federalidea.com

By Professor Betram Bastiampillai

After a lapse of many long years and a loss of over 60,000 lives, an intolerably excessive and wasteful dissipation of funds on arms, ammunition and extravagant armed services, Sri Lanka’s leaders prudently set out to negotiate an acceptable and fair settlement that could appease an embittered enemy, the Tamil community indigenous to the island as much as the majority Sinhalese populace. It is a return to a federal polity providing maximum and feasible autonomous management to the long-suffering Tamils of Sri Lanka.

Federalism

Federalism as the fit form of government for a multi-ethnic society was ably propounded by no less a leader than S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike on his return to Ceylon (then) from his studies in Britain. A Federal form has been the solution in plural societies such as Switzerland with diverse communities, each jealous of securing its individual identity.

Likewise, Canada with the distinctive English and French peoples, India with numerous communities possessing their own languages and cultures, have found in some form of federalism an apt answer to continue co-existence with different peoples within one geographical unit. Moreover, federalism has not weakened countries. Instead it has strengthened them if one surveys the United States, Canada, Australia or Germany. On the contrary a marginalised community compelled to live discriminated and alienated can always be a Sword of Damocles to a majority.

To assume that devolution of power from the Centre to the periphery has either weakened or disintegrated countries is grossly erroneous or totally false. Regrettably, the issue of devolution has more often been a topic for polemic rather than rational examination in Sri Lanka. A fundamental characteristic of devolution has to be the separate elected assemblies as the Kilbrandon Report in the United Kingdom envisaged for Scotland and Wales.

These assemblies were to be endowed with legislative powers to enact laws subject to a right of veto from London. Nevertheless, the Scots and the Welsh were also to be represented at Westminster and the United Kingdom government however was to retain overall authority. Ultimately, the report proposed a measure of home rule or of the devolution of only a limited and defined quantum of authority to Scotland and Wales.

A question of detail that cropped up involved decisions regarding the extent of regionally devolved powers, about finance and voting procedures. However, one fact emerged clearly, that it is almost an insuperably difficult problem, nay impossible, to hold together a multi-national state particularly when the nationalism of a minority had grown too salient and been made even sharper by the barbs of discrimination hurled by a majoritarian group which aspires to dominate and not to govern wisely and well.

Gladstone’s words

The issues that baffled Britain but were overcome compelled by failure and exasperation in trying other means to unite a land had been intelligently pronounced in his Midlothian Campaign in 1879 by Gladstone, thrice Prime Minister of the UK: “If we can make arrangements under which Ireland, Scotland, Wales, portions of England, can deal with questions of local and special interest to themselves more efficiently than Parliament now can, that, I say, will be the attainment of a great national good”. We have now in Sri Lanka to realise how true Gladstone was when we look back over the mismanagement of our island and how disunited it speaks.

Those who rejected a solution to the issue when Bandaranaike and Chelvanayakam and when Dudley Senanayake and Chelvanayakam sought to solve it should know a missed opportunity is as lost as a spent arrow is. Indian involvement and the Thirteenth Amendment were not sincerely and honestly utilised constructively and positively to solve the protracted and painful ethnic conflict. The District Development Councils were yet another abortive attempt earlier to draw wool over the eyes of the Lankan Tamils.

Finally, it looks as if one has to learn from the political constitutional expert, A.V. Dicey, who correctly concluded that, “A federal state is a political contrivance intended to reconcile national unity and power with the maintenance of ’state rights’ ” (The Law of the Constitution). It is imperative in a plural society that given honesty and sincerity one can evolve a union of nations, each with its own identity and institutions still in tact. This should happen in Sri Lanka if the traumatic and frittered away past is to be put aside in the country, and the island has to develop and not merely dream of being another Singapore.

Majority and minority must be sincere

The Sri Lankan people have to decide whether devolution can lead to a stable situation; it should if the majority and the minority are sincere in intent this time. The view that centralisation provides for national unity cannot simply be asserted alone. Alternatively, what Gladstone acknowledged years ago is truer now and a society can be better welded together by “recognition of the distinctive qualities of the separate parts of great countries”. Devolution and federalism will fortify Sri Lanka, not weaken the island.

Sri Lanka’s problem is that out of a diverse population of many ethnic groups the Sinhalese are in the majority. Minority communities are the Tamils, Muslims, Malays and Burghers. The Tamils are concentrated in the North and East primarily while Muslims live in the East and all over the island. Tamils of Indian descent live mainly in the upcountry plantations.

Majoritarian superiority

Devolution of authority in a setup similar to a federal state is needed because majoritarian superiority elevating their language and religion caused discrimination primarily resented by North Eastern indigenous Tamils. The population however is not homogeneous and heterogeneity is pronounced specially owing to discrimination of minorities by the numerically larger Sinhalese majority.

Education is Sri Lanka should have promoted nation building. But even here standardisation of marks on a communal linguistic basis added to strengthen division and discrimination against the Tamils from the North and East.

Sri Lanka comprises a population differing into groups on religion, language, culture and traditional customs. These groups can live in harmony in an appropriate devolutionary constitution where devolution prevails in management of the island. Such a system can foster harmony and coexistence.

Unfortunately, diversity in Sri Lanka has accounted for rifts and riots, and now almost civil belligerence.

Sri Lanka has to contend with pluralism in society arising from nationality, ethnic differences and there being majority and minority categories who feel discriminated. Devolution need to be founded so as to give legal and political protection to all elements of a diverse, disintegrated population as a foundation shown here and promoted nation building but it did not verify Sri Lanka’s diversity in the population.

Sri Lanka’s variety in the population stems from race or community, ethnicity, language difference, religious difference, religious practices, diversity in ceremonies, culture and different traditional customs. These factors must be reconciled through an appropriate federal structure and devolution of administration and management in order to foster and support national integration, but their different peoples’ ethnicity intact.

The Sri Lanka state is multi-ethnic and should accept and acknowledge that it is populated by different cultural groups and all should rightfully be recognised as Sri Lankans despite diversity. Importantly, all ethnic communities should be granted equal status and regard in public life and in society.Diversity can, it should be realised, strengthen democracy in Sri Lanka. Petty communalism should be disallowed only to protect one’s own interests as group and excessiveness. Sri Lanka should positively practice discrimination in social, political and economic spheres and equality must be exercised and legally and practically, all have to be equal. Tolerance and peace will prevail if aspirations of minorities are duly respected and recognised.

Safeguards for minorities

Where needed, as in Sri Lanka, safeguards should be provided for the security of minorities. Every community in the island should be permitted to enjoy their own culture, as the Sinhalese and to follow their own religion and use their own language without discrimination. A measure of autonomy to all races is a positive obligation to be followed in the Sri Lankan state and should be granted to any minority community.

Neither the Sri Lankan state nor its legislative, judicial or administrative authorities can deny or violate the rights of a minority community if a peaceful nation is to exist. Minorities should enjoy their distinct social, political, economic and cultural characteristics at the same while. Sri Lanka can, through devolution of defined power and with a system of some sort of federalism that will facilitate devolution of authority, promote integration among people and fair treatment of all communities. The term federalism can be replaced with another term so long as the context is there of devolution.

[THE WRITER, A DISTINGUISHED ACADEMIC, HAS ALSO SERVED AS OMBUDSMAN IN SRI LANKA.THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN THE DAILY MIRROR]