During the election campaign of November 2005 that saw him scrape through to a narrow victory, Mahinda Rajapakse promised an "honourable peace" with the LTTE. This was in contrast to what he and his nationalist allies described as the "bended-knees peace" of his rival, former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Rajapakse also promised to present a viable political solution to the ethnic conflict within three months. On 1 May, more than 18 months later, the president's party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, finally unveiled this proposal. Unfortunately, it falls woefully short of meeting even halfway the demands of the Tamil minority in general, let alone the LTTE.
There are three key requirements to finding a negotiated settlement to Sri Lanka's three decade-long ethnic conflict. The first, and most difficult, is to persuade the LTTE to enter the mainstream of democratic politics and to renounce its use of violence. The other two involve the extent of Sri Lankan territory that could be regarded as under Tamil habitation, and the quantum of power that a regional government set up for that territory should possess. In Sri Lankan parlance, these two issues are known as those of the 'unit of devolution' and whether the constitution should be unitary or federal.
While the proposals do not even touch upon the thorny issue of persuading the LTTE to renounce violence, the approach to power-sharing is also less than satisfactory. Proponents of a negotiated settlement to the ethnic conflict have argued that the missing ingredient in reviving the peace process is a consensual political proposal that could lead to power-sharing. President Rajapakse appeared to have been of this view as well, which was why, shortly after his election, he set up the All Party Conference to develop a solution to the conflict. And this is why many were hoping for a more imaginative and courageous package than the SLFP's proposals presented.
With regard to the unit of devolution, the aspirations of the Tamil polity are that the Northern and Eastern provinces, which amount to nearly 30 percent of the country, should be considered the Tamil homeland. The Indo-Lanka Peace Accord of 1987, and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that followed the signing of the accord, gave a degree of legal recognition to this Tamil demand by merging the two provinces, albeit on a temporary basis. This merger was accompanied by the requirement of a referendum in the Eastern province within a year, but that never took place. This year, the Supreme Court stepped in to de-merge the two provinces, much to the chagrin of Tamils.