The police had recovered a suicide jacket, four claymore mines, three parcels containing around 12kg of explosives, two packets of 9 mm ammunition and two battery packs which were wrapped in a Sinhala newspaper published on January 29, 2008.

These items were found in a house in Vallakulam, Chavakachcheri in the Jaffna district last week. The discovery was fortuitous in that it followed Police intervention in a domestic dispute that led to a routine search of a house there.

The critical question that arises is whether these explosives were a remnant of the Eelam war or whether they have been brought to Chavakachcheri subsequently. If it is the latter, it raises a whole gamut of questions with a central theme: are the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) regrouping?

Petty political advantage

It is incumbent upon the government to answer these questions honestly and provide as much information as possible to the public - within the constraints of discussing a sensitive national security issue. By the same token, it is the duty of the Opposition to act responsibly while raising pertinent questions, instead of attempting to gain a petty political advantage that would in the long run be harmful to the country's interests. Unfortunately, both the government and the opposition have been found wanting in this regard.

A judicial inquiry in to the matter is underway. This week, Colombo Additional Magistrate Aruni Attygala ordered the Terrorist Investigations Division (TID) to obtain a report from the Government Analyst regarding the explosives. Further magisterial inquiry has been fixed for April 20.

The government's official response has come mostly in the form of views expressed by Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi. Addressing a press conference, Secretary Hettiarachchi said there is a "huge gap" between national security and the discovery of these explosives. He appeared to discount the possibility of an emerging threat of terrorism suggesting that this could be a 'left over' from the war era and adding that discoveries of such explosives have been reported frequently in recent years, since the conclusion of the Eelam war.

Threat to national security

Hettiarachchi's pronouncements- especially when the matter is still under investigation- appear premature at best and that has had the opposition up in arms. While what the Defence Secretary has stated is indeed correct, he conveys the impression that matter has already been determined. This has allowed the opposition- mostly, the self-proclaimed 'Joint Opposition'- to seize the issue to try and embarrass the government.

Leading the charge, as usual, has been Jathika Nidahas Peramuna (JNP) leader Wimal Weerawansa who appears to have done exactly the opposite of what the Defence Secretary did: he appears to have come to the conclusion that the explosives are indeed a recent phenomenon and therefore, it surely follows that the LTTE is up and running once again!

Not content with that, Weerawansa has called for Defence Secretary Hettiarachchi's resignation. Sri Lanka would have been in danger if Hettiarachchi had been in office during the war years because he has interpreted this incident as not being a threat to the national security, Weerawansa argues. Launching a tirade against a government official who cannot officially respond is not the best of strategies but then, Weerawansa hardly has a reputation for taking the moral high ground on such issues.

Also fishing in troubled waters was former Minister G.L. Peiris. Now out of office and out of Parliament, it appears as if Peiris is keen to seize any issue to gain some publicity for himself. Peiris said the Government was attempting to hide the truth and had provided false information regarding the discovery. There was information that the explosives were prepared to being sent to Wellawatte, Peiris claimed.

If Weerawansa had been critical and playing to the gallery to secure a political advantage, Peiris' comments are more damning and unbecoming of someone who was a Professor of Law, a Vice-Chancellor and a Minister of Justice. While it is well known in political circles that Peiris has long eschewed playing the gentleman in politics, his comments still came as a surprise because it amounted to scaremongering at a time the country has embarked on the difficult road to reconciliation.

Unfortunately, the government's response to Peiris was also amateurish. Cabinet spokesman and Minister Gayantha Karunatilaka declared at a press briefing that Peiris must be questioned over the utterances he had made as he "apparently had vital information on this detection in advance". And sure enough, a few days later Peiris was questioned for two hours by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) over his remarks.

If indeed, Peiris needed to be interrogated on account of the comments he had made, that could have been handled professionally by the Police. With Minister Karunatilaka first declaring that he should be questioned and the Police then doing just that, it conveys the impression that this is all a political exercise, while the main issue- whether there is a real and present danger to national security- is being ignored.

In fact, Peiris would have enjoyed the whole exercise of being summoned to the CID to record his statement. It casts him in the role of victim and enables him to say, 'see, instead of investigating the explosives, they are harassing me'. And of course, for any politician out of power, any publicity is good publicity.

On the contrary, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa's comments on the issue came as a welcome surprise. Rajapaksa frequently claims credit for ending the Eelam war and would have been expected to joint the chorus from the Joint Opposition ringing alarm bells in the South of the country claiming that the LTTE has raised its head again.

Discovery of explosives

Instead, Rajapaksa has been rather restrained in his comments. The former President has said that the discovery of explosives should not be regarded as something trivial and that suitable action should be taken to dispel the suspicion and the fear that is now emerging as a result.

It is essential that the public be kept informed of the actual security situation, Rajapaksa has suggested. It is to Rajapaksa's credit that he has stopped short of blaming the government or calling for resignations and perhaps the years he spent directing the war effort has led to this mature response.

Meanwhile, officially the matter is still under investigation. Sri Lankans are none the wiser as to whether the explosives discovered were of recent origin or dating back to the war years. The general public, once bitten twice shy after suffering thirty years of war where the suicide bomber was a frequent occurrence, will be understandably perturbed.

It would be in the government's own interests in the long term to expedite investigations and reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It would pay to take the public in to their confidence rather than trying to gloss over the issue or dismiss it lightly. Similarly, the Opposition too must act responsibly, instead of recklessly, because war is too serious a matter to be left to politicians alone. We have seen little of this from both sides ever since that explosive detection in Chavakachcheri.

(dailynews.lk)