The deed was done, and they are all equal now
Helgesen, Harrold, Haukland -- when these guys who pack so much horsepower, either jointly or severally prevail upon our leaders to embark on certain courses of action, what choice do they have except a Hobson’s??

It would have been Ranil’s UNP or Somawansa’s JVP, but either of these parties would have been faced with just the same crisis with regard to the joint tsunami mechanism if they were in power: Damned if they did it, damned if they didn’t.

Damned if they did it, because it means one thing: the donors have twisted our arm into appeasing a group of human rights violating, child-soldier recruiting incorrigibles. Damned if they didn’t because if so, the country would have been forced to pay the price of being ditched by the donors, and sent in to the international doghouse.

Chandrika Kumaratunga’s one achievement on this score is that she vacillated on this whole issue until it began to look quite pathetic -- but then suddenly last week, she quit being gun-shy and began being decisive, as if she was a sleepwalker who promptly went back to work after being hit on the head with a sledgehammer.

What’s the point anyway, in her being President somebody could ask, if Helgesen can descend here, meet the country’s President, the leader of the opposition Wickremesinghe, and the de facto leader of opposition Prabhakaran, and get the whole P-TOMS -- which resembled a massive car wreck left on the middle of the road -- into good shape in a matter of a week? Who needs a government one might ask, in this day of the nouveau Norwegian Viceroy?

Her real achievement was that she quit being Mrs. Doubting Thomas and for good or for ill, signed the P-TOMS. It’s exactly the equal, in these terms, of what she would have achieved, even if she stated categorically that she will never sign the agreement.

It means that after being woolly headed and confused, she finally took the plunge. But her government did exactly what she and her Ministers in opposition accused Ranil Wickremesinghe of doing when he was in government.

They signed a document, which had not been unveiled. When asked on the day of the signing last week, Sarath Amunugama said the problem was “there were fourteen drafts, which is why we could not show it.’’ Fourteen drafts, and the government takes a decision to sign the document the same day that it is presented to Parliament? If that’s being transparent, they give new meaning to the word opaque. Also, it means they were asking the country and the JVP to accept a concept that was still only in draft?

So now, finally, the UNP and the SLFP are absolutely exactly even. Chandrika’s Ministers actually started defending the Tigers last week. When this writer asked an almost ten deep Ministerial press-conference soon after the document was tabled in Parliament on Thursday why the government did not seek any kind of safeguards that the Tigers will NOT continue to bump off political opponents, Amunugama did a G. L. Peiris. Jeyaraj Fernandopulle did a G. L Peiris. D. M. Jayaratna did a G.L Peiris. Nimal Siripala de Silva did a G. L. Peiris. Imagine listening to ten G. L. Peirises at the same time??

One of them said that the ceasefire agreement would ensure that the Tigers would be kept on check, even as D.E.W. Gunasekera said that the Tigers have been killing opponents under the ceasefire agreement. The words he didn’t say out loud were “so what (if they kill?)’’
D.E.W. has to be given his due. He has anointed himself a more blithe apologist for the Tigers than G. L. Peiris himself. It’s no mean achievement for a man fast approaching what would have normally been a honourable retirement.

Last week this columnist wrote: an epic political showdown will determine which forces are winning: the liberal international backed forces of appeasement, or the nationalist fringe of political wannabes ie: hyper nationalists on the make. That was with reference to the final outcome of the P-TOMS: Damned if you do it, damned if you don’t.

What’s clear is that the liberal international backed forces of appeasement have won over the ‘hyper-nationalists.’’
The problem is, the hyper nationalists are correct. Those who congratulate Chandrika for being ‘’forthright’ are cheats – who knows that this has nothing to do with doing the right thing. This is all about being forced to do the unpalatable. The hyper nationalists are correct when they say that a disgraceful bunch of Amunugama type government Ministers are doing exactly what they accused the UNP of doing when in opposition: becoming shameless apologists for the Tigers.
But, they are still hyper nationalists and “fringe wannabes’’ in the sense that they are not being hard-boiled cynics in this matter.

It’s tough, ain’t it? We do not have a choice in the issue. Can we say it just once to good effect: the intentional community led by the Americans have us well and truly screw**. Hats off to some people like the JVP for seeing it as it is. But hats off also to Chandrika in a way, for not being held indefinitely to ransom because of an unreasonable international demand to work jointly with a bunch of child soldier conscripting, opponent-murdering brigands.

She basically told the international community: “so if that’s the kind of hypocrisy you want you bunch of hypocrites, here you can have it. I signed it, now let’s get on with the job of saving at least what’s left of the economy of this country. ’’

The trouble is that she did not say it like that, which is what a politician with some self-effacing integrity should have done. None in the government said it as it is, and (a) saved themselves from being UNP-like hypocrites (b) saved themselves from being apologists for the Tigers (c) saved themselves from being apologists for the act of springing an unseen secret document on the people, an act of gross subterfuge notwithstanding that it was ‘presented’ for cosmetic reasons in parliament two hours before it was signed.

So there. Now it can be said that these guys are even. Amunugama = G. L. Peiris = Tilak Marapana = D.E. W. Gunasekera = Jeyaraj Fernandopulle. They all bent over backwards to lick Prabhakaran’s toes, and they should be specially compensated by the Wanni leadership for being warbling Tiger propagandists.

It’s not the way it all began. Remember the days when Amunugama castigated Marapana for being a traitor – a man who whitewashed Tiger killings of intelligence cadres??

Come come. If this government did not have a choice but to sign the mechanism, at least come clean on it. Or at the least sign it, and then keep your traps shut, the way Mahinda Rajapakse is doing now – even though he does not understand the first thing about anything except his own political survival, and even if he is keeping silent for all the wrong reasons.

The Amunugamas and the GLs have one thing in common. Amunugama quoted Alexander Pope for the benefit of the JVP to say “a little learning is a dangerous thing.’’ The learned doctor and his Cabinet colleagues have little integrity and it’s not just positively dangerous, it makes them easy wrappable around Mr Prabhakaran’s little finger, and they don’t even know it.

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