On the APRC, President Rajapakse & the International Community

On the APRC, President Rajapakse & the International Community

22 January 2008

Comment by tamilnation.org Mr.Rajakulendran is right to trace the history of the ARPC and President Rajapakse's twists and turns to survive in power. Said that, we ourselves continue to hold the view that the international community is not so foolish as to be 'fooled' or 'hoodwinked' by President Rajapakse. The international community is not stupid.

We believe that we as a people need to grow out of the 'hoodwinking syndrome' and the rationalisation provided by the 'black pebbles, white pebbles approach' - the 'anuku murai' or the diplomatic way to 'approach' issues, which avoids confronting the international community for fear of provoking its ire. "We know that the IC is not being hoodwinked but we are simply saying that it is being hoodwinked." But, even apart from anything else, has this 'anuku murai' succeeded? Again do we not confuse our own people by leading them to believe that the international community is without sufficient 'cleverness' to respond to our subterfuge with its own subterfuge and advance its own agenda.

The actions of the international community need to be understood in the context of the 'International Dimensions of the Conflict in Sri Lanka' and in particular the international community's present concern at the JVP - Chinaward tilt/dependence of President Rajapakse. The balance of power in the Indian Ocean region is not a simple black and white matter. And it is not static. The frame is multilateral and asymmetric. The interactions are nuanced and calibrated.

"We cannot ostrich like bury our collective heads in the sand - and, to mix the metaphor, ignore the elephant in the room. Whilst the goal of securing peace through justice is loudly proclaimed by the international actors, real politick leads them to deny the justice of the Tamil Eelam struggle for freedom from alien Sinhala rule. The harsh reality is that on the one hand international actors are concerned to use the opportunity of the conflict in the island to advance each of their own strategic interests - and on the other hand, Sri Lanka seeks to use the political space created by the geo strategic triangle of US-India-China in the Indian Ocean region, to buy the support of all three for the continued rule of the people of Tamil Eelam by a permanent Sinhala majority within the confines of one state."

Today, the international community's actions are directed to pressurise President Rajapakse to fall in line with IC interests in the Indian Ocean region - and to wean him away from a JVP/China dependence. And if and when President Rajapakse's own left of centre Sinhala nationalist political constituency (which is his power base) permits him to fall in line with IC interests, the international community will be content to allow President Rajapakse to perpetuate Sinhala rule of the people of Tamil Eelam through mechanisms such as the 13th Amendment.

Velupillai Pirabakaran's words in 1993, bear repetition yet again: 'The world is not rotating on the axis of justice. It is economic and trade interests that determine the order of the present world, not the moral law of justice nor the rights of people. International relations and diplomacy between countries are determined by such interests.'

And as to what diplomacy means, the views expressed by K.V. Balakumaran, Senior Member, LTTE in the recent interview by National Television of Tamil Eelam are not without relevance -

"We have to have a clear view of what diplomacy means. Whether Sri Lanka allows diplomats to visit, or when Sri Lanka stops diplomats visiting Vanni, they are trying to achieve the same objective. That is to find ways to advance the self-interests of Sri Lanka and the host countries of the visiting diplomats. It is wrong to think that allowing diplomats to visit Vanni is in the interest of LTTE; we should not entertain such delusions..."

[see also All Party Representative Committee Farce - 2006/2008 and Devolution or Comic Opera - Nadesan Satyendra, 1988]

Background

All party conferences (APCs) have been common phenomena in the history of Sri Lankan politics in dealing with the burning issue of ethnic conflict. Successive Sri Lankan Singhalese dominated governments from both sides of politics have convened APCs to pretend to the International Community (IC) that the government in power at that time was genuinely trying to find a peaceful resolution to this longstanding ethnic conflict. All these governments followed this same path to guarantee the flaw of development aid from the IC and were also successful in cheating the IC, as all the APCs so far failed to produce any results towards solving the conflict.

Just before Mahinda Rajapksa (MR) became the President, the Peace Process (PP) of that time, facilitated by Norwegians under the auspices of the Co-Chairs; namely US, EU, Japan and Norway, had come to a standstill on the issue of an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) proposal submitted by one of the antagonists in this conflict, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as an interim administration of the Tamil homeland - a merged North and East provinces - until a final political solution is reached.

At this stage, the Sri Lankan government was under pressure, irrespective of who leads it, by the IC to come up with a consensus amongst the Southern Singhalese political parties with regard to their willingness to share political power with the Tamil leadership, the LTTE.

Therefore to satisfy this demand from the IC, and keep the flaw of development aid from the same IC, MR followed the same footpath of his predecessors and appointed the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) and an expert committee to advice APRC.

This APRC was to be represented by equal number of representatives from each party represented in parliament except the Tamil national Alliance (TNA). This omission has been criticised by the British Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells in British parliament last week, as a “big Mistake” committed by the Rajapksa government.

