ABOMINATION - About the demand for an ISGA- by S. L. Gunasekara. Reviewed by Rajpal Abeynayake
S. L Gunasekara likes to pre-empt the big boys, and this time his tilt is at the would-be negotiators of the government and the LTTE if they get to the table to negotiate the Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) that now joins the long list of acronyms that have sprung to life in the over twenty year discourse relating to Sri Lanka's long-running conflict.
Gunasekara, a civil lawyer (see profile) pumps up his argument against the ISGA with legalistic citations, but then, when he cuts to the bone, he unearths some posers that will not be liked by any would-be negotiators, I wager, on either side.
He writes: If as the LTTE states, the ISGA is necessary to bring the dividends of the purported peace process to the Tamils, how is it necessary for that purpose to rule areas like Dehiattakandiya (98.8% Sinhalese), Padavisripura (100% Sinhalese), Bintenna Pattu East and West (99.4 % cent Sinhalese), Gomarankadawela (99..5% Sinhalese), Kinniya (96.1 % Moor) Addalechchenai (93.12% Moor) or Akkraipattu ( 96.3 % Moor.)
It is of course precisely due to these kinds of population figures that those in favour of the shared-ruled self-rule argument have pointed out that there is something in any arrangement for devolution of power called the "regional minorities".
Whosoever administrates any economically viable province, it is argued by them, has to administer the entire province which will necessarily contain some regional minorities.
But with S.L. Gunasekara such arguments do not cut, because he is primarily against any idea of an ISGA because he feels (with very strong language that's unremittingly pugnacious) that the Tigers are a bunch of criminals.
On occasion he calls the LTTE Tamil Nazis -- and apart from the fact that it might raise hackles among some Jews to whom Nazis are in a class of their own in their atrocities -- the Nazi epithet certainly lends that much more colour to the gamut of adjectives that have been used over time to describe the Liberation Tigers.
Gunasekara's enumeration of the provisions of the Tiger ISGA proposals is to be expected from a man who has written intermittently about the lopsidedness of the ceasefire agreement, and other such issues – such as the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, issues which have figured in the long march that the Sri Lankan conflict has endured since those incipient days of attempted reconciliation in the far off aeon of Thimpu.
It is very clear that Mr. Gunasekara feels the ISGA is a ploy for the Tigers to sack the Sri Lankan judiciary in the North East and take over the judicial process while taking over all control of land and sea resources. He also says the ISGA is a patent violation of the ceasefire agreement.
In his own words: "While the fact of this demand being a patent violation of the ceasefire agreement is as plainly visible as the nose on one's face, neither the present government, nor the last nor the so called 'International community.'''etc.,etc.,
One does not need a nose for these things to know that the author wants to shred the ISGA to pieces. Does he assume that the ISGA as a demand should be considered beyond the pale that it does not merit any sort of negotiation based upon it?
Well, it certainly does appear so -- but he does not leave room for supposing that all that has been asked for in the ISGA, can be significantly watered down. Two thirds of his book is devoted to demolishing the ISGA as it is.
But he does say in the eighth chapter that supporters and apologists of the LTTE as well as Neville Chamberlain-like appeasers want the ISGA discussed. Here he makes clear that the ISGA in his mind is not a document that can be sufficiently watered down.
His argument in its rudiments is to say that it's an affront to the Sinhalese people, and should therefore be ditched and destroyed. In his own inimitable pastiche, "it is like A making a pact with B (in an assumed conflict between A and B) for A to rape B's mother in order to arrive at an amicable settlement of the dispute.''
With that sentence, one does, of course, understand exactly where Gunasekara's arguments are coming from. He sees the LTTE and its proposals as beyond the pale, and he almost places himself beyond the pale in the style, the aggressiveness and logic of his rationale.
It is vintage S.L. Gunasekara of course – he represents a point of view that almost seeking a total absolution for the nation's sins in reversing to a total status quo ante since the LTTE's armed action began. His book's cover is of infants macheted to death by LTTE death squads in the Eastern Province. It's a gruesome picture. He also makes the more than valid argument that the LTTE is persecuting its enemies even as it is asking for an Interim administration for itself to govern the affairs of the North and the East.
