Political Column December 17, 2006

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), though out of Government but still a strong ally, dropped a bombshell this week. It pulled out of the All Party Representative Committee (APRC), one of three bodies set up by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, to evolve proposals to politically resolve the ethnic conflict. The other two bodies are the All Party Conference and the All Party Experts Committee.

The move, no doubt, can turn out to be a parting of the ways on the country's main national issue. They JVP is strongly opposed to the far reaching proposals made by 11 members of a 17 member Committee of experts.to share power.

The surprise move came at a meeting of the APRC chaired by Minister Tissa Vitharana on December 11. In the aftermath of the controversy generated by the group of eleven, the meeting began to discuss how fresh proposals should be formulated. That was to begin with those present using the majority report as the basis.

JVP representative Dr. Wasantha Bandara was the first to object. Before taking part in the meeting, he had a discussion with his party leader, Somawansa Amerasinghe. The latter had advised him that the JVP should not take part in any discussion based on recommendations of the eleven member Committee, now identified as Group 'A'. So, Dr. Bandara said if the JVP agreed to use that report as the basis, it would amount to the party endorsing the recommendations.

The member of a Muslim delegation disagreed with Dr. Bandara. He said in discussing some of the issues, reference would have to be made to the Group 'A' report. Hence, it would be better to use it as a basis. Professor Nalin de Silva was in disagreement.
Jathika Hela Urumaya's Udaya Gammanpilla declared "we have no problem with the talks. " However, he said, our problem is who leaked the document ('A') to the media. How did Government officials who served in the panel of experts place their signature?
Vitharana insisted that the report could remain the basis. He expressed the view that the proposals that would be evolved through consensus would have to be discussed later with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Hence, proposals that could form subjects of such discussion should be considered.

Minister Vitharana asked Dr. Bandara whether the JVP's exit from the APRC would appear in the media. "Our party will have to decide on that," he replied. But later the JVP held a news conference to announce its pullout.

R. Yogaraja of the Ceylon Workers Congress asked Dr. Bandara what was wrong with the recommendations of Group 'A'. He said there were "several". Asked to identify one, Dr. Bandara said the report had recommended a separate administrative unit for the plantation sector - something neither the plantation sector nor any others had wanted. But Yogaraja declared "we welcome that recommendation".

Vitharana was to announce that the UNP delegation will take part in the deliberations of the APRC from their next sessions. He urged the JVP not to leave, and to extend its co-operation. However, the JVP was adamant. It was the Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat Palitha Kohona who conveyed the news of the JVP exit to President Rajapaksa. He was naturally upset. It transpired that President Rajapaksa had asked Minister D.E.W. Gunasekera, another key player in the all party conference process, not to release any documentation containing recommendations without his prior approval. Rajapaksa met Vitharana to ask experts to be called upon to make proposals if and when required. In other words, they were only to play the role of resource persons to help representatives of political parties to decide on the proposals.

JVP leader Amarasinghe shot off a letter to President Rajapaksa reasoning out why they are walking out of the APRC.

The crux of his letter stated that; the Experts Committee has gone beyond its brief by including political solutions in their report, which is a matter for the political parties to have taken at the APRC.

The fact that Government officials were on this Committee smacks of a conspiratorial nature, and that 700 petitions sent by the public were not even opened while just one memorandum from an "international spy agency", the German NGO, Berghoff Foundation has been taken into consideration.

This proves that the Experts Committee was acting as mere puppets of this Berghoff Foundation, and that the Government should therefore reject in toto these findings.

Amarasinghe's letter says that the Committee 'A' report goes to the extent of disregarding the recent Supreme Court judgment on the de-merger and not only suggests that the North and East must be merged, but given wider powers - much more than what former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga pledged through her infamous 'package'.

These findings even recommend a separate council for Plantation Tamils in the Up-country areas and instead of solving the National Question, these proposals were only aggravating the situation. The Central Government's powers were being limited only to Colombo.

The letter says that the Committee 'A' report was given to the APRC on the 6th evening, and the Indian press reported it by the next morning, giving an impression that 'external powers' were behind the leak.