APRC and its past

APRC has met more than 57 times so far. MR appointed the Science and Technology Minister in his cabinet, Prof. Tissa Vitharana, to chair the APRC. After meeting for a considerable length of period Prof. Tissa Vitharana submitted a report to President and in summary this report suggested that Sri Lankan post-colonial state be restructured based on the principles of shared and self rule and it proposes devolution of power and the formation of a second chamber.

Although Tamils did not have any hope in this report, many in Sri Lanka thought that this could be a good starting point to begin negotiations again. But to everyone’s disappointment and dismay, MR’s party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), submitted a set of proposals to counter Prof. Tissa Vitharana’s report. The SLFP proposals submitted in response to Prof. Tissa Vitharana’s report were designed to reverse the entire power-sharing ideas that have evolved prior to this time. The extreme Sinhala nationalists went a step further and asked Minister Prof. Tissa Vitharana to resign from the APRC chairmanship while the JVP asked to dissolve the APRC itself.

With all these moves happening in and around APRC, Prof. Tissa Vitharana became a lame duck and he was supposed to be chairing an All Party Representative Committee, but it was not to be.

Because, by that time JVP has already left the APRC and the major opposition party the United National Party (UNP) also was leaving the APRC as MR has lured some key UNP stalwarts to his side to maintain a parliamentary majority. After this, the APRC was meeting without the major opposition parties UNP, JVP and TNA.

Still President MR continued to promise to the IC, deadlines after deadlines for the release of the APRC proposals. Every time the IC, especially the Co-Chairs leading the peace process, insist on a proposal, President will promise a date before which the proposal will be released. That date will come and go quietly, MR would have pacified the IC that was threatening to withdraw development aid time to time and continued with his military agenda

MR’s dependence on JVP

Faced with the dilemma of maintaining a parliamentary majority to sustain his government, first MR tried to attract, some of the UNP parliamentarians to cross over to his side. As this became harder and harder he had to depend on JVP’s support to pass any legislation in parliament including the budget.

Realising MR’s dependency on their party, JVP started to impose conditions for their support to the government. They even threatened to topple MR’s government if MR fails to abrogate the cease-fire agreement (CFA) and eliminate Norway from its facilitatory role. Another demand by the JVP that the government should crush militarily the LTTE before any attempt at negotiations, MR was already doing it. First the security forces tried to clear the East from the Tigers and after accomplishing that now they have started military operations in the North.

However, MR was trying to tell the IC that he was upholding the CFA and his forces are only retaliating, any attacks carried out by the LTTE. This made the JVP to demand openly from MR to abrogate the CFA and he promptly did it on the 16^th of January.

Reaction from the IC

IC openly expressed their shock and dismay at this unilateral withdrawal from the CFA. IC demanded that MR’s government should come up with a substantial devolution proposal as early as possible through the APRC process. While US, EU, Japan, Norway, Canada and Australia restricted their reaction to only statements Briton only has gone a step further and had a 1.5 hour debate in their house of commons.

Members from all the political parties in British parliament were unanimous in giving a stern warning to the Sri Lankan government. Without any exception all the governments and the UN Secretary General have insisted that there is no military solution to this conflict and the only way to solve this conflict is for the Sri Lankan government to come up with a devolution proposal immediately and start negotiations based on that devolution package.

MR’s response – Will the IC let him off the hook once again?

Although MR is pretending to his people and the JVP that he is not worried about the opinion of the West, in reality he seems to be worried. Otherwise he does not have to rush in and give 23^rd of January as an ultimatum to APRC to come up with a proposal. It is not difficult for Prof. Tisaa Vitharana to come up with a proposal after deliberating for more than 57 times. The dilemma for him is how to satisfy both JVP as well as the IC.

This is why MR hurriedly convened a meeting of the representatives of the all party committee. In that meeting he has instructed them to come up with a proposal to fully implement the 13^th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution, which came into existence with the Indo-Lanka accord but to date not implemented even partially. This amendment only amalgamated both the northern and eastern provinces into one North-East province, the Tamil homeland. But this merger was recently made null and void by the Supreme Court in response to a case filed by the JVP on the grounds that the merger was carried out through wrong procedures.

Therefore, even if MR’s government tries to implement the 13^th amendment fully now, it will provide much lesser devolution than it was intended to be. Therefore there is no doubt that it will be rejected by the Tamils.

This is why MR is trying to bluff now that the APRC should come up with an interim arrangement to implement the 13^th amendment fully on the 23^rd while continue to conduct deliberations to come up with a proper devolution proposal on a later date.

In other words MR is trying to play the same game of buying more time, by fooling the IC by pretending as he is delivering an interim devolution arrangement to the Tamils now and to carry out its military agenda. Whether he will be able to buy that time, this time, depends on how far the IC is prepared to go in taking punitive actions against the SL government.