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Pots and kettles

If President Chandrika Kumaratunga is serious about unitedly presenting to the LTTE the joint position of the People’s Alliance and the UNP, the two major political forces in the country, as a basis for ending the war, she is certainly setting about it the wrong way. Heaping abuse on Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, in the manner she did in her long letter published on Friday, will certainly not make things easier for anybody. Instead of the fence mending and bridge building we desperately need at this moment, we will only have the two big parties in the south fighting each other instead of unitedly meeting a most daunting challenge.

The people of this country are too well aware of the way politicians, whether they belong to the PA or the UNP, behave and a lot of what the president had said in her letter will be taken not just with a pinch of salt but with knowing smiles if not derisive laughter. Take for example her extravagant claim that she and her government are well on the way towards doing many of the things for which they sought the people’s mandate. This from a president who solemnly promised the nation that the executive presidency will be abolished by July 15, 1995!

Although we are notorious as a people for our short memories, the majority would not have forgotten the many promises that were incorporated in the PA manifesto that have been conveniently forgotten or cynically perverted. Take for instance the much vaunted promise of bread at Rs. 3.50 a loaf. For how long did we have it, and even when wheat prices had softened in global markets, do we not pay more than double that price for our daily bread? We do not think that the people of this country are wildly interested in the abolition of the executive presidency. On our part, we are glad that it is in place especially at a time when the country is locked in a debilitating civil war so that the country enjoys the required stability despite its hung parliament.

Who can forget dhooshanaya and bheeshanaya and all the hot air that was expelled on their behalf on election platforms five years ago. Is corruption any less in this country and can the head of a government that emasculated the very commission she herself set up to probe an ever-growing cancer claim that it is on the way to stamping it out? As for terror, the need for the kind of state counter that became essential in the context of the second JVP uprising had thankfully not recurred. There was terror then certainly, both state terror and JVP terror that brought the country to the brink of anarchy. We heard no politicians screaming then about tyre pyres when a brutal job that had to be done was finished off. Neither side fought then according to the Queensberry rules remember, and there is no point in harping about the excesses that did occur.

The president has also said that ``the war was not started by us but by the UNP.’’ Coming from the leader of the party that first raised the ``Sinhala Only’’ cry in this country and swept into power on the back of that slogan, accusations of who started the war are unbecoming. Even its most ardent supporters must admit that the UNP government of President J.R. Jayewardene failed miserably, or did not even seriously attempt to quell the shameful anti-Tamil riots of July 1983 that alienated the country’s most important minority. But those who talk about who started the war must also remember 1958 or even more recent times when Prabhakaran personally assassinated Mr. Alfred Duraiappah, the SLFP Mayor of Jaffna. The war must always remain a blot on the national conscience, a grim reminder of how, why and where we went wrong. We can do without finger pointing politicians flinging accusations at each other.

Given the way the state media is directed to function, due allowance being made for ``the king’s dog being more vicious than the king’’ as the hoary Sinhala idiom has it, there is no point in the president of this country grandly proclaiming that she had strictly adhered to the principle of ``never slinging mud at political opponents.’’ We live in an age when a minister of the incumbent government was moved to publicly say what he thought of the state controlled press - good only for buying cattle he said. We must also not forget how some of the Commissions of Inquiry appointed by Her Excellency’s warrant conducted some so-called inquiries in the glare of state media spotlights. Even poor Mr. A.C.S Hameed about whom the president said some very kind things after he died, was not spared the commission ordeal. So much for mud slinging.

It is best that sanctimonious self-praise and abuse of opponents is avoided if President Kumaratunga is serious about the PA and UNP presenting a united front to the LTTE. It is abundantly clear that the Tigers are not interested in the present proposals. Selling the package to the Tamils who now vote with the government in parliament is not going to end the war. The people are very well aware of the warts on both the PA and the UNP. The national interest demands that the pots and kettles stop calling each other black.

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