Consensus imported?

The UNP has called upon the government to implement the agreement that Liam Fox, the former Minister of State in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, thrashed out in 1997 between the government and the UNP, according to a news item we front-paged yesterday. It is believed that intervention of Fox’s successor, Derek Fatchett, who will be here next week to take part in a series of functions, will be sought in this regard.

According to the undertaking given by the PA and the UNP in the agreement, they are required to bring about a bipartisan approach in an effort to resolve the north and east conflict. The on-going tussle between the government and the UNP is proof that this agreement like many others appears to have ended up a non-starter.

One must be wondering why on earth these two parties cannot reach consensus on anything. They have hardly any difference between them in terms of policies. They are the parties that have ruled this country since Independence with their smaller allies riding piggyback. Therefore they have to equally divide the blame between themselves for having brought the country to this pass.

Can either the UNP or the SLFP, the PA proper, claim to have ruled the country differently? Every time they are elected, haven’t they started from where the other had stopped? The change in the 1970s could be cited an exception, but today isn’t the PA on all fours with the UNP in respect of statecraft albeit to a varying degree? The difference between these two parties save the leftists on board the PA is that between tweedledum and tweedledee.

The blame for allowing the north and east crisis to evolve into a protracted war should also be apportioned to these parties. Had one of them made a genuine effort with the singleminded purpose of defeating terrorism, the LTTE would not have been in a position today to brag its strength as a terrorist outfit.

So, it evades rational thinking why these two parties with so much in common cannot see eye to eye with each other on every issue unless an explanation is sought in the light of their greed for power. It is this greed that has taken precedence over the much needed cooperation between the two parties for adopting what has been termed a total focus on putting an end to the conflict.

Isn’t it ironical that even after fifty years of Independence, the country is at the mercy of the British again, who, it is said, sowed seeds of discord among different communities, to bring the two parties together? Isn’t it ironic that someone from a country with so sullied a history had to make a much publicised vain attempt to bring together these two parties?

This power struggle the two parties are engaged in at the expense of the national interest has assumed such proportions, that even the intervention of those who really matter in the country like the Sangha and the business community to reconcile them has been in vain. Leave alone the clergy for their preaching is anathema to politicians. How strange it is that the omnipotent business fraternity has failed to bring them together despite the influence they wield over them by virtue of financing their campaigns!

One man may take a horse to water, it is said, but twenty cannot make it drink. Dr. Fox has taken the horse to water. Others have been struggling in vain for over a year to make it drink.

This is the ground reality of the Sri Lankan politics that Fatchett has to come to terms with. Or even if his intervention is solicited by anyone here to bring about a consensus between the government and the UNP, and he fails like his predecessor, he should not get disheartened. For as regards Britain, bringing these parties together is not the only means of helping Sri Lanka solve the conflict.

There are other meaningful steps that it can take to help Sri Lanka. It can for example close the LTTE headquarters in London, from where it coordinates its terrorist activities. Else it can implement without delay the recent anti-terrorism law passed by the British Parliament. This law if implemented enables adopting emergency measures to combat both local and international terrorism effectively. When one door is closed, they say, the other one is open.

As we learn from the intransigence on the part of the government and the UNP, the door in Colombo is firmly shut. The door in London is open to Fatchett.