Untitled Document

By Susantha Goonatilake

The Peace Process: Picking up the alternatives
The meeting on the "peace process" was by the Centre of Policy Alternatives - CPA, the co-host being the Chamber of Commerce. But just as the "alternative group" here was the opposite of its parallel in the West so was the Chamber of Commerce being host to opposite views to the nationalism of similar groups in the US. The gathering was sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the German right wing political foundation tied to the CDU, again hardly "alternative."

Among the audience were perhaps the real masters, representatives of Western embassies. I spoke to a few and found them down-to-earth, hail, well met fellows, definitely post-colonial and post-60s. Their Sri Lanka influenced accents were a contrast to the Lord "Haw Haw" accent - most famously used in Nazi propaganda.
There were few other assorted whites and much of the rest could well have been plucked out of Colombo 7 or 5 drawing rooms. Definitely not "people" - alternative or conservative.

The I960s and 1970s of the West would have winced. It was a contrast to the hundreds of Sinhala speaking who would gather for meetings at the Public Library or the tens of English speaking academics or professionals who would gather at halls scattered over Colombo 5 or 7. These were open meetings, the open society which the right wing philosopher Popper would have approved of. I had hardly seen any of the present denizens in such audiences. The present bunch was a close society, implicit enemies of openness. They were hardly civil society in spite of the well funded propaganda to the contrary. Outside, among the Sangha, the trade unions and political parties were the real civil society.

The speakers apart from Paul Harris were all CPA types. Paul Harris gave the only dissenting voice. I was told that he had been invited and disinvited several times to the seminar, finally let in.

Rohan Edirisinghe spoke of "From Interim to Final: Constitutional and Legal Questions". He distributed two undergraduate-like papers. I found a possible explanation during the tea break.

Edirisinghe admitted to being a graduate student, that is, only an 'apprentice expert". But it was Bradman Weerakoon, Secretary to the PM, nearest to a government spokesman who kept me enthralled.

Weerakoon asked what was different this time. He answered by mentioning the post-September 11th global effort on terrorism. In the same breath he mentioned the Katunayake disaster and that the war was "unwinnable". He mentioned a presumed mandate at the elections for "negotiating even with the devil" and bemoaned "spoilers" who would frown at what is happening.

He looked positively at the separate agreements the LTTE has had with estate Tamils and the Muslim Congress. He admits as given, that part of the country will be administered by the LTTE. He has great belief in the neutrality of a third party mediator. Deproscription he considers very important - otherwise no talks, and admits that the LTTE has been defacto deproscribed by his government.

He spoke of the plans for an interim administration - and accepts as fact the NE province as already merged. He uses expressions like the "armed struggle" and not terrorists to describe LTTE barbarities.

Weerakoon clutches at the straw of so-called internal self-determination and says one should go "far beyond the 13th Amendment". He rejects the unitary state and says that the PM neither accepts nor rejects the homelands fiction. He says that the unit of devolution will take care of it, implying that homelands will be accepted as fact and then sold as its opposite to the Sinhala masses.

He talks of dealing with the media; I take it as Iying through the media as his government's plans unfold. Weerakoon was full of contradictions, mentioning in the same breath the September 11th effects and unwinning the war.

It is the government that seems to have been frightened by September 11th. No wonder Weerakoon's fear of the Sinhala masses finding out the truth and his patent desire to keep their minds controlled. (I learnt, co-sponsor, CPA has a project that monitors the post-MoU press).

I was to ask the obvious question which I would have asked in any seminar in the West - and I must modestly add that I am very probably more familiar with such Western settings than the speakers.

I was to ask the Konrad Adenauer representative on her CDU party's views on conflict resolution in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan (answer, bomb them) and the Chamber on their American equivalents' views (answer, bomb them) and the CPA on alternative groups in the very West that funds them (they would be appalled at the present establishment setting). But the chairman forbade the question saying we were not discussing other countries.

Great fear of not only Sinhala Buddhists but also of any alternative accent clearly loomed large. (I must add that when I am in London I easily slip into an English accent, when in New York to an American one and in Berlin to high German. Locally, I am a sarong wearing godaya).

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