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
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, May 30, 2013
Why The 13th Amendment Is Necessary
By R.M.B Senanayake -May 30, 2013
The Government seems to be bent on amending the 13th Amendment to
the Constitution. The JHU 19th Amendment wants to repeal the entire
chapter in the 13th Amendment titled Chapter XVIIA which sets up the
Provincial Councils. In short it wants to abolish Provincial Councils.
The Government seems to want only to repeal the police powers and the
Land powers given to the Provincial Councils and to amend the clause
which requires the approval of the all the Provincial Councils to any
proposed laws which affect the functions or the Provincial Councils. It
wants to change such required approval of the Provincial Councils to
read as a majority of the Provincial Councils and not to all the
Councils.
But any unilateral changes in the 13th Amendment will only open the way
to the whole ethnic issue including the right to secession. The 13th
Amendment was the result of an agreement between the leaders of the
Sinhalese and the leaders of the Tamils. Prabakaran who wanted only Eelam was
pressurized by the Indian government to agree to the Provincial
Councils. The TNA and the other Tamil parties are no longer demanding
Eelam although they ask for 13 plus. Now by unilaterally changing the
13th Amendment we will free both the Indian government and the Tamil
leadership to canvass for an alternative solution to the Ethnic problem
including Eelam.
The grievance of the Tamil people was that they had no voice in the
governance of their areas of habitation and that there was
discrimination by the Sinhalese dominated central government both in the
allocation of funds as well as the allocation of jobs in the public
service and in the use of the Tamil language. The Tamil people in the
two Tamil majority provinces had almost no say in the decisions that
affected and shaped their lives when the whole country was governed from
the Center and decisions made at the Center were made by Sinhalese
officials and Sinhalese politicians.
Bilingualism with English as the link language is neither economical nor
practical. It is not practical since the official language is the
language of record and one can’t keep records in two languages in a
practical manner. The only economic and practical solution in my
opinion is to make Tamil the official language in the North and East and
devolve as many day to day activities of the State public services to
the Provincial Councils and use English as the link language of
communication between the Center and the Tamil speaking Provincial
Councils.
So the rationale of the 13th idea in the Amendment was to create two
levels of government so as to empower majority Tamil provinces to manage
their affairs particularly in matters of local development including
the police function and land alienation.
These provinces are constitutionally empowered to make laws through an
elected Provincial Council and they were administered through a Chief
Minister and a Cabinet of Ministers drawn from the Provincial Council,
supported by a provincial public service. The Provincial Councils have
legislative competences (both exclusive and concurrent) on most of the
local service delivery matters including agriculture, education,
community development, housing, health services. There is also a system
of local government to facilitate popular participation in governance.
In addition there is to be a developed administrative structure in the
form of provincial administration, similar to the former ‘kachcheri’ but
under the Provincial Council.
The Provincial Councils seek to empower the local communities to be
responsible for the local governance. This would address the fears of
ethnic dominance which have been expressed by the Tamils by removing
some powers and resources from the centre to the provinces.
Since the 13th Amendment was passed there have been radical changes in
the Constitution by way of the 18th Amendment. It has removed virtually
all the checks and balances on executive power thereby putting to rest
the notion of constitutionalism- limited government.
Executive power however has continued to be legitimized ostensibly
through the Constitution. The Executive however is very conscious of the
need to trace back the exercise of its absolute authority to the
original democratic Constitution despite the fact that the values of
that constitution are no longer having any impact on the exercise of
executive power today.
But the Executive Presidency doesn’t
like any dilution of power to the Provincial Councils. As long as the
ruling political party controls these Provincial Councils the writ of
the Executive President will hold even among these Councils. But this
dominance through a political party will not work in the Northern
Provincial Council. So the present regime wants to re-centralize power.
The Divineguma Law
was another law to monopolize political power in the ruling party,
by-passing the Provincial Council system with power and authority
flowing directly from the Central Government Ministry straight through
to the field officials avoiding the Provincial Council hierarchy.
Under the regime political competition has been muzzled as witnessed in
the recent questioning of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation officials for a
seminar on how to strengthen the Opposition political party. Civil
society too is increasingly intimidated, co-opted or banned from
carrying out certain activities like the promotion of human rights by
the state. Over time the state seeks to occupy the entire public sphere
crowding out both political actors and the civil society.
Apart from political and social control, the state also may be
uninhibited in following policies favoring certain groups or parties or
communities while undermining others through policy and legislation. In
keeping with dominant economic model of the regime the state considers
itself the main agent of development. This model advocates comprehensive
centralized exercise of power as in the former Communist States. The
desire of the ruling party and president to centralize and monopolize
power is primarily driven by the need to exercise unlimited control over
state resources in order to dispense patronage to political supporters
(both individuals and ethnic communities).The monopolization of
political power by the ruling party has helped to co-opt the minority
political parties like the Muslim Congress or the Ceylon Workers
Congress to be co-opted to the government. But the removal of limits on
the exercise of executive power to dispense patronage inevitably lead to
problems in such coalitions. The system of allocation of resources and
development opportunities to individuals and different parts of the
country on the basis of political patronage instead of objective
criteria will be undermined if there is devolution of power and
allocation of resources of the State through an independent Finance
Commission. Hitherto the Finance Commission has been a mere figurehead
as the allocation of resources to the Provincial Councils is done by the
Ministry of Economic Development.
The system of political patronage in appointments promotions has
excluded many people who voted or supported the Opposition or were from
the ethnic minorities from government services creating a feeling of
marginalization among them. It is this strong feeling of exclusion that
has led to the perception that one had to have one of one’s kind in a
key political public office for him to access government services and
opportunities.
Inefficiency of government under centralization
Under the present system of centralized government there is often need
for constant communication between the officers at the Capital and its
implementation officers on the ground. This back and forth communication
in which field officers must constantly refer matters to the Capital
for decision making creates serious inefficiency in the system thus
undermining development. Locating decision- making and planning in the
centre while implementation takes place in the field undermines
co-ordination as the various technical departments operate independently
and also refer matters to the centre independently without adequate
consultation among each other. Horizontal co-operation in the field is
thus undermined by the need to defer to a faraway superior in decision-
making. The MTV regularly spotlights numerous failures of government in
the field despite the government having spent money. Rope bridges
collapse, irrigation channels are not cleared, dams are not repaired and
sluices decayed but all these repairs have to be carried out by central
government field officers and there is no monitoring of their failures
by the central government officials in the capital.
Centralized administration also undermines accountability as the field
officers can easily shift the blame for their defective implementation
or misuse of resources to their superiors at the centre. The identities
of the responsible officers at the centre are normally vague.
Decentralization overcomes these challenges by getting the field
officers to report to a regionally based superior be it the Pradesiya
Sabha or the Provincial Council. Centralization excludes the citizen
from decision-making in planning and implementation as well as the field
officers. Centralized systems presuppose that the citizen has no
ability to effectively contribute to developmental matters. It ignores
the fact that the citizen is more aware of their needs, is more
interested to support the development programmes in their area and that
opportunities for popular participation are necessary in order to
develop democratic culture. Centralization denies the local population a
genuine platform for participation as the public officers at the centre
are far removed from the citizens and not bound by the views or
suggestions made to field officers who know the ground situation better.
By this we mean that the era where hospitals, schools and other
facilities were built, without the requisite operational resources to
enable there utilization must come to an end.The effectiveness and
efficiency with which public services are provided to support inclusive
growth, economic innovation and competitiveness and maintaining quality
public services will be key to the success of the country. Public
services have been defined as any of the common, everyday services
provided by national and local governments with the aim of improving
social welfare.