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Editorial > Geneva here they come! Too much of
private tuition can make anyone sleepy.
TAMIL NATIONAL FORUM
Geneva here they come!
Too much of private tuition can make anyone sleepy
Editorial, Oru Paper,
17 February 2006
 The
gentleman whose photograph you see alongside is Mr.Nimal Sripala de Silva,
Mahinda Rajapakse's frontline minister, Government spokesman and head of the Sri
Lanka government delegation to Geneva for talks on February 22nd and 23rd.. If
the photograph shows him sleeping at an important public Function in Colombo,
forgive him. Colombo's sultry weather is of course sleep inducing, public
meetings nevertheless. But what is worse, even for Health ministers in charge of
nutrition, is too much of private tuition!
Nimal Sripala de Silva had already become a joke in political and press circles
in Colombo after being nominated to head the Geneva delegation. Poor President
Rajapakse had no option. Next to him in seniority was Prime Minister Ratnasiri
Wickremanayake whose sight the Tigers can't stand. Third in line in protocol was
of course this sleepy Minister. But it was hoped that intense private tuition on
how to handle Anton Balasingham face to face would help. And a workshop was held
at the Presidential Secretariat for no less a purpose than to create a
"knowledge base" for the Government delegation and their supporting staff.
Attending the conference were not only members of the armed forces, police high
ups, officials of the Peace Secretariat but also two Americans described as
experts on conflict resolution. And what does this head of the delegation do? He
sleeps, and sleeps and ....
Talking of the crash course on conflict resolution being given to Sripala de
Silva and the two other delegates Ministers Jeyaraj Fernandopulle and Rohitha
Bogolllagama (both again unfortunate choices, except that Fernandopulle knowing
Tamil could hear any jokes made by Balasingham in Tamil). Thamilselvan has
commented that they were happy about the intense training being given to the
government delegates, but what was important was for the government to have a
better understanding of the issues faced by the Tamil people. That being an
impossibility with the mindset of the kind of Sinhalese politicians who rule the
country, the Geneva talks could well be written off as unlikely to advance the
peace process. Anyway, the government's not so hidden agenda is not to advance
any peace process, but only to drag on the time until they sort out their
domestic problems.
The President has far too many domestic problems on his plate. The JVP has
reminded the President of the 13-point memorandum of understanding he signed
with them before the elections which were later incorporated in his "Mahinda
Chinthanaya" and that the negotiators should be made to stick to it in Geneva.
Apart from the constant American shadow falling over Colombo all the time, India
too had also poked her nose into the already muddied waters. Indian Foreign
Secretary Shyam Saran made an unscheduled four-hour stop-over in Colombo on his
return from the Maldives to "discuss some important issues with the President",
it is reported. The Indian intelligence men from RAW are already known to be
present both in Jaffna and in the East and
masquerading as
locals.
The question of who is to get how many seats in the forthcoming local government
elections is still a bone of contention between Mahinda Rajapakse, the JVP, and
the come-back girl Chandrika. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress is persistently
demanding that their delegation too should be there at Geneva. Meanwhile, the
country is being threatened with a series of strikes. The government doctors
have been holding token strikes at various hospitals in the country paralyzing
medical care, and the Health Care Minister is no less a person than the sleeping
minister himself. The railways were paralyzed on the 15th with station
roasters and signal operators demanding a new pay structure. All sections of
society are feeling the pinch of the sudden steep rise in the cost of living
with both gas and electricity charges shooting up. In-party rumblings are there
not only within the UNP and the SLFP but also within our racist comrades of the
JVP.
But the funniest part is the way the government is taking the Geneva talks far
too seriously. Even the advice of the Harvard specialists is being suspect. The
anti LTTE lawyer H.L.de Silva now in Australia is being invited to help in the
negotiation process. It is being forgotten that whatever talks that are held in
Geneva will be restricted to the "smooth implementation" of the February 2002
Cease-fire Agreement - as has been stated by the LTTE. Any
bull-in-the-china-shop attempt to bring in so-called "core issues" into the
discussion when Tamils continue to face military oppression everywhere and
thousands of families in Jaffna are unable to go back to their villages and
their own homes, could face the danger of the LTTE walking out of the talks. |
