The Island Editorial

Enemies of reconciliation

24 September 2016

President Maithripala Sirisena has, in his address to the recently concluded United Nations General Assembly, reaffirmed his government’s commitment to bringing about national reconciliation. He has also ruled out the possibility of the country being plunged into another war. His commitment to the reconciliation process and safeguarding minority rights cannot be called into question. In fact, he is duty bound to protect the rights of minorities who overwhelmingly backed his presidential bid.

However, one may have doubts about his assurance that there will be no war. He should not allow himself to be lulled into a false sense of complacency anent national security. There is, of course, no need for him or his government to tilt at windmills without demilitarising the former war zone, where people are struggling to rebuild their lives devastated by a protracted war. But, the country and governments must remain eternally vigilant and prepared to face any eventuality.

Terrorism is like cancer. There is always the danger of recurrence.

No sooner had President Sirisena extolled the virtues of reconciliation in New York than a group of northern politicians, sympathetic to the LTTE’s cause, announced their decision to hold a mass protest campaign, which will only help boost the morale of the lunatic fringe. Whether they will be able to muster adequate popular support for their project remains to be seen, but they are sure to continue to organise such events in a bid to gain political traction and eat into the TNA’s vote base.

The present government abused its power to enable the TNA and the JVP to secure the control of the official Opposition so as to prevent former President Mahinda Rajapaksa from becoming the Opposition Leader. It made a mockery of its commitment to good governance. But, as a result, the aforesaid two parties—one with a history of justifying LTTE terrorism and the other responsible for unleashing southern terrorism—now have to play a different role with some restraint as the democratic Opposition.

The incumbent administration has, either wittingly or unwittingly, neutralised extremists in the southern parts of the country politically. The fall of the former government left some of them without political clout and the attendant impunity. They have chosen to lie low. Others who fell out with the Rajapaksa government and joined forces with its opponents to engineer last year’s regime change have had to behave. For, if the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, dependent on minority support to win elections, shows them the door, they will fall between two stools.

President Sirisena should have stressed at the UNGA that if the LTTE’s military muscle had been spared there would have been no room for reconciliation efforts. If the Rajapaksa government had given in to international pressure and sought to appease terrorism instead of defeating it decisively, no one would have been safe today; the TNA would still have recognised the LTTE as the sole representative of Tamils; it would also have been making statements on behalf of Prabhakaran in Parliament and elsewhere the way it announced the Tiger leader’s decision to boycott the 2005 presidential polls. The LTTE would have continued to suppress democratic dissent violently besides committing other crimes such as child abductions, massacres, bombing of civilian targets and extortion if Prabhakaran had been alive.

In short, defeating terrorism is a prerequisite for rekindling democracy. But for the crushing of the JVP insurrections democracy would have perished in the southern parts of the country and the outfit would never have taken to democratic politics. It was the defeat of the LTTE which saved democracy in the North and the East. Those who are trying to revive the LTTE ideology are the worst enemies of the fragile reconciliation process. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the western diplomats have only helped legitimise their despicable cause by meeting them.