The Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on Constitutional Change is back in the news radar after some of the recent events, particularly in the light of news that the TNA is upping the ante as usual, with its leadership writing letters at the drop of a hat to all and sundry, including TN Chief Minister Jayalalitha.
Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva made what can only be called an entreaty to the TNA to make written submissions to the PSC if the party cannot be present at future Committee sessions.
On the one hand there are complaints about what some people refer to as a majoritarian mindset of the ruling coalition, but on the other, when the minority parties are invited to participate in the decision making process, they decline.
Democracy it is true cannot and will not be the tyranny of the majority, but Sri Lanka is no different from any other functional democracy in which -- by virtue of numbers -- the majority community is represented abundantly in Parliament.
The majority community, it might be added, is represented handsomely at the Centre, but not in a way that is disproportionate to its natural numbers in the demographic.
The minority community on the other hand, has wanted representation that is disproportionate to its numbers and this has been a historical failing of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
For example, G. G. Ponnambalam a prominent post independence Tamil leader spearheaded the call for 50-50 representation in the Legislature which by any standard was preposterous.
Most people forget that this legacy has coloured the perceptions of the post independence leadership both Tamil and Sinhalese.
When the TNA boycotts the PSC proceedings, a great many dispassionate and independent analysts in the Sinhala majority areas of the country cannot help but think that this is a hangover from the 50-50 days i.e: the Tamil leadership is being impossibly recalcitrant as usual.
In sum, the TNA policy, whichever way one looks at it, can only be described as one of brinkmanship.
This policy is dangerous, as it is being stretched to the limits. It appears that the strategy is to avoid at all costs meeting the government halfway, and then to blame the ruling administration in the process, with a view to gaining the maximum possible, which is a separate state.
No mechanism, no amount of cajoling around the table or devising of a discussion strategy could be of any use if one party is wedded to a dangerous policy of brinkmanship with one goal in mind.
Consistently, the TNA has rejected any participation in any political process aimed at any further political arrangement for the Northern province. The TNA has indeed been another LTTE in this regard.
The LTTE did not want to negotiate except when it was under attack, and was reeling and had no alternative but to buy time.
For a party that has its antecedents in the LTTE -- the TNA once upon a time was being run by Prabhakaran - jettisoning its early mindset and values might be difficult, but it is necessary, as the current policy of brinkmanship results in the party not making any political gains at all, even those which both sides may think the people of the North may eventually deserve.
Simply put, there will be no new concessions or any new political arrangement in the North of any type when the TNA sticks to a policy of ‘strictly no meetings with the government, and strictly no consensus.’
That of course is what the current position of that party amounts to, and those who say that it is the Sri Lankan government which should device a means for accommodation of the TNA, do not know that it takes two to Tango and that it is impossible to meet hallway, any political entity that is so hell bent on brinkmanship that it is only comparable in this regard to the fascist, terrorist LTTE.
From: Daily News. http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=editorial/tna-s-transparent-psc-policy
