The Peace Process and the Excluded Public

Sri Lanka's 5th peace process was characterised by being narrowly confined to formal negotiations between the principal protagonists to the conflict. The negotiations between the United National Front(UNF) government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) excluded a broad range of elite and popular actors in political and civil society (Liyanage 2008, Rupesinghe 2006b, Uyangoda and Perera 2003). Sinhalese political parties such as Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), Tamil parties such as Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) and Muslim political parties such as Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) were excluded from the formal negotiations. In civil society there was no independent representation of trade unions, religious communities, popular movements, non-governmental organisations or mass media in the formal negotiations and no parallel process of dialogue and reconciliation. This design was a pragmatic adaptation to the military-territorial balance of power between two warring parties that was further institutionalised through the GOSL–LTTE negotiations over cessation of hostilities, implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement, humanitarian relief and rehabilitation and political conflict resolution. Although the conflict resolution process revolved around contested issues of state and market reforms, there were no institutionalised channels for inclusion of other political actors, civil society associations or the public in general.

Despite this exclusion of stakeholders within the political elite and in civil society, the peace process was nevertheless based on the assumption that it would deliver popular support and disarm political spoilers.