Editorial

23rd May 1999

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The Peace lobby

The National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT) may have started with a whimper, but the march conducted by this organisation last week agitating for a policy of strict non - negotiation with the LTTE forces the polity to take a second look at how the movement has progressed.

The NMAT has projected itself as an organisation with a sense overarching civic purpose, and this image is in absolute contrast to the weak and emasculated image that has been projected by the peace lobby and its adjuncts. As is observed astutely by the University Teachers for Human Rights in a recent communication, the peace lobby , or the peace effort, has not been able to offer an alternative to the Tamils in the war torn North , because the peace effort despite all the hyperbole, has been stalled and is stuck in the mud.

For this, the peace lobby and the government cannot exactly blame the NMAT or any other organisation which they perceive as being of a more hawkish bent. The NMAT has not had half the goodwill that the peaceniks enjoyed at the beginning of the government's peace effort, but the organisation has been able to gather its forces together and project strength and a sense of purpose despite a notoriously ominous start.

It has, it appears, wrested the civic advantage which earlier was the peace lobby's for the mere asking. We do not necessarily see that one side's views are more astute or useful than that of the others. But, at least we need to point out that the peace lobby has taken too much for granted, and that its complacency has only been exceeded by its ineffectiveness. The peace lobby may see this observation as our caving into the forces of non-reason. But we only see it as an effort to apprise the peace lobby that it has to work hard for any gains, and that no imagined position of moral high ground will gain for it, automatically, any reasonable advantage over detractors.

Politics across the seas

The political goings on in India may be only of academic interest to us Sri Lankans, but the sheer drama engendered by Sonia Gandhi's resignation can hardly be ignored. Last week, some twenty five Congress party members were given kerosene oil by party leaders to immolate themselves and jump off high rise buildings.

Though the political pantomime in India may border on the hilarious, we in Sri Lanka are not exactly in a position to point our fingers and have a good laugh at the fun and the games for the simple reason that our post independence political history has not been far less comic. The tragi-comedy that we enacted in Wayamba for instance recently would rival any Indian political farce any day, even though the Indian political pantomime sounds more hysterical and almost like a bad Hindi movie in the way it is being played out.

Perhaps we in South Asia can eschew the part about comparisons particularly since there are no relative merits in lunacy, and look at our particular political styles as typically endemic to the South Asian region.

If we are self effacing at least to that extent, maybe we South Asians could see political farce for political farce. Self immolation in the world's largest democracy maybe so common and seen as being all in a day's work. But the danger lies in that sort of acceptance of our collective political fates in this part of the sub-continent. Maybe we in this part of the world are used to laughing at ourselves, but at the end of the day, when we think about how we elect representatives for our civic institutions, the joke sadly maybe on us.

Political Column

Editorial/Opinion Contents