In conclusion, the JVP leader reassures President Rajapaksa that his party is still willing to search for a political solution to the Northern insurgency whether they sit in the APRC, or not.

The Government lost no time in reacting publicly. It blamed the person, whoever he or she was, for leaking the 'A' report to the press - it first appeared in the Indian press! Secondly, it denied the 'A' report findings were the proposals of the Government, and thirdly, and in what was clearly a knee-jerk reaction, it wrote stern letters to the four public servants serving on this Committee asking for their explanations "forthwith" for signing the document.

While the first two points are understandable, the written explanations sent to the public servants seemed the height of absurdity. These officials were only asked to make their views known on some aspects, and different aspects of the issues the Committee was going into, and in some instances, these officials had even differed and given dissenting remarks. These have even been recorded.

Naturally, once their views, or dissenting remarks have been so recorded, these officials must sign the report, but merely because they have signed such a report it does not become "Government proposals". The JHU asking why public servants signed the report, and the JVP saying these are Government proposals are somewhat misdirected, and so is the Government's reaction to make the hapless public servants the scapegoats.

As a result of the crisis now Prof. G.H. Peiris, Chairman of the Experts Committee has tendered his resignation.

There were also Cabinet Ministers who complained to President Rajapaksa over Vitharana's conduct of business. They said a JVP walkout could have been averted if Vitharana did not insist on the Group 'A' report being the basis and sought a way-out. One such way-out, one Minister pointed out, was to adjourn the meeting and talk behind the scenes to find a way.

In a speech he made before announcing that the JVP was pulling out, Dr. Bandara said, "according to the directives of the President given on July 11, 2006 to find a home grown constitutional solution to the national question through the 'Mahinda Chinthana', he never mentioned that our task is to find a solution based on devolution. We were supposed to discuss various approaches which may or may not include some form of devolution or decentralization. But there was no place in our agenda to discuss how to improve the democratic and civil rights of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people or the minority rights in a specific context."

He added, "It was understood that the expert committee was supposed to analyse the pros and cons of various features or framework to be considered in the recommendation for a constitutional solution. Instead, the majority of experts have formulated a framework (or recommendations for a framework) for a final solution. We do not believe that the expert committee would submit any other report or reports to be called a final report. According to the majority report the experts are making an attempt to move away from conflict through constitutional reform. This means they are not guiding us specifically towards a solution to the national question."

But President Rajapaksa might now have to fall back on the backing of the main Opposition United National Party (UNP) if he wants to proceed with these recommendations that Vitharana is saying will form the "basis" of the Government's proposals.
In Washington, UNP and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe met US Assistant Secretary of State Nicholas Burns on Thursday, and the official statement from Wickremesinghe's Office thereafter said that the US supported the Government and the UNP getting together to kick-start the peace process once again.

"He (Burns) told the Opposition Leader, the US believed the two major parties should jointly present a set of proposals to the LTTE and any peace negotiations in the future should be based on it", the UNP Leader's statement added.

Wickremesinghe on his part has stated that whatever proposals "should be" based on the Tokyo Declaration that was mooted during the UNP Government's tenure, as well as what agreements have been reached during the six rounds of talks with the LTTE. He then added to that by saying that all this "should be " also based on the Indian model - which would mean Federalism.
Wickremesinghe left for Sri Lanka from New York on Friday night and has asked for a meeting with President Rajapaksa to brief him of the US view-point. Rajapaksa is now clearly in a quandary as to how to set about his Constitutional reforms.

Is he to dump the JVP (and the JHU) and the findings of the H.L. de Silva led Committee 'B' report and embrace the UNP and the far reaching recommendations of the Committee 'A' report. He might strive for a middle path, but then he might fall between two stools, and get the support of neither the JVP nor the UNP.

In the meantime, he is still toying with the idea of increasing his parliamentary majority to push through whatever reforms he wants to introduce on his own.

