New Year musings

The seventh Sinhala Tamil New Year since the war came to a decisive end in May 2009 is upon us and Sri Lanka is no closer to finding a lasting solution to the root causes that led to that war than we were the first time around when the political leadership at the time missed a golden opportunity to reach out to the vanquished and offer them the much needed proverbial olive branch. 

What little hope was instilled in the polity for a better future with the advent of a new government in 2015 following the end of an increasingly autocratic regime is now diminishing amidst poorly thought-out mechanisms to resolve the national question, though, in fairness, not for lack of trying.

Buzzwords like reconciliation and transitional justice are being thrown about by those who have made a vocation out of supposedly bridging the gap between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, but what many of these INGO-funded activists seem to forget is that, to the average citizen, such high-flown terminology is largely meaningless, and a more grounded, homegrown approach is needed to resolve the country’s decades-long ethnic conflict. 

The LTTE’s ruthless terrorism needed to be dealt with militarily; no patriotic citizen will ever question the decision to fight that barbaric outfit to a finish. The vindictive agenda adopted by sections of the diaspora community and certain advocates of peaceful coexistence only serve to make matters irrecoverably worse.

To this Government’s credit, it has been handling the Geneva issue maturely with some surprising level-headedness in the face of mounting hostility from the above mentioned quarters. On 23 March this year, the team of diplomats representing Sri Lanka headed by Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera in Geneva scored another much needed diplomatic win for the country. 

Despite those with vested interests framing it as a treacherous act of international brown-nosing - what with a former head of state going as far as to call it a great betrayal - the fact of the matter is that Sri Lanka was badly in need of a timeout and the Government managed to secure that reprieve - for the lack of a better word - and more without sacrificing national pride.

While some activists might understandably raise issue with how this doesn’t really translate into any real action on Sri Lankan soil with regard to transitional justice and/or reconciliation, this - along with the proposed Truth-seeking Commission - is a start, to say the least. If the Government can also get its act together and get the ball rolling on the proposed new Constitution, we may finally have a lasting solution in sight. It’s a pity that the UNP and the SLFP can’t seem to agree on how to go about it.

Ultimately, no “political solution”, however neatly packaged, will amount to anything if the people - the ordinary citizens of this country who have to pay the price for the incompetence of their elected representatives - don’t come together to put their differences behind them and move forward as a nation. 

These are, of course, complex matters that cannot be resolved overnight. Here’s hoping that at least this year some progress is made in that regard. Subha aluth Avuruddak weva.