Abusing the Ceasefire

Within three months of Wickremesinghe's assuming office as Prime Minister a Ceasefire Agreement had been signed with the Tigers. For this purpose the Norwegian government had acted as facilitators, and they were now responsible for a Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission to ensure that the Ceasefire was observed. Over the next couple of years the SLMM had its work cut out, with their records indicating that the Tigers had violated the Agreement on over a thousand occasions. The record of the government was substantially better.

This precision in recording suggests that the Norwegians aimed at objectivity. This was not the perception of most Sri Lankans who felt that the CFA had been designed in the interests of the Tigers. Thus they saw the LTTE taking control of the mechanisms of government in what had previously been government controlled territory, while the government had no role in the North and East in which the Tigers had held sway.

Such perceptions may not have been fair to the Norwegians. Certainly many of those involved started from an assumption that the two parties to the agreement were equal in stature; there was a tendency to assume that morally the Tigers were superior, given perceptions fuelled by Tamil refugees in Norway (politically influential) that Sri Lankan governments were majoritarian and racist. More importantly, Ranil Wickremesinghe's government expected such an approach. Wickremesinghe was determined not to rock the boat to ensure Tiger support during the interim period before he could assume Presidential powers.