ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE...

Everyone needs to learn lessons from the past, yes, but that lesson should not be the mistrust that had caused war and violence, destruction and desolation for decades. This part of the past needed to be left behind, if Sri Lanka had to move forward

N Sathiya Moorthy

Independent of what the world has to say on accountability issues of the ‘war crimes’ kind, there is even a greater need for the Government in Colombo to revive talks and hopes on a political solution aimed at power-devolution. The problem is that the various stake-holders, starting with the Government and including the TNA, are unable to move away from their clichéd positions from the war-time, and move forward in a conciliatory mode.

Reconciliation in post-war situations, whether between States or within any of them, is a state of mind. One needs to prepare the mood and evolve methods that could take one there. Everyone needs to learn lessons from the past, yes, but that lesson should not be the mistrust that had caused war and violence, destruction and desolation for decades. This part of the past needed to be left behind, if Sri Lanka had to move forward.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa wears multiple caps, like his predecessors, and possibly like his successors, too. It is both an opportunity and burden for post-war Sri Lanka. The Head of State in him has ensured that post-war rehabilitation has proceeded mostly in a manner that is now commended even by international critics on war-crime issues. However, the Supreme Commander of the armed forces has continuing security concerns. Yet, it is the president of the ruling SLFP component of the larger UPFA that seems to be dominating, if not domineering the discourse.

The TNA has to respect the Sri Lankan State and the Government -- both are distinguishable entities that the party has problems acknowledging -- for engaging it in postwar negotiations without preconditions of any specific kind. The Government, by downgrading what originally read like official discussions with the TNA to one initiated by the SLFP, and not even the UPFA, cannot escape the blame for being seen and sounding ‘slippery’.

The solution does not necessarily lie in the PSC just as it does not stop with the talks between the SLFP and the TNA. As the TNA has been pointing out time and again, and endorsed for change by other political stake-holders, both inside the Government and outside, there is enough in the Constitution take the post-war movement forward. Arguably, the TNA is telling the Government that it needed no pampering if the latter were to go ahead with the implementation aspect of existing provisions in the Constitution.

The TNA has shown the way by its parliamentary leader Sampanthan vetoing a suggestion for the party sending a delegation to Geneva, when it would do least good to the nation. The Government, if it has to strengthen the hands of the Tamil moderates, can start with the implementation of the existing constitutional provisions on devolution.

For starters, the Government can roll back on long-standing decisions involving Health and Education, where while creating ‘national institutions’, the Provinces were made to feel poorer and powerless for the same. If an alternate model was available, the Government should draw the line between the responsibilities of the Centre and the powers of the Provinces.

It is same with Police powers. At a time when the TNA and the rest of the Tamil polity, including those in the Government, are agitating over the issue, no Government in its senses could have left unexplained the causes, if any, for it not having even a single Tamil and a lonely Muslim in the long list of 22 officers promoted to higher ranks in the nation’s police powers.

It is not about powers for the Provinces, but a reflection this on the institutional insensitivity to issues and concerns that had triggered the ethnic war and violence in the first place. It will be seen as ethnic politics of a continuing kind, otherwise. No one likewise is talking any more about the recruitment of Tamils to the police, if not the armed forces, where de-mobilisation of some kind may be in order, instead.

Likewise, the problems pertaining to Land powers do not concern State security, as those relating to police powers, as if they were. It concerns politics of the ‘colonisation’ kind, in the eyes of the Tamils. The Government has failed to make the delineation despite the bright minds that it has in it -- both on the political and administrative sides.

Yet, the efforts at wanting to identify the land-owners in the war areas for handing over possession and fresh papers, where required, could not be mistaken, as the TNA and a section of the Tamil community has been complaining. There lies the catch, too. The Government needs to walk that extra mile, if the moderate Tamils have to feel wanted and encouraged -- and hold itself accountable, there at the very least.