by Rt.Rev Duleep de Chickera
A Message to the Nation on the occasion of Sri Lanka’s National Day
This year we celebrate 60 years of independence from British colonial rule. Our history as an independent people was interrupted and suppressed at the beginning of the sixteenth century with the invasion by the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and the British. There is yet to be an apology from the former colonial powers, for the violence and exploitation to the economy and cultures of countries like ours.
[Orrs Hill, Trincomalee]
Today sixty years after self Government we still are a deprived and divided people. While there is no such thing as a perfect nation, our performance continues to be traumatic and tragic. Our growth and progress as an independent people has been violated by confrontational party politics, greed, and lack of vision and planning of the political leadership of the country, and an indifferent civil society. There has yet to be an apology from our successive layers of political leaders for depriving our people of a legitimate, secure and integrated quality of life.
A long journey lies ahead towards freedom. True freedom is freedom for all. There can be no freedom for some at the expense of freedom for others. Any such promise is immoral and a political lie.
The journey towards freedom must acknowledge and overcome the immediate national threats of poverty, impunity and violence, the oppression of ignorance and disease, the hypocrisy, rhetoric and lies of politicians, and growing corruption, suspicion and fear amongst the people.
It is a journey that will require forgiveness, reconciliation and healing between the communities.
It is a journey in which each is called to see the other as a gift. It is a journey that will only reach its destination through a transformed and participatory political vision as well as the patience and courage of all.
It is then that our people will be free to;
dance and sing on the streets,
dream and discover themselves,
think and disagree,
relate and integrate,
be different but one,
and move and live without restriction.
“May God give us the courage to change the things we can,
the humility to accept the things we cannot change,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Feb 4, 2008
[The Rt Revd Duleep de Chickera is the Bishop of Colombo]
January 31st, 2008
By A.K. Verma
The cyclical politics of Sri Lanka are again at cross roads. The choice before the Sri Lankan Central Government is between expediency and statesmanship. The majoritarian complexes, as in the past, stand like an immovable rock limiting the options before the Government.
Like President Premdasa earlier, the Central leadership is again seeking the company of a strange bed fellow, the JVP this time. A union of the two might strengthen Sinhala public opinion against the Tamils, but it will cause no dent on the traditional posture of the Sri Lankan Tamils of the North and East. How does one then move forward?
An obvious option is that India should be approached to provide its good offices once again to become an interlocutor between the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Central Government. The thoughts of some might even run to seeking a more decisive form of an intervention from India.
The history of ethnic strife in Sri Lanka establishes two facts very clearly, the uncompromising quest for Ealam on the Tamil side and an equal determination on the Sinhala side not to succumb to the Tamil pressure.
The Indian policy in the past was based on the fantasy that it could work out an acceptable middle path between the two extreme positions. From arms training to Sri Lankan Tamils to Thimpu talks, to the 1987 Sri Lanka accord and to the activisation of IPKF in Sri Lanka, the Indian authorities had failed to comprehend that its leverage with the two adversaries had not been of a magnitude as to give it a decisive role in the troubles between the two.
Believing in the principles of Panchashila, the thoughts of any kind of intervention in Sri Lankan affairs should have been taboo for the Indian Government. How did errors of policy, now widely acknowledged, actually occur?
More than any individual, the mechanism of policy making has to be blamed. In point of fact, no structured mechanism for making high level policy decisions existed then, as it perhaps exists not even today. Decisions were often made on a cue from the top, but usually that cue was not the distilled product of an informed debate, arising from options formally presented in the shape of approach papers from persons who could be identified as experts in their fields. Some time adhoc core committees would be constituted whose membership would necessarily be all bureaucrats with individuals qualifying for the membership on the basis of jobs held in the government.
Apart from the fact that such adhoc dispensations did not bring about the required level of scholarship, expertise or experience into the consideration of issues, the proceedings would often be marked by fruitless pursuits of one-man upmanship, opposition for the sake of opposition and wrangling for being identified as the most productive participant.
Most members might contribute by being mere mute spectators. They would be none the worse for their substandard work culture, because setting of standards, commitment, accountability and supervision were virtues which the system rarely demanded.
For example when the July 87 India SriLanka accord was signed, there was no study to check whether Prabhakaran was genuinely ready to give up Ealam and surrender all the arms held by the Tigers.
Again, when it was claimed that the IPKF would be able to clear the field of the Tigers within a week, the claim was not tested by independent scrutiny, before being accepted.
The irony was that the decision to air drop troops at certain locations was also taken in complete isolation, even without an intelligence briefing. The locations were manned by the Tigers. The paratroopers descending to the earth were decimated in large numbers.
Even the assumption that Dravidian nationalism and Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism reinforced each other, on the basis of which many decisions were taken , was a subjective formulation but no body in the policy making apparatus was willing to test it empirically or otherwise.
In the core group there were occasions when a member would only be interested in wrecking the progress being achieved by the rest. As no minutes of the meetings were officially kept or circulated, irresponsibility would never become an issue to haunt anyone ever.
Such adhoc committees or core groups as they were sometimes called, often functioned without being given objectives to be sought, by the political leadership.
At the end of the day the most articulate or the best informed would be able to carry the group with him but it did not necessarily mean that his recommendations would be in the best interests of the country if only because the discussions in the group would have taken place without laid down policy objectives, options and consideration of short, mid or long-term impact.
The resulting failure was not only in making an accurate reading of the Tamil Tiger mind: there was a similar inability to assess the limits of Sri Lankan concessions on offer to the Tamils.
At no time except in the 1987 Indo Sri Lanka accord, the Sri Lankan authorities agreed to let Tamils rule in the Eastern Province. The concession made in the Accord was withdrawn as soon as it came unstuck. Sri Lankans cannot bear the thought that the port of Trincomalee should come under Tamil governance and they would try to frustrate such a possibility till the end.
No new security management exercise seems necessary in India in order to conclude that Indian involvement, if any, in the ethnic crises on Sri Lanka must abide by the following parameters:
* The invitation to India has to be from both the sides.
* India must know in advance the ultimate fall back position of each side and its exit policy.
* Prabhakaran will not settle for less than defacto Ealam in a designated Tamils territory.
* Is the Sri Lanka Government in a position to get a Sinhala majority to live with a fully autonomous Tamil territory within an integrated but federal Sri Lanka structure? The Sinhalas must be transparent about it.
* The plantation Tamils should have the freedom to stay in their existing abodes.India must first be convinced that the two adversaries genuinely feel the urgency of a political solution. Only then it should offer its good offices. There is also an absolute need to tighten its national security management apparatus so that progress or lack of it could be monitored at every stage in terms of goals set.
[The writer is a former chief of the Indian intelligence agency RAW)]
January 31st, 2008