCain or Romney. America, as Bush never tires of insisting, must lead. But it must lead by example, not just by military force. Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, secret CIA camps, waterboarding and ‘extraordinary rendition’ have all combined to give the lie to the US as champion of human rights.
The new occupant of the Oval Office can but hope today’s dislike for America is directed at a leader, not at a country. That may well be, but one thing is for sure. Never again will the US occupy that extraordinary position of supremacy –– military, moral and economic –– that it held in the interlude between the demise of [the Soviet Union] and the attacks of September 2001.
To the 44th president falls the task of explaining that truth to the country, as well as dealing with the concrete day-to-day problems left by George Bush. Indeed, one wonders, why would anyone want the job?
The Independent/UK online, January 20, 2008
Army chief’s comments
The army chief on last Thursday asserted that ‘the state of emergency would gradually be relaxed, saying it is quite obvious that emergency will not be in place ahead of election’.
Good news for the country and the nation as a whole. But the question is who imposed the state of emergency, was it the army chief or the president? Who is again to take decision regarding lifting of the emergency immediately or gradually?
TH
On e-mail
Saeed Anwar in Dhaka
I read with interest in your paper that the former Pakistani cricketer, Saeed Anwar, is presently in Bangladesh to join Bishwa Ijtema. He has been delivering sermons here and encouraging his audience to be better Muslims.
Over the years, a number of former Pakistani cricketers have visited Bangladesh in various capacities, and undoubtedly they have a large popular following here. However, I have never heard from these luminaries about the seminal event that affects relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan, namely the Liberation War of 1971. I would be most interested, for example, to hear from a distinguished guest such as Saeed Anwar what he thinks of those events and whether he considers an apology from his government to be appropriate for the actions of their army in 1971.
Nadeem Khan
On e-mail
Budget airlines
A report in your paper on January 19 informed us that the government is delaying permission to budget or low-cost airlines to operate to and from our airports.
There are committees which are famous for rendering everything stalled forever. Budget airlines are essential for a country like ours. Here the per capita income is one of the lowest in the world. Moreover, if you shave off the income of top 2 per cent of the people the per capita income may come much below $100 per annum. Therefore, budget airlines will be highly beneficial to us.
Haq
On e-mail
Homeopathic government
I write to express my disagreement with Quick Comments under the heading ‘Homeopathic government’ (January 9). Homeopathy is a well-tested method of treatment, based on sound therapeutic philosophy of which vaccination, inoculation, etc. are modern examples. Introduction of medicine into the body will cause reaction, if the medicine is good and body has energy to react for recuperation and this is normal even in many so-called allopathic medicines nowadays. Preparation and storage (from dust, sunlight, humidity, high temperature, etc.) of homeopathic medicine is very difficult, and hence these do not always produce good effects in a country like Bangladesh. However, in England I find such medicines of excellent efficacy for most of my acute and chronic illnesses not involving accidents.
Homeopathic medicine is also much cheaper than conventional medicines, and we must remember that it is not only medicines but also food and nutrition which are necessary to effect a cure and maintain a healthy body.
Lastly, all forms of physicians and medicines are only trained and capable of curing a disease and none can prevent death, as is proven by so many patients dying in hospitals of all types including homeopathic hospitals.
Engineer Shfi Ahmed
London, UK
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Next on Quick Comments
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a. 4 DU teachers, 11 students acquitted
b. Khaleda, sons freed on parole (New Age, January 20)
c. Country needs elected govt before June, says Akbar (New Age, January 20)
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e. Joint forces start kitchen market monitoring (New Age, January 20)
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