His point that murderers cannot be allowed to govern even a half inch strip of territory is more than abundantly clear; it's an ideological position which in fact does not have to technically be told in a book because it is plain in one sentence.
It can be posited that his position is the antipode of those who say that compromises and adjustments could be made; that even the worst murderer can be made malleable by negotiations or can be made to arrive at a reasonable arrangement that had the off-chance at least of putting an end to a problem that seems to be without end.
Gunasekara's position will certainly be at odds with those who say that the Sri Lankan army was unable to deliver the coup de grace to the Tigers, which therefore necessarily means that the government should come to some sort of arrangement with them, however unpalatable it may seem. Gunasekara argues completely out of that frame of reference.
His is a zero sum position that says: if they are murderers and criminals, it is no way to solve the problem with their cooperation. He might as well have said there is no point talking to the Tigers at all - period - - about anything at anytime. I'm not sure he does not say this, at least implies it, but the bottom line with this book is that either a reader agrees with him, or he doesn't.
You could say if you are for nicety that his book does not believe in a nuanced argument - - or you could just say that Gunasekara thinks one does not give an inch to LTTE or their sort no matter what – even if it's the collective national agony of mutual self-annihilation and slow death. Certainly he offers a very clear choice - and you can either agree with him, or not. The book is priced at Rs. 300 and is available at Vijitha Yapa Bookshops.
S.L. - a voice refusing to be smothered?
PROFILE
When inaugural peace talks between the Sri Lankan government, Tamil rebels and Tamil political parties were held in the Bhutanese capital of Thimpu, S. L. Gunasekera was sent along with Mark Fernando, both at that time upwardly mobile legal eagles, to be a part of the negotiating team.
Gunasekara was also previously assigned a secret file on violence in the North while serving in the Attorney General's Department, and then, when runaway political ambitions of the LTTE were manifest, S.L. was able to put his experience to good effect. Gunasekara leads a nationalist movement aimed at helping Sinhalese victims of the civil war and soldiers fighting it.
Gunasekara, a civil lawyer who lives in his well-appointed digs in Colombo 8, is identified by the LTTE sympathizers and sometimes by a larger swathe of liberal minded Tamils and Sinhalese as a hawk of quite unrelenting proportions.
A former Editor of the Davasa, Mr Gunasekara is a bi-lingual who has nevertheless been faulted by the hard-line Sinhala lobby for accidents of birth, and other incidental upshots from a sheltered life lived as a scion of an urban and urbane family with a public school background. S. L. was educated at S. Thomas' College, Mt Lavinia, and he was born a Methodist. He claims agnosticism now.
Gunasekara has been uncompromising in career and conviction, to the point where he has refused silk as a lawyer, and also sacrificed his parliamentary seat when the SLFP changed its stand on the issue of devolution of power.
He was a founder of the Sihala Urumaya, a precursor of the current Jathika Hela Urumaya, but he then resigned from this outfit as well, claiming that a Taliban like rump had taken over the party.
He went on to found the Sinhala Jathika Sangamaya which has not still found the resonance of the JHU, which makes Gunasekara what he referred to himself in a press interview once as "a voice in the wilderness”.
However, Gunasekara carries on an activist campaign to redress grievances of terrorist-affected families in Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu Trincomalee, Ampara and Polonnaruwa districts. He has written four previous books on the Sri Lankan conflict, with titles as colourfully terse and poetic such as 'Wages of Sin' and the 'Tragedy of Errors'. The other two are 'Tiger Moderates and Pandora's Package', and 'The Indo Lanka Accord - An Analysis'.
The son of late Justice E. H. T. Gunasekara, judge of the Supreme Court, S. L. naturally gravitated towards the law. It's a career that he does not necessarily adore, often saying that its hurly burly and unmentionable ways are not quite endearing to his temperament. But he has had no such hesitation jumping headlong into the political whirl, in which he has been known to be as pugnacious as his personal trademark style portends : gravelly voiced, quip-prone and utterly uncompromising. He lives like his book - you may or may not agree with him, but his politics stays the way he wants it. -
