federalidea.com

by Rajan Philips

An open letter has been sent by Muslim, Tamil and other minority Sri Lankans to President Mahinda Rajapakse asking him to

(1) avoid labelling, as unitary or federal, the new constitutional proposals that are being developed by the APRC, and

(2) facilitate the creation of Tamil and Muslim units of devolution in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, instead of precipitating their isolation from one another. No sooner the letter went online, and before the President could have formally received the letter and read it, than a response on his behalf has been filed by one of his principal advisers.

Writing in the media , Dayan Jayatilleka – now Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, after his seemingly impressive doctoral thesis on the ethics of violence, analyzing the moral dimension of Fidel Castro’s political thought – has chided the burden of the open letter as the “unrealistic immoderation of Tamil moderates”, a case of history repeating itself from the overreached 50-50 demand (of G.G. Ponnamabalam) to the now forgotten Majority Report of the Experts Panel. At every historical turn, so the argument goes, the Tamil moderates burnt their boats by their immoderation.

The response of Dr. Jayatilleka, now Sri Lanka’s resident Ambassador in Geneva, is appropriately diplomatic in tone and conciliatory in content, perhaps more for international than national effect. DJ acknowledges that “the settlement of the ethno-national question may require the ditching of the unitary label, but this is a task for the future; for a subsequent stage of constitutional development, when the balance of forces permits it”. For now, it can only be “maximum devolution within a unitary state”. DJ also outlines the many procedural hurdles – legal, judicial and plebiscitary hurdles – to dropping the unitary label from the Constitution.

History Repeating

If historical precedents are anything to go by, every time the Tamil leaders overreached and fell short, their Sinhalese counterparts went back on even the moderate concessions they were willing to give. For example, if D.S. Senanayake was prepared to offer 60-40 in response to 50-50, why in heaven’s name did he have to disenfranchise the Tamil plantation workers in the Central Province and carry out Sinhalese “plantation” in the Eastern Province that worsened the balance in parliament from 69-31 in 1947 to 80-20 by 1960. Even now, there is every possibility that after rejecting the request to avoid the unitary label the government may well baulk at implementing maximum devolution as suggested by DJ, but stick with the status quo or enforce something worse.

It would have been a great deal more reassuring if the sentiments now expressed by DJ had emanated from the President himself even once during his now nearly two years in office. All that we have experienced throughout his tenure is a rolling back of whatever advances that had been registered since 1994 – advances, not in the law books but in the attitudes and the mindsets of the Southern polity. President Rajapakse has done this in word and in deed.

He surpassed the Supreme Court’s ruling on the merger of the North and East and instead of rectifying it through Parliamentary sanction he chose to administratively de-link the two Provinces. The government’s reported plan to establish high security zones in the East is only a ruse to carrying out another “plantation” but, this time, of the armed kind. Mr. Rajapakse even proposed out of nowhere that the district should be the unit of devolution.

The bloody red herring of the LTTE apart, nothing prevented President Rajapakse from saying what Ambassador Jayatilleka is now saying from Geneva. He may still say some thing new for the benefit of the UN General Assembly, in that great hall of vacuous speeches, in New York, but what will stick with the signatories to the open letter is what he said in a recent interview in Colombo. In that interview, Mr. Rajapakse declared his primary responsibility as one of acting on behalf of his Sinhalese voters and defending the unitary system.

The open letter challenges this assertion not only on behalf of the unarmed and moderate minorities whom he has so ungallantly abandoned, but also on behalf of the large numbers of Sinhalese who hold a contrary view on the constitution and have voted for change in every election since 1994 including the Presidential election of 2005 that put Rajapakse in office. The letter reminds him that this is his true and primary legacy.

One of the remarkable aspects of the open letter is the coming together, in equally large numbers, of Muslims and Tamils in the common cause of constitutional change and devolution. Add to them the even larger numbers of Sinhalese moderates, and it augurs well for the country’s future.

Those who have watched Mr. Rajpakse’s political journey are at a loss to understand as to when he got fixated on the unitary mantra. Sumanasiri Liyanage, a friendly critic of the Rajapakse regime, has taken pains to show that Mahinda Chinthanaya, that much ballyhooed hotchpotch of a manifesto, does not really make any specific commitment to a unitary constitution, but rather to an open, transparent and consultative process towards devising a new constitutional framework.

The APRC process was apparently started with that intent, but has now been torpedoed by the JVP, the JHU, and their less strident partner the MEP, even though all three of them together represent only a minority in Parliament. The JVP and the JHU are marching to well-beaten communal drums, but those in the MEP should know that their founder, the great Philip Gunawardena, was a firm and principled supporter of both the B-C and the D-C (Dudley-Chelvanayakam) pacts that were the early efforts to restructure the Sri Lankan state. Neither of them failed because of Tamil immoderation. And although these efforts were unwisely and unfortunately reversed by the Constitutions of 1972 and 1978, the momentum for restructuring has been on a roll since 1994.

Immoral Dimension

Regardless of the outcome of the APRC and the results on the battlefront, the debate over devolution will continue. For even if Mahinda Rajapakse chooses to be stubborn on the unitary matter, he can do so only until his term runs out – whether one or two terms it does not matter. Just as Rajapakse found it expedient to breakaway from his predecessor, his successor will find it morally and materially necessary to revert back to where Chandirka Kumaratunga had brought the SLFP after 1994. Further, while Mahinda Rajapkse may have chosen to represent only the most extreme and voluble sections of Sinhala society, he does not represent all of the Sinhala society.

It was a truism with the Tamil Federal Party that while the Sinhalese leaders try to address Tamil grievances, if not demands, by reaching agreements with Tamil leaders, the Sinhala people turn around and force their leaders to repudiate the agreements. I have been arguing for some time that the Federal Party got its proposition backwards, my point being that rather than the Sinhala people repudiating their leaders it is the leaders who have not been able to reach a consensus among them on resolving the national question and commend it to the people with conviction and courage.

Instead, the UNP and the SLFP have alternated in riding the communal bandwagon to power and ‘percentage’ corruption and for the satisfaction of feudal needs and class interests. Kumari Jayawardena’s thesis of ‘dynastic democracy’ could be seen as a partial exposition of the process through which nobodies became somebodies in the name of Sinhala nationalism, and her thesis is equally applicable to Tamil nationalism as well. One has only to look around for proof at the names and faces of those who are currently calling the shots in the name of the State and the Sinhalese, and of the Tamils.

We are all aware of the procedural difficulties in effecting constitutional changes in Sri Lanka, including the ‘ditching’ of the unitary label. But these difficulties can be overcome if the two main parties of the Sinhalese can reach a consensus on constitutional changes. The primary purpose of the APRC is to achieve this consensus even if all the changes cannot be implemented tomorrow. At the most, President Rajapakse could announce the ditching of the unitary label and dare Ranil Wickremesinghe to step out of the closet and take a stand.

At the least, he should publicly agree with Ambassador Jayatilleka that the unitary label should eventually go, even if not now. If the President does not make that commitment and continues on the path that he has been treading so far, Dr. Jayatilleka may have to some day reflect on the ethics of diplomacy and the immoral dimension of the Rajapakse presidency.

Related: Unrealistic Immoderation Of Tamil Moderates On Unitary State – by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka