Thus your question is the riposte unanswerable by liberals – values are at the end of day, the ultimate relative concept, and the liberal is defeated by his very defence of freedom of choice.

This is a profound question meriting great attention, and perhaps we may have the opportunity of doing so sometime in more congenial circumstances and climes.

Surely you make a fundamental mistake though – when did academic credentials, experience and intelligence become a measure for sense and sensibility? Surely some of most misguided politicians and policymakers have been the most educated as well?

Appropos your question whether those who are committed Tamil nationalists in parliament are absolved from envisioning Tamil rights and Tamil dignity sans the LTTE, my own experience is that one has only to read between the lines of the rhetoric to answer that with a resounding ‘yes’.

As for your final observation, I am tempted to say “Vive le Mervyn!”, but that would be to more than dignify addle-pated nincompoopery – it would be in thoroughly bad taste given his extra-parliamentary antics, for example, in the small matter of freedom of expression and the media. Ditto JVP and its breathtaking hypocrisy in having the gall to pontificate to anyone on parliamentary politics. But perhaps most odious, as Publius indicates, is the example of those in the mainstream Opposition – some of whom have the academic credentials, experience and intelligence to qualify for membership in the best Parliaments in world, but for unforgivable moral failure, executive fetishism and lack of integrity. This, you will agree, is most unfortunate.

Point taken – I think that (most regrettably) the next best speeches in parliament are possibly made by the JVP, although as you say, the timbre of their loquacity leaves much to be desired in the form of content that celebrates a larger Sri Lankan nationalism.

Seen another way, is it possible to think worse of the TNA for the very fact that they are above the fray? In choosing a seemingly more dignified erudite approach, they are even more isolated in word and action when compared to what the LTTE is doing on the ground in the North & East. This is surely an indictment against all parliamentarians – the implosion of this country is because there is no real accountability in parliament to actions conducted by the Executive with his limited imagination. However, does this absolve those who are committed Tamil nationalists in parliament from envisioning Tamil rights and Tamil dignity sans the LTTE? I think Blacker asked a similar question here – http://www.groundviews.org/2007/01/17/do-tigers-swim-in-the-sea/.

Put I think the writer would agree with me on this point – I just go a step further and say that glib gloss on the Hansard is no guard against the regression of peace in Sri Lanka today. Coupled with the inability and / or unwillingness of the TNA in parliament to envision securing Tamil rights without the LTTE (much as they are recognised, celebrated even, as the one force that brought the argument on Tamils to a head) and the equal inability / unwillingness and continuing reprehensible behaviour of the misguided Sinhala nationalists in parliament, parliament today is an echo chamber that sits in isolation of the larger events as they unfold with a life of their own in Sri Lanka.

Besides, the Sinhala MP’s in parliament may be less erudite, but tragically, isn’t their very crude, crass and thoroughly distasteful intercourse in parliament more a source of cheap entertainment?

Personalities and parties that now comprise the TNA were pushed, nay shoved, into this course, not as first resort or as willingly as Southern nationalists would have it. They were impelled into this with tremendous personal and political sacrifice, when the peaceful politics of the old Tamil parties were met with total rejection by the State.

The LTTE is not absolved from any measure or standard of decent conduct that the State is subject to. But where do you have a Southern parliamentarian who is willing or able to make that case in Parliament, without resorting to crude nationalism or militaristic grandstanding?

The writer’s argument, as I see it, is about the role of Parliament and parliamentarians in a constitutional democracy – not about letting the LTTE off the hook for any of their eggregious human rights violations, past, present and continuing; nor the LTTE’s thoroughly reprehensible attitude to political pluralism.

That the TNA articulates not just a Tamil nationalist, but the LTTE’s definition of Tamil nationalism is well known. This makes it all the more regrettable that the erudition, personal charm, and wit of the likes of “Sam” and even Gajen Ponnanbalam don’t hold the LTTE accountable for their actions in the same vein as they do the SL State.

When the author says Mr. Sampanthan captured “the State in a relentless spotlight, exposing its moral cowardice in the unwillingness to address its own political infeasibility while resorting to ham-fisted coercion to impose its unwelcome will.” he neglects to perhaps ask why the LTTE is also not judged accordingly, by these very same measures?