The price of peace for Sri Lanka
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, The Straits Times , Asia News Network, Singapore
Sri Lanka's 20-year civil war between Tamils who comprise 17 percent of the population and the majority Sinhalese community has always been a warning to the rest of Asia on how not to antagonize ethnic minorities.
The latest crisis is a reminder to politicians not to place party and personality above national requirements.
Any breach of the Norwegian-brokered peace that has held since February last year could be the prelude to greater disaster.
Squabbling between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe encourages rebel defiance and compounds instability. The long-term answer lies in reviving the regional autonomy package that Kumaratunga herself (aided by her Constitutional Affairs Minister, G.L. Peiris) mooted in 1995.
The stark truth is there can be no peace without compromise. The two Sinhalese parties, the President's People's Alliance dominated by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the Prime Minister's United National Party (UNP), must not cling to the unitary status quo. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) must give up dreaming of independence.
It is simplistic to conclude that Kumaratunga's constitutional coup suspending parliament, sacking key ministers and announcing a state of emergency was only an attempt to upstage the Prime Minister by scuttling the peace process.
Western analyses suggesting that she was piqued by American applause for Wickremesinghe, who was in Washington for his second meeting in two years with President George W. Bush, diminish Asian realities and set a fanciful value on American patronage.
Sri Lanka's Constitution gives the president more power than the prime minister. The courts recently upheld her authority over the security forces.
Rightly or wrongly, she suspects Wickremesinghe of giving more than the LTTE. In particular, she fears the latter's proposal for an interim self-governing authority in the Tamil-inhabited north- east (which it controls in any case) as the thin end of the wedge of secession.
Kumaratunga carries the burden of tragic history. Her father, the late prime minister Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, pandered to ultra-nationalistic Sinhalese and fueled conflict by bestowing official status on Buddhism and the Sinhalese language. But he did not go far enough for the Buddhist monks who murdered him. The President's husband was also murdered, but by the Tigers who feared the appeal his liberalism might have for middle-of-the- road Tamils fed up with warring.
Over the years, the Tigers have avenged themselves for historical neglect and discrimination by ruthlessly eliminating anyone who challenged their demand of a sovereign homeland. Between LTTE militants and UNP hardliners, they killed Kumaratunga's 1995 plan though the 27 moderate Tamil Members of Parliament welcomed it.
In the 1950s, Sri Lanka -- then Ceylon -- boasted Asia's highest living standard. When he was reshaping Singapore in the 1960s, Lee Kuan Yew wished he had the benefit of Colombo's substantial sterling reserves. In the 1990s, the daily cost of the civil war was estimated at an awesome US$77.5 million (S$134 million). The death toll stands at 64,000.
THE war has ruined a once thriving economy, devastated large parts of the island, sucked small boys into the fighting and generated intense communal enmity.
It has also forged unholy links between the Tigers and forces like the Palestine Liberation Organization which trains and arms them. Trafficking in narcotics, guns and illegal immigrants is said to finance the rebellion. A political settlement may remove these abuses. But there cannot be one if the president and prime minister are at loggerheads. Fresh elections under the present system will only perpetuate the impasse, for the French-style cohabitation arrangement between two adversarial parties is just not workable in Sri Lankan conditions.
The answer lies in elections under a reformed Constitution that redeems Kumaratunga's 1994 election pledge to restore the Westminster-style parliamentary system that was abolished in 1978.
She cannot any longer plead the need to find a job for her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world's first woman prime minister, whom she reappointed. Bandaranaike is dead and the LTTE is agreeable to negotiations. It can negotiate only with a responsible government that is unambiguously in control.
True, elections might replace Kumaratunga with a UNP candidate, but Sri Lankans would regard that as the price of the peace they deserve and yearn for.
Meanwhile, the government and the Tigers must both control their guns.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies. The views expressed here are his own.