In its talks with the Liberation Tigers last week, the government delegation that departed for Switzerland promising to return with a drastically modified Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), was apparently overcome by the crisp Helvetian weather and cheesy Swiss food. The hellfire and brimstone hoped for by sections of the media were conspicuously lacking. Team Leader Nimal Siripala de Silva made sure he was photographed beaming cordially at a scowling Anton Balasingham, whose hand he was shaking with a warmth that must have raised bile in the stomachs of stalwarts of the JVP and JHU.

For his part, Mahinda Rajapakse spent most of his time in the situation room set up at Temple Trees, to be in constant contact with his negotiating team. With the dexterity of an accomplished puppeteer, this master political prestidigitator was careful also to invite the JVP to sit in on the proceedings. Having had its chance to have its say even as the talks proceeded, it will be doubly difficult for the reds now to claim they could have been done better. Those of them who swotted their Shakespeare must now feel they’ve been hoisted by their own petard.

The talks have come also as a coup for Mahinda Rajapakse, who was finding it extremely difficult to admit to the Sri Lankan electorate that his earlier opposition to the 2002 CFA was purely opportunistic. In the course of his election campaign, desperate for support from the influential nationalist minority represented by the JVP and JHU, Rajapakse repeatedly slammed the CFA as being a sellout to the Tigers. Raising his arms as if to invoke the gods, again and again he bewailed his inability, as a result of the CFA, to travel to Tiger-controlled areas accompanied by his armed bodyguards. "How could it be that there are places in this country to which the president of Sri Lanka cannot go with his security staff?" he would thunder rhetorically, repeatedly claiming that the CFA was not just an insult to sovereignty, but also contrary to law and ultra vires the constitution.

With the Swiss talks out of the way, it is clear that Rajapakse was kidding all along, acting the part of a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Clearly, he recognised that the 2002 CFA signed between the UNP and LTTE was about as good as could be got: however, he could not say so without jeopardising his support from the JVP and JHU. Now, by sitting beside him in the situation room as the talks proceeded and failing to object, the JVP has tacitly subscribed to the outcome of the talks. And that outcome is precisely what we said all along it would be: an unqualified endorsement by the Mahinda Rajapakse administration of the 2002 CFA.

It took Rajapakse just three months to completely outwit the JVP, leaving them speechless in the face of a fait accompli whereby the government has committed itself to uphold the UNP’s hated ceasefire, and to the letter. Not one word of the original agreement has been changed, and the rhetoric about unconstitutionality and illegality has been thrown out the window to thaw out with the Alpine snow.

The JVP and JHU have once again been taken for the ride of their lives. Just as Kumaratunga won their support for the presidency in 1994 by pledging in writing to abolish the executive presidency by July 15, 1995, Rajapakse got the reds on board his campaign by pledging to defenestrate the 2002 CFA. When asked at the time about the wisdom of doing this, the would-be president would wink at his interlocutors and tell them that the rhetoric was only for the election campaign: after he was elected, it would be too late for the chauvinists to do anything about it. And that is precisely what he has done.

The JVP and JHU have been taken for suckers once again, and are now left grumbling on the sidelines, unable to oppose Rajapakse so soon without looking utterly ridiculous before their electorate, forced to smile ingratiatingly at the President even as he slits their ideological throats. It would not surprise us to learn that Wimal Weerawansa dashed off to the Hilton’s plush Spoons restaurant last Friday and ordered three helpings of humble pie with apple sauce. Even the media critics of the CFA were now on the ‘peace bandwagon’ enjoying the cool climes of Geneva and finding justification in the agreement reached by the government with the LTTE.

Not even the most picky semanticist could find in the statements issued by the government and the LTTE the slightest reservation with regard to the 2002 CFA. Nimal Siripala de Silva, like the lawyer he is, paid lip service at the outset to the JVP-JHU concerns, having been careful in his opening statement to reiterate that the CFA as it stood was both unconstitutional and illegal. All that, however, was rapidly swept under the carpet when the talks got underway.

When the joint statement came to be issued, it was plainly lacking in eyewash. It stated that the government and LTTE met in Geneva for talks on the CFA, not for talks on revising the CFA. The government went on to pledge to fully ‘uphold the CFA,’ thereby accepting unreservedly the UNPs 2002 status quo ante. By these statements, the government made it crystal clear that its earlier claims that the CFA would, e.g., compromise national security and lead to separation, were put in merely as palliatives for the JVP and JHU, to keep the mutts happy.

The final joint statement itself was held up for three hours as the Sri Lanka team engaged in feverish discussions with the President, who, wanting to save some face for his extremist allies, insisted that the talks were about the ceasefire and not the CFA. This, de Silva tried to do by saying that the original CFA itself was unconstitutional because it was not signed by the competent authority, viz., the president. The Norwegians, however, quickly pointed out that in that case Chandrika Kumaratunga had every opportunity to abrogate the agreement at any time, especially after her government received a fresh mandate in March 2004.

Not only that, President Rajapakse too, could have done likewise, when he took office in November 2005. Thus it was that Silva had no choice but to commit his side to respect and uphold the CFA, and reconfirm their commitment to fully cooperate with and respect the rulings of the SLMM. No talk now of sending the SLMM packing and having monitors drawn from the Asian region, instead.

And as for the lone ace in the government’s hand, poor Karuna too, was given the boot. While the LTTE agreed only to take all necessary measures to ensure that there will be no acts of violence against the security forces and police, the government agreed to take all necessary measures in accordance with the CFA to ensure that no armed group or person other than government security forces will carry arms or conduct armed operations. What is more, Article 1.8 of the CFA, to which the government subscribed hook, line and sinker, states that all paramilitaries will be disbanded and disarmed. Finally, as if to add insult to injury for those who insisted the talks should be in Asia, it was decided that the next round of talks (to review progress in implementing the CFA in the coming month), would take place in Geneva in April.

Where then, do the Geneva talks leave Mahinda Rajapakse? Not only has he now fully endorsed the UNP’s CFA of 2002 (which he claimed led the way to separation), but failed to extract a single concession from the Tigers. Post-Geneva, neither Rajapakse nor his ministers can say a single word against the CFA, which they have now unreservedly endorsed as valid. All talk of sovereignty, illegitimacy and paving the way to separation have now gone down the tube. The JVP and JHU have been left, to coin a phrase, katé pas. By deft sleight of hand, Rajapakse has sold them a lemon, evoking the vernacular metaphor, nangi pennala akka dunna (show the young sister and marry off the old sister).

All this comes as something of a vindication albeit too late for Ranil Wickremesinghe. It must give him smug satisfaction to see his adversary, Mahinda Rajapakse, come a full circle to agree that every word, every comma, of his CFA of 2002 is not just valid, but re-endorsed and revived four years later. Wickremesinghe argued at the time that that was the best deal he could get, and now Rajapakse has admitted to all the world that the Opposition Leader was right all along. Not only that, but the JVP, which fought furiously against both the spirit and the content of the CFA, have been left looking pretty silly, with not even one of the pre-election pledges they extracted from Mahinda Rajapakse having been honoured.

At the end of round one of this season’s ceasefire handicap, then, we have Prabha: 1, Mahinda: 0, and Ranil: did not finish.

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