The Future is Uncertain
Victor Ivan finds the President immobilised. He cannot abandon the JVP after the support it gave him at the presidential election, yet dropping it would mean placing full faith in Ranil Wickremesinghe, whom he does not trust; and a president dependent on the JVP is trapped in its framework, as Chandrika Kumaratunga discovered. Neither party can transform the other, so nothing moves without the JVP’s consent. Ivan sees the same deadlock between the government and the LTTE, each blocked by India — which will permit neither the oppression of Tamils in the north and east nor a separate state. He puts the negotiating gap in a simile: the LTTE asked for tens of thousands of buns, was offered thousands, refused, and is now invited to the table for one. A government proposing decentralisation within a unitary framework is offering less than the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact of 1958, and cannot raise the offer while the JVP and Hela Urumaya hold it in place. With no negotiated route left, Ivan warns the LTTE may settle accounts by war and may seek borders drawn by community — an attack on the Sinhalese of the East making it impossible for Tamils to live in the south, and opening the way to massacre and mutual slaughter.