The reason I disagreed with Jehan Perera when around a month and a half ago he said that the dissidents would bring into the government a) their significant CR / negotiations experience b) their pro-federal bent was that I don’t believe either motivates them or will play any significant role in the timbre of their supine participation in the President’s machinations. My very brief article – http://www.groundviews.org/2007/01/21/crossing-over-into-chaos/ – that I want to expand / revise following GL’s revelation, is that the central factor for the crossing over was power and a pragamatic, realist approach to secure that which they would have been denied under Ranil’s leadership of the UNP for many years to come. As noted by other political commentators, not a single one of the dissidents have been given a portfolio directly associated with conflict transformation.

Oslo is (was?!) important as a statement of principles, though marring it is the perhaps never to be verified stories of coercion and last minute wrangling that led to agreement on the text, which is perhaps the seedy underbelly of Norwegian mediation of which the less known the better. Commitment to the text aside, the content and spirit of the text were to me the important motivational foundation for the strengthening of the debate on federalism, though in reality, the declaration worked both ways and to concentrate on it as much as we did without speaking of federalism in a larger / broader sense was a strategic folly.

It is more useful to consider ways to speak of federalism and the absolute, enduring need for the devolution of power to address not just the Tamil national question, but also that which plagues the South in terms of under-development, corruption etc.

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peace talks with ltte claiming to be sole representative is not compatible with ‘liberal’ principles i have heard of, since by definition that means end of democracy to tamils. so whoever were in ‘aghast disbelief ‘ at professor’s statement were not liberals. and they have long since ‘perfidiously and appallingly retreated from principle’ by supporting the sole representative claim.