Sri Lanka: Prescription For A Political Solution – Analysis
By: Observer Research Foundation By N Sathiya Moorthy
July 20, 2012
Unknown to the world and unacknowledged by the international community, Sri Lanka may be running to a point of no-return, all over again. ‘International intervention’ in the form of UNHRC resolutions has made the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa more vulnerable in electoral terms – or, that is the internal perception – and this has consequences for the course of the ‘ethnic discourse’ in the country. So has international invention given ideas to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and more so the Tamil Diaspora, the latter having imbibed the duplicity of the LTTE with disastrous consequences as in the past.
Sri Lanka
The Tamils cannot but share the blame. The Government had invited the Tamil moderates for talks when ‘Eelam War-IV’ was still on. The TNA said the Government’s idea might have been to isolate the LTTE in the midst of the Tamils. The Government’s possible aim was to commence a process that could lead to a political solution when the war. The TNA was obstinate and stayed away. So, post-war suspicions lingered in the Government’s mind – and that of the majority Sinhala polity. Those who wanted an honourable political package to be offered to the Tamils after the war were not sure on what would satisfy the TNA.
In the initial months after the war, the TNA too was not sure on what it wanted. When they finally spoke, and spoke to the Government, they gave enough indications about their mind-set. Their demands were near-similar to those of the Tamil moderates’ pre-war. Or, so felt the Government, and the Sinhala polity, particularly the ‘Sinhala Buddhist nationalist constituency’. Their numbers are not many, but their voices do not end up in wilderness. To them all, the Tamil moderates’ demands had led to the war in the first place, and they would not have any of it, any more. They are wary of the Government talking to exclusively to the TNA, the LTTE’s ‘sole representative’ status having poisoned their minds enough.
