04-13-2004, 01:15 AM
Little hope for Sri Lanka
Thirty years of civil war have done irreparable harm to Sri Lanka. The fight by the island's Tamils to secure a homeland has claimed more than 60,000 lives and deeply fractured the nation. A peace process appeared to be making progress, but divisions among Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority derailed those efforts. An election earlier this month deepened the deadlock. Extremist parties are the winners of the recent vote; peace appears to be the loser.
Sri Lanka's Tamils have fought for decades to establish a homeland. More than 65,000 people have died in the bloody struggle and more than 800,000 others have become internal refugees. The long list of victims includes Tamil moderates who were willing to negotiate with the government in Colombo and accept less than the maximalist demands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). Norway negotiated a shaky ceasefire two years ago; despite some close calls, the ceasefire has survived and offers hope for a more permanent deal.
The peace prospects were shaken last November when President Chandrika Kumaratunga unilaterally dismissed the ministers of defense, interior and the media, and took the portfolios herself, charging that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had made too many concessions to the Tamils during the negotiations. The president has no love for the Tamils: a 1999 suicide bombing cost her one eye. She is also a fierce rival of Mr. Wickremesinghe, and many saw this move as an attempt to make up for her party's defeat in the 2001 parliamentary elections.
Four months of negotiations between the two leaders failed to yield a government and Mrs. Kumaratunga, hoping to secure a parliamentary majority, called for elections. The vote, however, yielded an even more divided legislature.
The results gave the president's United People's Freedom Alliance 105 seats, eight seats short of the 113 needed to claim an absolute majority in the 225-member legislature. Mr. Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) trailed with 82 seats. Mrs. Kumaratunga has selected Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse, a veteran politician belonging to her own party, as prime minister. He now must form a Cabinet by the deadline of April 22, when the new Parliament is scheduled to convene.
The problem for the president is that none of the smaller parties are ready to join the Freedom Alliance and help her win that majority. The most obvious potential partner is the National Heritage Party, a radical Sinhalese nationalist party made up of monks, which took nine seats. But it has said that it will not join either of the two main parties. The third largest party, the Tamil National Alliance, the political arm of the LTTE, has 22 seats. It has said that it will join any government that recognizes it as the "sole representatives" of the Tamil people and accepts its plan to devolve authority. The Freedom Alliance has already rejected that proposal.
In other words, the results suggest that the only majority consists of parties opposed to peace. Even if Mrs. Kumaratunga opted for negotiations and she initiated peace talks in 1994 and adopted a hard line only after they broke down her alliance partner, the Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP), strongly opposes concessions to the Tamils. And the JVP gained seats at the Sri Lanka Freedom Party's expense, which dropped from 77 legislators to just over 60.
Were this not enough, the Tamil parties appear to have split as well. A rebel commander formed his own faction just before the election, and killings of his supporters by LTTE elements have already begun. At least two civilians were reported killed and many more wounded since the main Tamil Tiger group launched a major offensive Friday to retake territory held by the renegade commander.
These results are especially bitter for Japan. Japan has been one of the cochairs of the Tokyo Conference on Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka, which was formed to marshal international support for the peace process. Tokyo has donated $1 billion to help build peace there. That investment may well be put on hold as Sri Lankan politicians struggle to find a common ground that will allow peace negotiations to continue.
Should, with a hung Parliament, the new government effectively stop functioning, Mr. Wickremesinghe might try to cobble together a coalition consisting of his party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the Tamil National Alliance, but that would put the government at the mercy of the Tamils a party intimately linked to the LTTE and raise serious doubts on any deal it reached. If this all sounds familiar, that is because there are echoes of Northern Ireland in Sri Lanka. That does not inspire much confidence in the island's prospects.
The Japan Times: April 13, 2004
Thirty years of civil war have done irreparable harm to Sri Lanka. The fight by the island's Tamils to secure a homeland has claimed more than 60,000 lives and deeply fractured the nation. A peace process appeared to be making progress, but divisions among Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority derailed those efforts. An election earlier this month deepened the deadlock. Extremist parties are the winners of the recent vote; peace appears to be the loser.
Sri Lanka's Tamils have fought for decades to establish a homeland. More than 65,000 people have died in the bloody struggle and more than 800,000 others have become internal refugees. The long list of victims includes Tamil moderates who were willing to negotiate with the government in Colombo and accept less than the maximalist demands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). Norway negotiated a shaky ceasefire two years ago; despite some close calls, the ceasefire has survived and offers hope for a more permanent deal.
The peace prospects were shaken last November when President Chandrika Kumaratunga unilaterally dismissed the ministers of defense, interior and the media, and took the portfolios herself, charging that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had made too many concessions to the Tamils during the negotiations. The president has no love for the Tamils: a 1999 suicide bombing cost her one eye. She is also a fierce rival of Mr. Wickremesinghe, and many saw this move as an attempt to make up for her party's defeat in the 2001 parliamentary elections.
Four months of negotiations between the two leaders failed to yield a government and Mrs. Kumaratunga, hoping to secure a parliamentary majority, called for elections. The vote, however, yielded an even more divided legislature.
The results gave the president's United People's Freedom Alliance 105 seats, eight seats short of the 113 needed to claim an absolute majority in the 225-member legislature. Mr. Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) trailed with 82 seats. Mrs. Kumaratunga has selected Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse, a veteran politician belonging to her own party, as prime minister. He now must form a Cabinet by the deadline of April 22, when the new Parliament is scheduled to convene.
The problem for the president is that none of the smaller parties are ready to join the Freedom Alliance and help her win that majority. The most obvious potential partner is the National Heritage Party, a radical Sinhalese nationalist party made up of monks, which took nine seats. But it has said that it will not join either of the two main parties. The third largest party, the Tamil National Alliance, the political arm of the LTTE, has 22 seats. It has said that it will join any government that recognizes it as the "sole representatives" of the Tamil people and accepts its plan to devolve authority. The Freedom Alliance has already rejected that proposal.
In other words, the results suggest that the only majority consists of parties opposed to peace. Even if Mrs. Kumaratunga opted for negotiations and she initiated peace talks in 1994 and adopted a hard line only after they broke down her alliance partner, the Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP), strongly opposes concessions to the Tamils. And the JVP gained seats at the Sri Lanka Freedom Party's expense, which dropped from 77 legislators to just over 60.
Were this not enough, the Tamil parties appear to have split as well. A rebel commander formed his own faction just before the election, and killings of his supporters by LTTE elements have already begun. At least two civilians were reported killed and many more wounded since the main Tamil Tiger group launched a major offensive Friday to retake territory held by the renegade commander.
These results are especially bitter for Japan. Japan has been one of the cochairs of the Tokyo Conference on Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka, which was formed to marshal international support for the peace process. Tokyo has donated $1 billion to help build peace there. That investment may well be put on hold as Sri Lankan politicians struggle to find a common ground that will allow peace negotiations to continue.
Should, with a hung Parliament, the new government effectively stop functioning, Mr. Wickremesinghe might try to cobble together a coalition consisting of his party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the Tamil National Alliance, but that would put the government at the mercy of the Tamils a party intimately linked to the LTTE and raise serious doubts on any deal it reached. If this all sounds familiar, that is because there are echoes of Northern Ireland in Sri Lanka. That does not inspire much confidence in the island's prospects.
The Japan Times: April 13, 2004
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