Sections of the UNP are offering themselves to him, still. Last Saturday, one of Wickremesinghe's erstwhile protégés, Milinda Moragoda went to see Rajapaksa in the company of business magnate Killy Mahendran of the Maharajah Organisation. There, they discussed, inter alia, a cross-over by at least eight UNPers to the Rajapaksa Government. Moragoda was touted as a fine Foreign Minister for Rajapaksa.

The problem Rajapaksa will have is, by getting eight UNPers to join, whether he will risk the UNP abrogating the MoU with him, and then having neither the JVP nor the UNP to back him.

These likely crossovers will not include people like S.B. Dissanayake and Mahinda Wijesekera - ex-SLPers and one-time colleagues of Rajapaksa, and this would already create a rift within the group calling themselves the Reformists in the UNP who were spearheading the clipping of Wickremesinghe's powers within the UNP.

To add to this political pot-pourri ex-President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, now disengaged from service by Unesco, has made a foray into local politics once again with a visit to Attanagalla, accompanied by her brother Tourism Minister Anura Bandaranaike.

Kumaratunga had summoned a closed-door meeting of the party's Attanagalla Bala Mandalaya at Horogolla Walauwwa last Sunday.

She was in a fiery mood. She said she believed in astrology. Once there was a warning of impending illness of a family member, it turned out to be correct. Then there was warning of a danger to her life. That came and she escaped death. However, she lost one eye. Now the astrologers had forecast she would become stronger by April next year. She said she had not given up politics. She criticised President Rajapaksa over the conduct of the war against Tiger guerrillas.

Brother Anura, known for his contradictory utterances, also was critical. He said he could not bring tourists to Sri Lanka since a war was under way.

Early this week Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to President Rajapaksa, had asked Mr. Bandaranaike to quit Visumpaya, the State Guest House (former Acland House) which he is now occupying. He had moved into this house during his sister's tenure as President on the grounds that his own private house at Rosmead Place was not vacant. He wanted time to think over. Later, he telephoned Mr. Weeratunga to say it would be difficult for him to move now in view of threats he had received. Bandaranaike had planned to leave Sri Lanka on December 15 for his annual holiday in Los Angeles. Having said what he did, he advanced his departure to December 12 and quickly left leaving the house vacating for later.

It was Anura Banda-ranaike who opened the Attanagalle meeting saying "This is a new start we are making. My sister ruled the country for several years. She is still suitable to rule the country. Therefore, we decided to make a fresh start. I want to make a platform for my sister".

Ms. Kumaratunga addressing the gathering said that what was in power was now a 'UNP government' and that the government was harassing those who worked for the SLFP from the days of her father.

She said Rajakaruna in Atttanagalla was harassing the SLFP supporters who worked hard for the party and the President Rajapaksa government was doing the same thing.

Kumaratunga said she was not worried about that as she could take over leadership after April as the astrologers have predicted so.

She said that she was removed from the party leadership in a disgraceful way, but cannot be removed from the Attanagalla Balamand-ayala as the people of Attanagalla always loved the Bandaranaikes.

"The fellows who crawled to me seeking favours, when I had power are the people who raised both their hands when they removed me from the leadership", she said.

Kumaratunga said that some of those who sought favours from her did not have a spine to defend her when she was criticized and removed from the leadership and warned that she would take care of such persons after April.

She said that on her return to the country she did not have adequate security and the persons who were around her are not there now.

"When the party was collapsing it is I who came and supported the Pada Yathra programmes and salvaged the party. Does (President) Mahinda (Rakapaksa) have any international recognition? Only my brother and myself have some international recognition. They did not allow me to complete the 12 years, if they allowed it, I would have completed the development work", she said.

She said that it was President Rajapaksa who objected to P-TOMS and she wanted to offer an interim administration to the North and East which was also not allowed. She said that President Rajapaksa had been able to win the support of Buddhist monks, the JVP and few UNPers and questioned whether you could rule a country with their support.

"It is only my brother and myself who can safeguard the party", she concluded.

Kumaratunga has been suspended from serving Unesco, and whether or not she has that kind of international recognition she claimed to have in her speech would leave some doubts in the minds of the people. But, as far as she is concerned, she seems to have no doubts about returning to power and place come April next year. So the soothsayers have predicted, she says.