Editorial

The ‘tug-of-war’, as part of the fun and games of the traditional New Year, has taken a far different, more belligerent mode with the ongoing conflict in West Asia. The personal pride of a mad hatter and his cowboys in one country and the national pride of another are at play as the world watches in muttering resignation if there will be an early conclusion to the fighting.

So far, world leaders have been indulging the whims and unilateral excesses of a president who is casting himself in the image of God, but reaction is mounting.

This is the moment to pursue the only available remedy: the two-state solution of an independent, sovereign state of Palestine side-by-side with the state of Israel as a permanent resolution for lasting peace in the region. The Arab states have, after decades of futile wars with Israel, come around to recognising the Jewish state as a fait accompli. The member states of the European Union (EU), Canada and the UK have also veered round to recognising a free Palestine. During the height of the Gaza massacres by the Israelis in 2024 and 2025, the EU member states voiced their support towards this goal only to have their attention diverted by the economic fallout to themselves from the war on Iran.

The ongoing war with Iran will have to end one day as both warring parties are almost ‘dead on their feet’ after more than a month of war that has also left the rest of the world suffocated and fuming at being held hostage by ‘some other people’s war’. And yet, the Palestine Question will linger until the next major war erupts in the region, all in the name of the forgotten people of Palestine.

In this ‘fog of war’, neither the USA nor Iran has included the ‘Palestine Question’ for discussion. Neither seems interested in resolving what is very much at the very root of this forever conflict in West Asia. Gaza and the misery its people have had to endure and are still undergoing are almost like history already.

Back to the old world order

The Hungarian election grabbed world attention this week because it had much to do with the rejection of US President Trump’s endorsement of the right-wing incumbent prime minister of 16 years as much as the demand for ‘system change’ in the East European country.

The Trump administration went ‘flat-out’ to support the premier, dispatching its own vice president to Budapest in a show of solidarity with him before the polls. It turned out to be the first public snub for Donald Trump outside America at a time the USA is roundly despised for waging a war that has sent the lives of millions of people around the world into a tailspin while he goes around saying the implications of the war “don’t affect us”.

The Hungarian government’s pro-Russian, pro-Trump, rightwing, anti-immigration and reportedly dictatorial policies over a period of one and half decades contributed to it being trounced at the polls. No one knows much of the policies of the newly elected party, all of which make for comparisons with Sri Lanka, where the surge in popular support for an opposition came from an electorate sick and tired of the establishment – opting to vote for the unknown angel rather than the known devil.

What is crystal clear is that Europe, which includes Italy, France, Spain and Germany, may be quietly distancing itself from the Far Right and gave the right royal boot to ‘Trumpism’, a broader pattern of reaction against what is going wrong with the world under Trump, including the descent into xenophobia and the rejection of established international law and order.

The relative stability of the ‘old world order’ is striking back at the chaos of the ‘new world order’ in the making of President Donald Trump.

Lanka card missing in Tamil Nadu elections

Closer home, an election next door in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is reaching fever pitch with its Assembly seats up for grabs next Thursday. After many moons, Sri Lanka is not an election issue during the mud-slinging campaigns of either major coalition, viz., the DMK-Congress and the AIADMK-BJP, with only a fringe TVK headed by a celluloid hero raising the ‘Lanka card’.

It has been a while since the chief minister hopefuls hitched their wagons to the Sri Lanka star for electoral success. During the height of the New Delhi-inspired separatist war in Sri Lanka, DMK leader M. Karunanidhi and AIADMK leader M.G. Ramachandran would jostle for the hand of the LTTE leader, making a public spectacle of being photographed breakfasting with him or handing over a cheque to his terrorist outfit. Then came the challenge from India to the sovereignty of Kachchativu – very much like the ongoing Strait of Hormuz conflagration is an issue of freedom of navigation – but relating to fishing rights rather than commercial shipping.

Even India’s Minister of external affairs waded in, blaming the rival Congress leadership of India for the Maritime Agreement of 1974 that sealed the islet’s sovereignty. That he raised this bogey at the last parliamentary elections did not help his party or its partner, the AIADMK, win votes. He has remained studiously silent this time.

Sri Lanka’s ‘blockade’ of the Palk Straits from illegal fishing by the mega Tamil Nadu fishing industry has not been effective largely due to successive governments in Colombo buckling under pressure from New Delhi. Northern politicians have to decide between the local fishing votes and largesse from India. They have chosen the latter. The rape of Lanka’s marine resources continues unabated.

The Vice President of India, a seasoned BJP politician of yesteryear, has been despatched ‘coincidentally’ to Sri Lanka’s North and East on the eve of the Tamil Nadu polls. The Tamilian voters have been asked to pick between a ‘corrupt and dynastic’ DMK and the AIADMK as the ‘weak slave of the northern-based BJP’. This week the DMK Chief Minister lashed out at the BJP government for the timing, on the eve of state elections, to introduce a Delimitation Bill that will rejig constituencies and raise parliamentary representation by almost 50 per cent.

While the two major alliances thrash it out, it does not mean Sri Lanka is a closed chapter in India’s domestic politics. It has only been overshadowed by New Delhi’s systematic and strategic manipulation of the economic framework of Sri Lanka directly through the central government – its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.