{"id":38625,"date":"2012-04-15T19:12:48","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T19:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=38625"},"modified":"2012-04-21T20:47:25","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T20:47:25","slug":"the-crisis-in-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-crisis-in-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crisis In Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

Diplomacy is supposed to be a profession, an activity or skill of managing international relations, usually by a country\u2019s representatives abroad.\u00a0\u00a0\u2018Manage\u2019 is a tricky word, though, pregnant with diplo-speak if you will.\u00a0\u00a0It is essentially about securing advantage, and safeguarding and furthering interests without rupturing relations.<\/p>\n

Some countries, if they have guns and bucks, have the inside edge in these matters and can get away with anything, murder included.\u00a0\u00a0Some machinations by some have to be treated with grin-and-bear by some others.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s what international political economy is about.\u00a0\u00a0Some arm-twist, some wince and say \u2018thank you\u2019.<\/div>\n

So when Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State sends an\u00a0Avurudu<\/em>\u00a0message about democracy and human rights, it is not about either but about having bucks and guns to say the most outrageous things.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the same principle that was evident in the \u2018diplomatic\u2019 moves of the Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka with respect to the \u2018abduction\u2019 of Premakumar Gunaratnam\u00a0alias<\/em>\u00a0Kumar Mahattaya\u00a0alias<\/em>\u00a0Ratnayake Mudiyanselage Dayalal\u00a0alias<\/em>\u00a0Noel Mudalige.<\/p>\n

Now the Government\u2019s version of the incident and its shy-making regarding abductions hardly hold water and most certainly make embarrassing reading regarding the law and order situation.\u00a0\u00a0While one can be sympathetic about the difficulties of governing a country that is under threat from within and without, it must be mentioned that no one, least of all politicians, expects running a country to be easy.\u00a0\u00a0Politicians benefit. Enormously.\u00a0\u00a0If managing difficulties is a price to pay then it must be paid.\u00a0\u00a0One would say it\u2019s a \u2018small price\u2019, all things considered, except that securing the benefits directly and negatively impacts governability, not to mention that it severely compromises law and order.<\/p>\n

In short, while the government finds itself divested of several headaches, the explanations have generated more questions than answers.\u00a0\u00a0Fortunately for the government, Gunaratnam\u2019s apparent penchant for cloak-dagger politics has not resulted in any public sympathy for the man or his party.\u00a0\u00a0The script, if there was one, has been played to perfection; a thorn has been removed and a potentially disruptive political gathering has had its coming-out party pooped.\u00a0Complicity in the \u2018un-thorning\u2019 seems apparent and that can only boost the enemies of the Government, here and abroad, especially in the context of the kind of \u2018diplomacy\u2019 that took place in Geneva last month.<\/p>\n

What is more interesting, however, is the moves by the Australian High Commission, moves that are best understood if boot was on the other foot.\u00a0\u00a0Imagine an Australian leaving the country under suspicious circumstances including need to evade arrest, violating\u00a0\u00a0all immigration regulations, obtaining citizenship in Sri Lanka, then re-entering Australia, overstaying his visa, and launching a political party along with others who are associated with a political party that has an insurrectionary history.\u00a0\u00a0Imagine the Sri Lankan High Commission being privy to his operations and knowing that he used various aliases.\u00a0\u00a0Need we say more about how flat or otherwise global politics is?<\/p>\n

It is in the context of these realities that Sri Lanka cannot afford anything less that utmost professionalism from her diplomatic corps.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t have bickering.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t have braggadocio.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t play the blaming game about a game which was scripted in ways that we just could not win.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t have ambassadors who are more interested in self-aggrandizing.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t have people batting for India or the USA or some other country.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t continue to have political appointees running our missions abroad.\u00a0\u00a0There must be strict guidelines about what is ok and what\u2019s not.\u00a0\u00a0Above all, there must be a cogent policy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That policy must be informed by national interest, first and foremost, and be crafted in securing the best possible outcomes in a power-skewed world where we don\u2019t call the shots.<\/p>\n

The bottom line, however, is that if the national house is not in order, then international moves can only be expected to flounder.\u00a0\u00a0The \u2018National House\u2019 has a king post called Constitution and is made of law, order, institutional safeguards that ensure accountability and transparency and so on.\u00a0\u00a0That \u2018base\u2019 is shaky and has been so for decades.\u00a0\u00a0The Government can no longer postpone repairs.\u00a0\u00a0The people cannot afford that work to be outsourced.<\/div>\n
http:\/\/malindawords.blogspot.co.uk<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":38626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Crisis In Diplomacy - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-crisis-in-diplomacy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Crisis In Diplomacy - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-crisis-in-diplomacy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-04-15T19:12:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-04-21T20:47:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Malinda-colombotelegraph1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1136\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1643\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-crisis-in-diplomacy\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-crisis-in-diplomacy\/\",\"name\":\"The Crisis In Diplomacy - 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