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| Cyril Ramaphosa |
Editorial, The Sunday Times
The
visit of the Acting President of South African is shrouded in mystery;
and the more the Government tries to explain the visit, the more curious
it gets. They say that foreign experts usually rush in to find
out and then leave just as quickly before they are found out. Foreign
correspondents who come to the ‘Third World’ with pre-conceived notions
are nick-named ‘Running Johns’ — or ‘Running Janes’ as the case may be.
What can one say then about the visiting South African Acting President
Cyril Ramaphosa?
The Sri Lankan Government was coy with
what he was doing here. The Minister of External Affairs was at pains
to say Ramaphosa was neither a ‘mediator’ nor a ‘facilitator’. The
Minister said what Ramaphosa was not, not what he was, except to say he
was here ‘for an exchange of views’. We may ask, what views?
The
Minister also put a gag order on the South African High Commissioner in
Colombo preventing him from speaking about the visit. What was there to
hide if it was merely to exchange views? It appears that the entire
episode is being down-played by the Government. Even the official
statement made in Parliament in response to a query from the Opposition
did not reveal much.
What the Sri Lankan Government is
straining to do is not to give the impression that the South African
Acting President is interfering in the internal affairs of this country,
and that his visit here was just a routine non-controversial one. It is
ironic, however, that while the United Nations Human Rights Council
(UNHRC) investigations team is being labelled as intrusive, the South
African VIP’s visit is not.
No doubt there is a
difference in the two, but the Government must come clean with the
objectives of the South African dignitary’s visit. The South Africans
themselves seem to want to downplay the importance of the visit and
thereby deflect the hype by saying their main purpose was to see their
national cricketers wallop the locals. But in Jaffna, Mr. Ramaphosa has
told the Northern Chief Minister that the South African initiative was
to complement the Geneva UNHRC agenda on Sri Lanka and the Indian
process aimed at pushing for further devolution.
The
common belief, however, is that Mr. Ramaphosa’s assignment is to
kick-start stalled talks between the Government and the Tamil National
Alliance, or to cajole the TNA to attend the Parliamentary Select
Committee meetings on the subject of devolution. But will a new
‘salesman’ selling the same product succeed?
The Government
arguably sees this with the twin objective of fending off Indian
pressure to implement the 13th Amendment “and more” as promised to them
by the President on the one hand, and to buy time with the international
community, to give the impression that it has taken its demands for
greater autonomy to the minority Tamils in the North seriously – at
least till the next election.
What is unfortunate, to
say the least, is that after 66 years of political Independence, Sri
Lanka has to look to a relatively new nation to solve its domestic
problems. What is even more unfortunate is that given the opportunity to
right several wrongs, and get back on track, through the
recommendations of the LLRC (Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation
Commission), the political will to do so was absent and the opportunity
squandered. This has put the country in the plight it is in now.
To
expect the South African initiative to save the day for the Government
is to expect too much. The South Africans are heavily influenced by the
Tamil lobby in that country. We saw glimpses of this from one individual
– the outgoing UNHRC chief. Additionally, the South Africans have it in
their psyche that the minorities are being oppressed. This apparently
stems from their experience during the apartheid era.
It
is not that one must not seek outside assistance to solve what has
become chronic domestic problems. In today’s globalised world, this is
not uncommon or unusual. Sri Lanka is surely independent enough to open
its windows to outside experiences without being blown away by the wind.
If the South African initiative is the bridge between the TNA and the
Government, so be it.
However, what is in question is
the Government’s credibility. This question arises after it was
discovered that despite the Government-sponsored brouhaha at home and
the vituperative attacks on the Darusman (UNSG’s) Report as an
interference in the country’s internal affairs, the same Government sent
a delegation secretly to New York to meet Darusman and company to argue
Sri Lanka’s case.
The question therefore is; what is
the South African Acting President’s real brief. The President is
reported to have told the visiting VIP that he expects to solve the
political question in Sri Lanka with continued assistance from India’s
new Government and that he was confident the northern issues can be
settled as well. He, however, said he was open to ideas from countries
with similar experiences. But why then is the Government unable to make
its position clear to the people.