When Prof Uyangoda’s criticism of the government Peace Secretariat was brought to my attention a couple of weeks ago, my initial reaction was surprise. I have known him as a balanced intellectual, slow to blame let alone hurl invective; not the Prince Hamlet of the peace industry but more an attendant lord perhaps, as he was during President Kumaratunga’s peace negotiations in Jaffna, kindly and avuncular.
What then had upset him so much, not only to call us a War Secretariat, but to declare, with condescension unusual in one generally modest and circumspect, that we wrote ‘reasonably good combative English’?
Why the unusual adjective? What had we done?
A grant of 20 million rupees to the LTTE
I am still not sure, but some glimmerings of an answer came to me when I finally received the accounts of one of the many funding operations arranged by the last government in connection with the peace process. This was a UNDP grant, signed for by Bradman Weerakoon, Secretary to the Prime Minister and Commissioner General for the Coordination of Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation, and also by our External Resources Department. The agreement was signed on 19th December 2003, and in critiquing it I should make it crystal clear that I do not blame the UNDP for signing or acting on such an agreement, since it was clearly a project that had government approval.
It is odd however that this project was signed in December 2003, when the political situation was volatile, when compromise between the President and the Prime Minister seemed unlikely, and when the fruits of intransigence were likely to be a General Election. Why then was Bradman so anxious to sign an agreement designed to ‘Strengthen Information Capacities for the Peace Process’?
The answer may be connected with a mindset that has tried to declare that Mahinda Rajapakse won the Presidential election only by offering millions to the Tigers.
I have long believed that, when people make outrageous charges, whether or not in good faith, this is generally because the practices they highlight are those they themselves are used to. And here, to my mind, was proof of this, for what Bradman Weerakoon was signing for, presumably on behalf of the Prime Minister who had appointed him to such exalted positions, was a project designed to provide over 20 million rupees worth of goods and services to the LTTE Peace Secretariat. The whole project was for $600,000 (c. 60 million rupees), of which over a third was for the LTTE Secretariat.
The same amount was in theory for the government Peace Secretariat, but nearly two thirds of that was for civil society organizations.
There was also about 9 million for a Muslim Peace Advisory Unit, which then seems to have been housed in the Prime Minister’s office, 4 million for joint activities, and the rest for management.
Whether the initiative came from Bradman or his master or someone else, it was a masterly stroke. Not only do you in effect give Rs 20 million to the LTTE just before an election, you make the poor UN do this so that you suffer no loss yourself.
I should note that I say advisedly that these funds were given in effect to the LTTE. The project document claims that the LTTE planned to set up regional and district Peace Secretariats, a claim also repeated to SCOPP even later, in requesting SCOPP assistance with providing vehicles. We have no record of such Secretariats, and the UN indeed now notes that ‘this activity has not taken place to-date’.
However I have been told by the SLMM, though without certainty, that they believe one or two such secretariats were set up, but functioned as such only briefly before being turned into political offices. And leaving that aside, as has been made crystal clear in many instances, the LTTE simply did not bother to maintain any distinction between its various agencies or claim that any of them were independent. In a dispensation in which all law are made with the approval of the National Leader, there can be no doubt that the various institutions that benefited from this grant were under the direct control of the LTTE and its leader.