Editorial

25th November 2001

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That secret pact

For the second successive election, the paramount issue of a Sri Lankan poll will be whether the UNP has a secret pact with the LTTE or not. At least that's what the PA hopes the paramount issue will be. Though the government's frontline political operators have run to the Mahanayake prelates with "new evidence'' of such a pact, these wizened old monks have refused to be impressed, and have instead said they are only agreeable to 'studying the evidence'.

The incontrovertible fact is that this is all concocted propaganda aimed at whipping up the sentiments of a nation justifiably wedded to the notion of a unitary Sri Lanka. The chief advocates of the brand new "evidence'' of a secret pact were those who, not so long ago, branded as "traitors'' all those who wanted the LTTE militarily crushed. These peace activists launched sudu nelum movements and got moving various other bandwagons to push an effort which stopped short of embracing the LTTE as the bosom buddy.

In that innocent era, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga said she will cede the North to the LTTE for ten years, and Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar paraphrased these sentiments earlier this month by saying that this Government will give more devolution to the North and East than federal India has given to their huge states.

But, the issue of the elections is not what the PA or the UNP will do if elected. Any elected Government will have on its hands a stubborn LTTE, an ineffectual army and an unyielding intractable South.

What's disturbing is the unfortunate use of the LTTE problem as a vote catching instrument. The Government has an almost nauseous ability to use the LTTE problem the way a beggar flashes his wounds for alms and sympathy.

Though the PA has every right to alert the people of possible dangers of the UNP being in truck with a pro-LTTE Tamil alliance, adducing spurious evidence about a secret pact to hoodwink the masses, is to dishonestly throw dirt on the eyes of an innocent public.

The UNP refuses to be dragged into the argument, to make this the main campaign issue. The UNP leadership seems determined and quite rightly so, to retain good governance, the economy and management as the key issues of the campaign.

On the other hand, the UNP displays some measure of arrogance in insisting that this question of a deal with the LTTE is a non-issue that can be wished away.

The vast mass of the country's electorate consists of those, especially from the rural hinterland, who want to save their motherland even if they have nothing to appease their hunger with. They are quite different to the westernised urbane elite. It is their love for the Motherland, and their sacrifices to a great extent which has sustained this war despite all the military reversals sustained at a tremendous cost to life, and to the exchequer.

It is therefore extremely insensitive to fan or to ignore the insecurities of a people who genuinely care for their motherland. Today's politicians of course have consistently shown that they are deaf to the sensitivities of the people, and that they cannot rise above the rabble rousing instincts of the cheap politician. They have been unable to forge a joint approach to meet the terrorist menace and the mania for separation. They have sung different tunes at various times to ensure their own political survival, and the nation has become moribund in the process.


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