President Postpones Negotiations with Tamils

As mentioned before, a true “victory” in Sri Lanka will come not from the military defeat of the Tigers, but from a decision by the government to pass legislation in such a way that Tamils no longer feel oppressed and marginalized. When all Sinhalese and Tamils can more or less coexist without seeing the existence of the other as a threat to their own existence, then the government can say  “We (all Sri Lankan people) have won.”

Sadly, President Rajapakse has essentially and blatantly turned this vision into a political ploy. In an interview with Indian newspaper The Hindu, Rajapakse stated that he was going to hold off conciliating with Tamils until after his (hopefully, for him) reelection in November 2011. What, is he going to hold this over our heads to make sure we do the “right thing” and reelect him? It’s as if we’re children and he’s saying “If you behave for the rest of the day, I’ll get you ice cream,” except the “rest of the day” is actually more than two years, and the “ice cream” is the chance for Sri Lanka to be a safe, peaceful country instead of a bitterly-divided war zone.

What needs to happen is that the majority voters need to hold their president accountable. It’d be an easy thing for Sinhalese voters to elect him out of office if they thought he was a totalitarian bully doing not what’s best for all Sri Lankans, but what’s best for his own cultural group and himself. Rajapakse counts on his “own” people to stand by him no matter what, and even if all Tamils are against him, he can still win.

The root of the problem is this: many Sri Lankans view the Us vs. Them dichotomy as existing between Tamils and Sinhalese, with the government and Sinhalese citizens on one side, and the militant rebels and Tamil citizens on the other. This is the wrong way to look at it, and the cause of the self-perpetuating cycle of violence. The proper dichotomy is this: The People vs. the Government/Tigers. The Sri Lankan people need to make a commitment to peace and hold the government accountable for doing the same, now that the Tigers are defunct as an official force. To Sri Lankan Tamils: you should be siding with your Sinhalese brothers against the government, not with the Tigers against the Sinhalese. Sinhalese folks: it’s not the Tamil citizens who are your enemies, it was the militant Tigers. Stop taking the government’s side no matter what. Side with your fellow citizens, no matter what ethnicity they are, and hold your government responsible for their failures to create peace.