A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, July 9, 2017
The Maha Sangha’s Opposition, Tamils & Mobilizing Support For Devolution
While
constitutional reforms are being discussed by the Steering Committee,
there are forces like the Joint Opposition led by the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa that have started to whip up anti-devolution sentiments in the South. Adding strength to these forces, the Mahanayakas recently
declared that the country does not need a new constitution. We will get
to know in the referendum, if and when it takes place, how the
Buddhists in this country perceive the Mahanayakas’ position on the new
constitution. We do not need to jump to conclusions about this now. We
know that a large number of Sinhala-Buddhists voted against Mahinda
Rajapaksa in 2015 when he was widely perceived as the invincible leader
of Sinhala-Buddhists. Let’s not be too optimistic either. The government
that is spearheading the constitutional reforms has failed miserably on
the economic front. Privatization of basic services such as health and
education and the neo-liberalization of the country’s economy have
accelerated under this regime. The Tamil National Alliance, the
opposition in Parliament and the major Tamil party involved in drafting
the constitution, has also failed to participate in the struggles led by
the poor, the landless, the dispossessed, workers and students against
the neo-liberalization of
Sri Lanka’s economy and thereby alienated itself from the Southern
constituency. The party also did not rise to the occasion swiftly when
floods hit the South recently and during the Meethotamulla tragedy.
In
a context where the Joint Opposition is trying to stoke ethnic passions
while projecting itself as a crusader against neo-liberalism, the
Southern people’s opposition to the economic failures of the government
may easily translate into a protest vote against devolution in the
referendum. Between 2002 and 2004, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s
government initiated peace talks with the LTTE along with a set of
neo-liberal reforms. The UNP government was defeated in the next general
elections held in 2004.
While
the economic and political problems that plague the country are
intertwined and the latter are sometimes seen as an outcome or
expression of the former, one cannot deny that ethno-religious
chauvinism has its own force too and that such chauvinism exists among
minorities as well. To defeat the chauvinist forces that are against
devolution, progressive forces in the country should immediately
inaugurate a vigorous campaign for a constitution that ensures
devolution of powers to the provinces and makes the state one that
respects pluralism and diversity at all its levels including in the
peripheries. There are some crucial questions about the constitution
that we need to discuss forthrightly as part of this campaign: Will
those who are involved in drafting the new constitution come up with
proposals that ensure the devolution of important powers like land and
police to the provinces? Will they also ensure that such powers cannot
be taken back by the center unilaterally without the consent of the
provinces, especially the two provinces where the Tamil-speaking people
form the majority and have demanded regional autonomy for many decades?
Will there be mechanisms or clauses in the constitution that guarantee
that the judiciary cannot interpret the constitution as one that favors a
centrist or unitary state even if the word unitary (ekiya rajya) is
going to appear in the constitution in Sinhala as we are told? Will the
state be secular? Will there be mechanisms to protect the rights and
freedoms of the country’s ethnic and religious minorities and
non-territorial minorities such as Muslims in the Northern Province or
Buddhists in the Eastern Province? How would devolution benefit the
minorities within a province, the working classes, the landless
populations, students, women, oppressed caste communities? These
questions revolve around what we generally consider as the national
question or the minority question or devolution. These questions led to a
30-year civil war in this country and we lost thousands of precious
lives because of our failure to resolve these questions in a just
manner.
There
are many other issues and questions that the constitution should
address including the executive presidency, electoral reforms,
socio-economic rights, the rights of women and sexual minorities and
disabled populations. I have excluded them from this post because there
seems to be a general consensus on many of these issues across
religious, ethnic, cultural and regional divides. The political leaders
should act on them now in a fair manner as asked by the people during
the public consultation sessions held last year.
It
appears very clearly that the Tamil political leadership is not going
to insist on the repeal of the constitutional clause that offers
Buddhism the foremost place (a major concession on the part of the
Tamils and other minorities in my view); nor is it going to demand the
merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces although it will maintain
merger as its stated position. Will the Parliament of Sri Lanka offer a
constitution that is federalist in practice and spirit as I mentioned
above even if it is unitary in paper? And will the Sinhala-Buddhist
community ratify such a constitution in the referendum? Here is an
opportunity for us to move forward as a single political community that
respects pluralism and self-rule in the peripheries. Hope we will not
throw it away as we did several times in the past.
Anandasangaree’s call for a meeting between the Maha Sangha and Tamil leaders
In the wake of the Maha Sangha’s opposition to the new constitution, V. Anandasangaree,
the General Secretary of TULF, has urged the Leader of the Opposition
R. Sampanthan to form a team of representatives from different Tamil
political parties for a meeting with the Maha Sangha.
Selvam Adaikalanathan of TELO has also made a similar request. The
Federal Party under the leadership of R. Sampanthan and M.A. Sumanthiran
has repeatedly expressed its commitment to an undivided Sri Lanka since
2009. Breaking with a long-held tradition of protest, the two leaders
even attended the Independence Day celebrations in February 2015 as a
gesture towards reconciliation (not to mention all the attacks they
faced from other Tamil nationalist camps). This change of approach did
not weaken them politically among the Tamils; instead, both of them
emerged victorious in the general elections held after six months.
TNA
leaders R. Sampanthan and M.A. Sumanthiran have also urged the Tamil
community in public – both in Sri Lanka and at expatriate gatherings –
to self-introspect about the crimes committed in their name against
other communities in the past, especially during the years of militancy.
But the reciprocation from Southern political leaders was not
remarkable, to put it mildly. Some of them continued to claim that there
was zero casualty during the last stages of the war in May 2009. Only a
few leaders from the South acknowledge openly that an ethnic conflict
exists in the country or that the state needs to be secular. One needs
to admit that the TNA’s interactions with the people in the South has
been inadequate. The party could have campaigned with more earnestness
among the Sinhala communities in the different provinces to win their
trust. Its engagement with the South was too Colombo-centric. But there
is still time left and the party should activate its campaign without
delay.