CFA: weighing courage and cowardice in the balance
Peace talks are very much in the back burner, said Lakshman Kadirgamar to the Foreign Correspondents Association. The ceasefire agreement (CFA) between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, has meanwhile notched up three years. Writes Jayadeva Uyangoda, political scientist, in an article to the Tamil Sangam website, that it’s a pity that even the UNP newspapers do not acknowledge that Ranil Wickremesinghe had the courage to sign the ceasefire agreement, because Chandrika Kumaratunga and Lakshman Kadirgamar whom the Southern press treat as heroes, would have dilly-dallied with the document so much that in the end it would have become obsolete.

It’s three months since the tsunami, but it's three years since the CFA, and what's counted in years needs to be recorded as the more important watershed. But, the tsunami has more immediacy in people's minds, which explains why the three year anniversary of the ceasefire is being taken for granted. So, three years since the ceasefire, and the government appears to have prematurely retired the peace talks? If that's the case, does Uyangoda have a point when he says Wickremesinghe had the courage to sign the CFA, while all Kumaratunga and Kadirgamar are capable of is to ponder over the fine print until the 'document becomes obsolete'?

But, isn't it possible to take Wickremesinghe's "courage'' and Kadirgamar/ Kumaratunga's "pusillanimity'' as two separate quantities? Why is Uyangoda insistent on dumping them together, as if he was interested in putting chalk on top of cheese?

At least if this column can make an attempt to sort things out, let's first take Uyangoda's possibly feigned shock on why the press is not praising Wickremesinghe's 'courage' in signing the CFA. Wickremesinghe signed the draft CFA which was given to Prabhakaran for his perusal by the Norwegians. That's an acknowledged fact. Prabhakaran's eyes lit up when he saw the draft, and he placed his signature on it, and Wickremesinghe placed his signature on the draft, because his eyes lit up in turn when he heard that Prabhakaran had signed anything…..

So maybe Wickremesinghe possesses courage in the draft form. But that aside, Wickremesinghe presided over a ceasefire that gave unarmed LTTE cadres full access to government controlled areas for 'political work.'

The result was that almost the entirety of armed force intelligence cadre in the North and the East, (certainly the better part of it) including the informants used in the Long Range Reconnaissance operations were wiped out mercilessly by the LTTE. The LTTE then proceeded to carry out 4300 or so ceasefire violations as opposed to a hundred or more by the armed forces, and this is by the estimate of the Norwegian ceasefire monitors themselves.

If Jayadeva Uyangoda wants to call that kind of leadership 'courage', it's his prerogative. He can just as well call the Ratwattes the Dissawes courageous for signing the Kandyan convention, or Premadasa courageous for supplying arms to the LTTE and getting killed by them in the bargain.

While Sri Lankan soldiers fought the LTTE before the declaration of the ceasefire, rogue elements in the armed forces secreted out army strategies to the LTTE high command. In the normal lexicon, such people are called spies. In Uyangoda's lexicon, they will doubtless be called courageous. For saying all this, of course, Uyangoda must definitely be given the smartest accolade -- Captain Courageous.

But it's not just Uyangoda's point, but the position of many others including this columnist, that the ceasefire has prevented an armed confrontation for three years. A three year interregnum for a country that has seen years of bloodletting is an achievement.

It's Ranil Wickremesinghe's CFA that brought about this interregnum. This position however has to be qualified by saying that the LTTE had already declared a unilateral ceasefire when the CFA was signed, even though it was continuing to carry out strategic attacks on positions such as the Colombo airport, such acts being outlawed under terms of the CFA, which by and large the Tigers honoured to that extent -- even though they continued to kill informants and violate the ceasefire horrendously in territory closer home in the Wanni.

Though some Sri Lankan lobbyists living abroad will not understand it because they always claim to be more Sri Lankan than Sri Lankans who are living here (we hear they want to erect statues of Dutugemunu and Denzil Kobbekaduwa in Melbourne and California….) , the CFA in the above context was an achievement. The CFA also resulted in an embarrassing split in Tiger ranks, which of course must be having Jayadeva Uyangodai in tears, which is why he is not attributing this also to Ranil Wickremesinghe's courage.

