(MENAFN- Colombo Gazette)
By N Sathiya Moorthy
Now that the draft of High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet's mandatory bi-annual report to the UNHRC council is doing the rounds, the Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT) polity should be wondering as to what she meant by describing the government-proposed amendments to the dreaded Prevention of terrorism Act (PTA) as an 'important initial step'. Even otherwise, High Commissioner Bachelet's report this time does not bark, leave alone bite, possibly indicative of an easy time for the government through the fixe weeks of council discussions and a possible new resolution and vote.
“…we have very serious issues… the militarization, the ethno-religious nationalism, the continued lack of accountability. And you couple that with a pattern of surveillance and harassment of those who try to speak out — civil society organizations, human rights defenders, journalists — and it is a recipe for further human rights violations,” high commissioner's spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, said. At the same time, she also said that the government had shown some willingness to initiate reforms, but there little to address past human rights violations or redress the harm done to victims. At least, she was not as specific and sharp as the high commissioner's report was expected to be.
However, High Commissioner Bachelet has said enough in one sentence to provoke the government enough, but without giving any real hope to the victims, which now includes not only the SLT community and their 'war victims', but being expanded to include every other allegation of human rights violations in the country. As her office should have anticipated, Foreign Secretary Adm Jayanth Colombage (retd), has promptly declared that the government would not allow the high commissioner's office to set up an evidence-gathering mechanism in the country. “It is against the UN mandate,' he asserted, adding that the government could not allow one even otherwise as a domestic mechanism for the purpose was now taking shape.
Dramatic but to no end
All of it should now make the SLT community and polity thinking – as to the uselessness of their current call for international support on multiple fronts, all pertaining to their core ethnic concerns. Already, the TNA has launched a signature campaign for the wholesale withdrawal of the PTA, including the amendments, and party and allied Tamil MPs staged a surprise protest outside the President's Secretariat, seeking an appointment with incumbent Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Again, to no avail.
It is thus time for the Tamil polity to sit back, look back and then decide the future course. For instance, they need to address the simple question, if the wholesale rescinding of PTA alone would suffice, or they instead needed iron-clad, enforceable guarantees that multiple arms of the Sri Lankan State would not be used to harass them illegally, as has been the case all along.
With the likes of Justice C V Wigneswaran and President's Counsel M A Sumanthiran among them, the Tamil polity should actually be thinking about such instrumentalities. They can independently assess if they still wanted the PTA to stay or go, as nations across the world are under compulsion to have one of their own, given the existing circumstances and emerging apprehensions. The SLT may get little help and support from the international community for the wholesale deletion of PTA, precisely for this reason – and the latter would be couching their reservations in such pious terms, nothing more.
Delayed, welcome initiative
Then, there is the Sumanthiran initiative to bring together all Opposition parties to take on the government on the economic front. As a concept, it is a delayed yet welcome initiative. As a tactic, the choice of TNA, and through the TNA, Sumanthiran, a post-war Tamil politician, makes sense. Not for the latter reason, but because the TNA as the second largest party in the Opposition after the SJB alone is capable of bringing the party and its estranged and diminished UNP together, to the same table. Of course, the JVP too participated in the first round of what could be described as the all-Opposition talks.
Even those non-Sinhala parties of the Muslim and the Upcountry Tamil stocks have no real political issues viz the TNA, for them to turn down an invitation for such a conclave. Needless to say, they have produced a document for the government to consider – which it would do only in breach, as always. This has been the bane of the nation whichever party is in power.
But then, the TNA too has to realise that despite being around in national politics and international interactions for decades, the Tamil polity does not have a comprehensive idea about regional, national and international economy – which is the real driving force in all three segments. Maybe, a bunch of economists from outside, or an economic council to advise chief minister Wigneswaran when he held the post in the Tamil Northern Province could have turned out things better for the people and the party, the TNA at the time.
It does not stop there. Through the four-plus years of a friendly and eternally-dependent Government of National Unity (GNU), the TNA and the anti-TNA sections of the Tamil polity wasted all time and opportunity to reach out to the Sinhala South, to the last village. Barring a low-profile meeting that TNA boss R Sampanthan had with the Buddhist prelates in Kandy, nothing came of what was otherwise seen as a TNA/Tamil out-reach to the majority community.
Cataclysmic changes
Third and equally important, the TNA and the rest of the Tamil polity may have to look at a future without their past haunting them and the rest of the nation and the rest of the world. It is a reality that they cannot escape from, as a new generation of Tamils born away from the horrors of war won't be able to relate to the past as their present generation does.
This could mean, new ideas, new concepts and new ideologies may prosper without anyone knowing and acknowledging. The chances are that the present generation is often caught napping at such cataclysmic changes to their beliefs and politics, on the one hand and the passage of time taking with it the tall leaders from their midst, one after another.
Deciding factor
Unlike the Sinhala parties the SLT, Muslim and the Upcountry Tamil polity to a lesser extent has not allowed fresh grass to grow under the foot of the present generation. That's how the socio-political changes that they are going to face in the next five or ten years is going to be catastrophic to their current faith in the eternity of their past ideology.
They all need only to look around the neighbourhood and elsewhere in the democratic world to know how a new generation throws up a disturbing ideology and methodology, which overshadows the status quo and demolishes the same, oftentimes effortlessly. The JVP, the LTTE and the rest of the Tamil youth militancy from the past are products of such a demographic dynamic that their own older generation did not comprehend enough and in time.
Maybe, it is thus time for the TNA, for instance, to take the initiative not only for bringing together all of the SLT polity, but also attempt to form a forum of all minority interests. There had been occasions in the past decade-plus when Tamil-speaking parliamentarians cutting across ethnic and political divides added up to 50, if not more, in a House of 225. That is saying a lot.
Include the Catholics under Colombo Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith now, and you will have over 30 per cent of the nation's voters. In a good election for the presidency, it translates as the 'deciding factor', provided they all stick together, or most of them stick together. And in a good parliament election again, they will decide who will be prime minister.
In turn, they can tell the government to have the kind of Constitution and laws and enforcement that the nation deserves and their own constituencies demand. The PTA would then be passe. Why UNHRC, the government and Parliament nearer home could then be made to act!
(The writer is Distinguished Fellow and Head-Chennai Initiative, Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: )
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