.

Closing ranks

For understandable reasons, people of this country are becoming increasingly cynical about their political leaders. The growing groundswell of public opinion demands that at least as far as the war, which has already extracted a frightening toll of blood, suffering and scarce resources, is concerned, that an apolitical approach be adopted to resolve issues that are unparalleled in the contemporary history of this country.

This is what five national organisations demanded in a recent statement that we highlighted in our issue last Sunday. These bodies that some would see as representative of Sinhala Buddhist opinion called on all parties to shed political differences and form a common front for the single purpose of wiping out Tiger terrorism. They said what should by now be clear to all Lankans - that there will be no political winner if terrorism should overrun the country. The time to form the anti-Tiger terrorist coalition is now, they stressed. Already too much time has been lost.

It is not only organisations such as the National Sangha Council, the National Joint Committee, the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress, the Sinhala Veera Vidhana and the National Movement Against Terrorism that are saying these things. Many other organisations that most liberals would empathise with are saying as much. In fact, partisan supporters of both the SLFP and the UNP, the two major parties in the South of the country, see the compelling need to either prosecute the war or negotiate an honourable peace outside the parameters of politics.

The need for this became increasingly apparent when the renewal of the Emergency was last debated in Parliament in the wake of what is now accepted to have been the Kilinochchi debacle. The military censorship that has attempted to hide the truth about the war from the people of this country only slightly postpones the day of knowledge. It is an open secret that some newspapers that without reservations supported the ruling People's Alliance to win power today do not deal with the censor on what their editors call a matter of principle.

The international media covers the story without being subject to any kind of restriction and anybody with a shortwave radio can get news of the war that the national media is prohibited from reporting. We live in the absurd situation that the state-owned and controlled Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation is actually relaying the uncensored BBC Sinhala Service's Sandesaya programme to listeners in this country. If the SLBC can do this, why deprive the domestic media of covering the war and war-related issues without restriction? The people must know the truth, not just what the politicians think they should know for the sake of their own hides.

Even the LTTE knows very well that any kind of peace deal is of no value unless all the people of the south, regardless of political affiliation, agree to the terms of settlement. The Tigers have not repudiated their demand for a separate state. The fallacy of the Tamil homeland has been exposed time and again that it does not bear repetition. Nobody will, or should, quarrel with the contention that justice must be done not only to the minorities in Sri Lanka but to all her people. We cannot think of a Sinhala homeland, Tamil homeland, Muslim homeland or whatever. This island belongs to all of us and the sooner that we think of ourselves as Sri Lankans first, and not by communal identity, the better for us all.

It is now admitted by those who hold the reins of government that a planned referendum to test what people think of the "package" that has now been relegated to the backburner was not held in the wake of the LTTE attack on the Dalada Maligawa. The Maligawa attack was only one of many perpetrated by the Tigers against places of worship. Are memories so short that we have already forgotten what happened at the Sri Maha Bodhiya not so long ago? Have we forgotten the fate of our Muslim brothers who were brutally cut down as they knelt in prayer at a mosque in the Eastern Province? What happened at the Dalada Maligawa only revealed the stripes of the Tiger, its tooth and claw and is of little relevance to how the people of this country wish to settle the problem confronting us all.

It will also be useful for all of us to reflect on the demand that the whole country be placed on red alert given the current situation. Now that the ambulance sirens do not wail with the insistence of the recent past, Kilinochchi is receding in the national memory just like Mullaitivu and other tragedies of the past did. Look around Colombo and most of our other cities and for all intents and purposes, no war seemed to be raging anywhere in this land. Those of our people who can afford it continue to enjoy the good life without a thought for the young men locked in battle on both sides of the lines.

Just as much as we wish that our politicians would close ranks, all the people of this country too must not only feel for the fighters, the orphans and the destitutes of this war, but also show their concern in tangible ways.

| NEWS | PROVINCIAL | POLITICS | DEFENCE | FEATURES | LEISURE | BUSINESS | SPORTS | ADS |