Counter Justification For A National Security State Through National Unity Charter
By Jehan Perera -April 13, 2014
Jehan Perera
Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunge gave an early warning of things to come during his visit to Washington DC in February to lobby against the proposed UNHRC resolution on war crimes that was being led by the United States and reached its denouement in the vote in Geneva on March 27. The presidential secretary drew upon his knowledge of the workings of Sri Lankan society and government to warn of chaos if the resolution was passed. At that time he was criticized for making this statement. It was seen as reviving the ghosts of Sri Lanka’s most tragic episodes, the anti Tamil riots of 1983, behind of which were sections of the then government. The larger implication of his statement was that an international investigation into the last phase of the war, which would implicate those who ended LTTE terror in the country would be resisted to the fullest extent possible.
Those who have been seeking to promote accountability in Sri Lanka, as the means to reconciliation, are perhaps thinking in rational terms in which concepts of Rule of Law, Due Process and Separation of Powers prevail. But it appears that what exists in most parts of the world is something entirely different. The March 31 issue of Time magazine has a commentary on how geopolitics impacts on the way nations act. It refers to Russia’s takeover of Crimea, and the response of the United States and its Western allies who have been impotent to stop the course of events. The article by Robert Kaplan states, “The worldwide civil society that the elites thought they could engineer is a chimera. The geopolitical forces at work will not be easily tamed. While our foreign policy must be morally based, the analysis behind it must be cold blooded, with geography as its starting point. In geopolitics the past never dies and there is no modern world.”
