The 10th round of talks between the government and the TNA ended in failure on August 4. After some stock taking, the Tamil party has gone public with the request that the government must ‘meaningfully define’ its response to three issues within two weeks as a condition for further discussions. The three issues relate to the much talked about devolution package for the Tamil dominated North and East of the island. One of the issues is power over the police. The other two primarily give a freehand in deciding local development priorities.
The Eelam War IV ended in May 2009 and the island nation has seen two elections with President Mahinda Rajapakse getting a mandate on the promise of power sharing deal to the ethnic Tamil minority on honourable terms. But subsequent developments, particularly the procrastination on the devolution package have created the impression that the Rajapakse government is using the façade of talks since January to ward off pressure from India to end discrimination against the ethnic Tamils.
The TNA, during the heydays of Tamil Tigers, was the defacto over ground party of the LTTE. It had won elections in the North and acted as LTTE’s parliamentary wing. But after the Tigers were vanquished in the battle field, TNA leaders renounced the Prabhakaran plank of a separate Tamil Eelam. In the post-war elections, it has shed the LTTE tag and got rehabilitated as a voice of the people.
So much so, observers expected a positive response to the TNA request. The hopes now lay shattered. Because, far from considering the request, the official interlocutor, Sajin Vas Gunawardane, secretary of the government’s delegation, denounced it as an ‘ultimatum’, and accused the TNA of ‘reliving the attitude portrayed by the LTTE’.
Gunawardane‘s reaction amounted to a formal end to the charade of talks minus a formal announcement.
In a manner of speaking, the government had set the stage for de jure end to the talks. The President had talked in early July itself of referring the devolution issue to a parliamentary committee. On August 9, that is five days after the talks with TNA ‘ended’, an official resolution was moved in Parliament to realise the ‘Mahinda Chintan’. This is not the first time such a stratagem has been used and the ethnic issue made hostage to Southern consensus.
In 2006, President Rajapakse had referred the ‘issue’ to an “all party conference”. Its deliberations spread over three years ended up in the proverbial tryst of blind men to identify an elephant. The government has not made public the report.
On Aug 8, that is a day before parliamentary resolution was moved, Rajapakse’s brother, Gotabhaya, who is also the Defence Secretary, has ruled out the need for a political situation in the changed political landscape of the island nation. In fact, he had gone to the extent of saying the talk of political solution is simply irrelevant.
‘The political solution talk is simply irrelevant… The existing constitution is more than enough for us to live together… Now the LTTE is gone, I don’t think there is any requirement (for a political solution),” Gotabhaya told the Indian TV Channel, Headlines Today, while putting up a strong defence of the government’s record on the Wanni theatre.
Gotabhaya’s assertion begs the question, what next. If not Gotabhaya, his elder brother, President Rajapakse, may not be unaware of the fact that majoritarian politics created the ethnic issue in 1972 as a political football and later on made it a pestering canker sore.
Over the years, the Tamil leaders have turned to New Delhi for a ‘good word’ with Colombo. They still do so. As recently as July, TNA leader Suresh Premachandran stuck to the same line. ‘The solution for the ethnic question in Sri Lanka is in the hands of India’, he said, while his colleague, M. A. Sumanthiran said their doors are ‘open for talks’ with the government in Colombo.
Like always, now also, the Lankan ethnic concerns are finding an echo in Tamilnadu. The state assembly adopted a resolution on June 8 asking Delhi to impose economic sanctions against Sri Lanka.
Moving the resolution, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa said only economic sanctions would “rein in” Sri Lanka, which she said, “did not heed the global opinion when it came to the Tamils issue”. She said Tamils had been struggling against being treated as “second class citizens in their own country” even after Sri Lanka got independence from the British. And told Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh that if India and other countries imposed sanctions, ‘Sri Lanka has to listen to what we say’.
Unlike most of her contemporaries, Jayalalithaa has impeccable credentials to speak for Lankan Tamils. It was on her insistence that the Delhi had first banned LTTE in India in 1992. It was also during her stewardship of Tamilnadu in 2002, the state assembly passed a resolution demanding the arrest and extradition of V Prabhakaran in connection with Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
During her sojourn through India, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton made a stopover in Chennai and had a long conversation over the current situation in Sri Lanka with Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
‘They actually had quite a long conversation about Sri Lanka, and I think they both agreed that we have concerns about the situation in Sri Lanka’, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake told reporters later noting that the discussions were held against the backdrop of the Channel 4 documentary (on human rights violations by Lanka army).
‘More broadly, the Secretary (of State) and (Chief) Minister Jayalalithaa talked about how there needs to be greater progress towards reconciliation and that really, the government should redouble efforts to reach an agreement in their dialogue with the Tamil National Alliance on all of the key issues of concern to Tamils inside Sri Lanka’, Blake said.
Significantly, immediately after Clinton’s visit to Chennai, Lanka High Commissioner to India called on the Tamilnadu Chief Minister. The call, officially described as a courtesy call is seen as the Rajapakse way of reaching out to the present Tamilnadu leadership. The Lanka President has since invited Jayalalithaa to visit his country.
Colombo has been creating irritants in the bilateral relations with Delhi by waving its China card and a Pakistan card occasionally. Yet, the Government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken the consistent stand that President Rajapakse should strive for a political solution. Its message to Jaffna has been to persist with dialogue with Colombo to resolve the problems in the country.
A pre-requisite for success of negotiations is a willingness to be flexible. It is in short supply as the turn of events show. Rigidity will only complicate matters.
– malladi rama rao
