Mahinda Rajapakse stands firm

The LTTE faced the UPFA Govt’s negotiating team just once at Geneva (April, 2006) and got into a blue funk. His team, unlike that of the UNF Govt’s, gave as much as it got. A feature of the tete-a-tete was the well documented statement by its leader, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, containing a factual expose of LTTE killings, abductions, child recruitment, extortion etc. Prompt and effective police action and a lucid enunciation of the technicalities involved by our constitutional lawyer H. L. de Silva were the other features of note.

It was a new and frightening experience for the LTTE to come up against a resolute, but reasonable opposition. It had become accustomed to facing a supine UNF Govt delegation before.

Balasingham had previously got enamoured of having being conferred a ‘doctorate’ by Prof. Dr. G. L. Pieris and being addressed as ‘Dr. Balasingham’. He used that academic honour to good effect with the UNF team, strutting about at the previous five Peace Talks sessions from Bangkok onwards.

Even ‘Doctor Balasingham’ had the dubious distinction of being addressed by Eric Solheim as ‘Your Excellency’ at the first meeting in Bangkok, with the UNF team looking on sheepishly.

The UNP-led team had not learned a lesson from the PA delegation’s unforgivable faux pas of conducting talks under the LTTE banner in Dec. 1994/1995, under President Chandrika Bandaranaike. It is also interesting to note that Nalin Laduwahetty drew attention to Solheim’s constant reference, during the UNF regime, on the notion that what underpinned by the CFA was "a balance of military power" between the Govt. and the LTTE – a totally untenable notion in any talks between a sovereign state and a rebel group. He pointed out that the UNF Govt. refrained from making any objection to this notion with the result that it was taken for granted. Thanks to President Mahinda Rajapakse’s Govt. the theory has been jettisoned.

Indeed there is a new ‘tougnness’ in the air since the Rajapakse regime took over. This factor is neatly tempered with the regime’s unequivocal policy of continuing with the Peace Talks with a view to finding a political solution to the ethnic issue.

It is also heartening to note that the Sri Lanka forces will strike back effectively at the LTTE in retaliation if the latter’s actions are unwarranted. This two-fold approach to the Peace Process and the LTTE highlights Rajapakse regime’s decisiveness and prudence.

The President’s stoic patience in the face of the murderous and relentless "claymore" onslaughts by the LTTE on govt. forces with some 150/200 servicemen killed to date, apart from losses of equipment, etc., has won him international acclaim as a statesman, while giving the lie to all sorts of lobbies which at one time called him the ‘war candidate’ -’Prolanka’