In sum therefore, the ceasefire has brought hope, of the variety albeit that wells eternally in the human breast. But yet, it's a legitimate variety of hope for a country which had seen nothing but war and anarchy in its recent historical record. Which is why there were rationalisations such as "an unjust peace is better than a just war'' made in newspaper columns, when however, even people who loved the merits of the ceasefire refused to see, as Uyangoda does, Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe as the last word in courage….

Perhaps an even better measure of the success so far of the CFA is that even Kumaratunga who Uyangoda does not see as 'courageous' as Wickremesinghe, calls the CFA an achievement in her speeches. She ' says the ceasefire has achieved the ‘first part’- - and that she will however in the final analysis be the harbinger of a permanent peace (..the 'second part'.)

Ranil Wickremesinghe is seen as courageous by Uyangoda because he purportedly faced down the opposition from the Sri Lankan South to sign the ceasefire agreement, while Kumaratunga and Kadirgamar are seen as pandering to these forces. But Wickremesinghe not only faced down the Southern opposition, he came close to making their worse nightmare scenarios a reality because the Tigers continued to kill under cover of the ceasefire, altering the balance of forces by decimating the state intelligence cadre while recruiting child soldiers etc, which even Uyangoda's sponsors in the international community are chagrined with the Tigers about.

For such 'courage' in the face of totally irreverent aggression on the part of the Tigers, Ranil Wickremesinghe got kicked out. Uyangoda of course will not understand that kind of courage on the part of an electorate which had the courage to kick out the author of the ceasefire which they were enjoying, because he had gone from being a peacemaker to a crap-taker, to put it sans the usual unctuous Uyangodian frills…

But, just because Ranil Wickremesinghe is one kettle of fish, does that make Kumaratunga and Kadirgamar a better kettle of fish? I do not know whether Uyangoda's political science prevents him from judging leaders each on their own individual merits, but we analysts of the non-indentured variety have no such fetters. Undoubtedly Kumaratunga and Kadirgamar had the courage (not to mention the politically convenient motivation) to call Wickremesinghe's cowardice when the LTTE was abusing the terms of the CFA with juvenile abandon.

But now, they are not seeing the merits of talking peace and arriving at a permanent settlement. They are then guilty of not having the courage to face-down the Sri Lankan south.

Here, it might merit mention that Ranil Wickremesinghe never really faced down the Sri Lankan south. He happened, or stumbled upon the ceasefire agreement by accident, because that was the condition imposed by Tiger supported parties in order to bring his government to power. No courage there, just expediency -- and therefore, if Ranil Wickremesinghe can be called courageous for signing the ceasefire agreement, the Ratwattes and the Dissawes can be called courageous for signing the Kandyan convention, resulting in the British endowing us with a railway system and the English language. (Never pause to count all the depredations and calamities that the British visited upon us. Uyangoda, for instance won't count these.)

But if the Ratwatte's caved into the British, Kadirgamar and Kumaratunga can be likened to those who wanted to declare war on the British allying with Japan, when D. S. Senanayake was able to arrange even a lopsided agreement with the British that gave us independence. He seized the moment, and maybe historians can say he had the courage to do it. It's the kind of statesmanship that Kumaratunga and Kadirgamar are loath to display, and as much as Ranil is a wimp, the two (President and her Foreign Minister) are therefore cowardly to the extent that they can do nothing but pander to the Southern lunatic fringe.

At this point, it might just bear mention that it's this column that first repeatedly ventilated the idea that the only way to defeat the untrustworthy foreign intruder (American/Norwegian etc.,) is to make peace at home. (Please refer archives on website.) This idea is now being trotted out by a certain peacenik NGO wallah, albeit for his own ends, almost as his own unalloyed wisdom, couched of course in Uyangodian-type frilly language such as 'a joint mechanism is in the interests of sovereignty'' ---- so that what was said here repeatedly, is almost not recognisable as such anymore. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we are gratified. But more about that later…

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