Keeping Govt offices under lock : Shoo away the SoO violators
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 10, 2012 -

Deserted forest office and locked gate tell the story:: Pix - TSE

Call their bluff or shoo away the SoO violators, the groups which do not believe in sticking to the basic premises of the agreement. There should be no two ways about it.

Government offices, in this case the office of Motbung Forest Range Officer and the Koubru Forest Beat office kept under lock since September 28 following threats and intimidations from a group which is a signatory to the Suspension of Operation agreement and the farce of it all is too evident.

Time to use the very long rope given to some of these groups to pull them in and make them fall in line. It is instances like this which erode people's faith in things like peace deal or peace pact.

This is not a one off incident and the time is right to crack the whip and rein in errant members or groups.

Peace, this is the foundation on which ceasefire pacts or Suspension of Agreement or Memorandum of Settlement or whatever name one may coin, rest and forcing the closure of Government offices goes against the very understanding of working out a viable political settlement.

An indifferent Government and its agencies and armed groups which see peace deals as some sort of a license to carry out their agenda and the setting is ready to enact a series of farces under the cloak of dialogue or political negotiations.

If these do not amount to taking the people for granted, if these are not acts of creating smokescreens in an effort to cloud the reality then what would be ?

It is not so much the recalcitrance of the armed groups that is worrying or disturbing but the manner in which the Government sees nothing wrong in treating such cases with kid's gloves.

Government offices forced to lock up or down shutters from groups which are in dialogue says so many things.

Firstly there is nothing not to suggest that such groups may enjoy patronage from the political class, a class today inhabited by people with dubious antecedents.

Secondly it is indicative of a Government to whom peace deals only means holding sporadic talks with the armed groups, while turning the other way to their chicanery and in the process making a mockery of the existence of the people. v Thirdly it is also a damning statement on how the Government is ready to look the other way as long as the guns of the armed groups are not turned towards them and are instead pointed towards the public.

More like a case of ‘you scratch my back and I will scratch yours.’

It is not only the SoO groups which have taken the peace pacts as something of an official mandate to carry on with their activities blatantly but also groups which have signed a term known as ceasefire.

It is the willingness of the Government to overlook these acts of commission and omission that defies logic. Such posturings can only lend more credibility to the stand adopted by armed groups which have not responded to the call for political negotiations.

This fact would not have escaped the consciousness of the Government thus giving a more sinister turn to the soft approach adopted towards such blatant acts of violating the ground rules.