Unasked and unanswered questions will trip talks

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) submitted a long list of concerns to the Government.  Most of these relate to day-to-day issues that they believed require urgent attention.  Many of them are legitimate even though not all of them can be said to be relevant only to the Northern and Eastern Provinces or the Tamil people living in these areas.  The TNA, given its ideological position, does have a legitimate case for inserting into the wish-list elements such as police and land powers, and the merging the two provinces.

The focus has been, understandably, on the last, i.e. the most contentious of issues.  The Government has taken the position that these issues are irrelevant whereas the TNA claims that discussions are not limited to them, that Minister Keheliya Rambukwella’s articulation of the Government’s position is therefore misleading with respect to the status of the ‘talks’.

Given how crucial these matters are, however, one can conclude that with respect to ‘reconciliation’ and ‘resolution’, there is or will be an impasse.  Part of the reason of course is the crimes of omission and commission in the matter of articulating grievance and aspiration, both by the ‘aggrieved’ and well-intentioned and/or mischievous ‘brokers’, local and international.  Reconciliation for some is about the government submitting to the TNA’s proposals while for others it is about development and dropping all demands for devolution.

Those who were banking on the LTTE’s (largely inflated) might to wrest vast swathes of land and half the coast now talk of Tamils being impatient to move on, ‘moving on’ meaning ‘securing the North and East’.  Forgotten is the fact that a community and a nation that was held hostage began ‘moving on’ the moment the hostage-taker was removed from the equation.  It must nevertheless be acknowledged that aspirations, however outrageous and impractical they are, are not easily erased or abandoned.  For that to happen, a true sense of belonging to a nation has to be forged.  ‘Development’ will not do the trick for development is a responsibility on the part of governments and not an exercise in charity.