Division!

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is talking ‘division’. No, it’s not THAT division which his party has been advocating on the sly or in the very least aiding and abetting. No, it’s not the incremental progress towards Eelam that has been a well-rehearsed script diligently played by Tamil nationalists. Let’s elaborate before we talk about the ‘division’ that Wickremesinghe is talking about right now.

Here’s the process: 1) Formulation of objective (Eelam), 2) Construction of history (‘Myth modeling’ a la Traditional Homelands), 3) Inflation of grievances, 4) Wild Extrapolation, 5) Demand the Unreasonable, 6) Armed insurrection (because ‘democratic avenues will not yield objective), 7) Obtain incremental gains. That’s Chelvanayakam’s ‘A little now, more later’ thesis in action and the oxymoronic  M.A. Sumanthiran is up to. 

Now. This is not THAT ‘division’. It’s something else. Think ‘Divisional Secretariat’ (for now).   Wickremesinghe has laid it out at the launch of ‘Citra,’ dubbed as ‘Sri Lanka’s first social innovation lab’.  

‘Our divisional level should work. President Premadasa wanted the division more independent but today it is overloaded. When you think of 2020 or 2030 is division enough? Or do we have to think of a new unit. We are wondering whether the Division can spend all the money that is being put by all levels of the government. There are many competing programs. We are now trying to identify a common unit to implement all these.’

‘Long ago the basic unit of administration was the province and a GA. In the 60s it was the district. However, subsequently early 80s it was a division. Divisional secretariats are in a tug-o-war with the central government and the provincial council. However, those are today’s problems. I am looking at tomorrow’s problems. Is this model outdated? Have we got to rethink of divisional structure,’ he added.

Wickremesinghe is talking about getting things done and of course things not getting done. He’s talking about operational units. He is talking about provinces and divisions.  He’s focusing on the administration aspects but does talk of devolution units. 

First he says that the divisional secretariats are overworked. Then he claims that they are further hampered by tensions between the central government and provincial councils. 

The issue can be resolved in any number of ways. Endless postponement of provincial council elections and absolute silence on the part of the devolution lobby, provincial politicians and the people in the relevant provinces clearly indicate that provincial councils need to be done away with. They were, for those who may not remember, thrust down our throats by India and embraced by political parties and politicians to further political projects. Well, they are not functioning and no one is bothered. 

That alone will not resolve the issue. Wickremesinghe says that divisions cannot handle all the matters that come to them. He has mentioned that it is hard for citizens to interact with officials. He cautions that the bureaucracy is a problem. Most importantly, he asks, ‘is there enough space for citizen’s participation at the grass root level?’

That’s about participatory democracy. He should know better than most how democracy does and does not work. He can talk about participation and of course non-participation or rather the subversion of participation. 

The proportional representational system of elections has clearly distanced representative and the represented or rather those who ought to be represented. The elected are answerable to an entire district and not an electorate. It’s the same with the provincial councils. Electoral reform to cure these ills were deliberately fudged by those responsible. What was promised was a mixed system, but what we got was a perverted version of the same problematic system.  

The planning conundrum that Wickremesinghe has so accurately described is made worse by the decentralized budget where each Member of Parliament is allocated a certain amount of money to spend as he or she wishes. This turns legislators into mini-executives and nurtures a mindset that infringes upon the principle ‘separation of power’ in the state. 

So what’s the solution that Wickremesinghe is pointing towards? He has not spelled it out. What he has done is suggest that the way things are is not the way things ought to be. In other words, when it comes to decentralization, we need even smaller units, i.e. smaller than the ‘division’.  That would take us to the map of local government authorities or rather the lines that indicate jurisdiction. In an administrative sense we would be talking ‘Grama Niladhari Plus’ here. In a political sense, i.e. in terms of representational unit, it would indicate something smaller than the local government authority. 

Getting things done. That’s what devolution advocacy is mostly about. The Prime Minister has clearly indicated that the provincial councils are not getting things done and moreover are essentially subverting the development project. Even District Development Councils (DDCs) would not work according to his argument. 

The solution then would be an administrative/representational arrangement that is not burdened by PCs and kept to manageable proportions by going for smaller units. Interestingly this is the logical direction indicated by devolution ideology. That thought-process has stopped at the boundaries of the PCs, but Wickremesinghe has boldly come out and said, essentially, ‘it is not working!’  

Way to go Prime Minister! Now convince your party and your fervent allies!

malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindasenevi@gmail.com

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The management of insecurities

Dayan Jayatilleka has made some pertinent points regarding conflict resolution and the seemingly vexed issue of Tamil grievances/aspirations and relief sought in an article titled ‘Constitution-making and the North-South political cycle’.  

I have an issue withe the term ‘North-South’ so let me first get it out of the way.  It is a ‘break’ that has been used frequently enough to give it legitimate political currency.  Erroneous, however.  It has come to the point of ‘goes without saying’ which automatically assumes ‘came without saying’ and therefore pushed deliberately.  What does ‘North’ taken for and what is ‘South’?  They have acquired proxy status for Tamil and Sinhala respectively and imply, following the geographical reference, a land that is divided by a line moving from West to East where the ‘North’ is of (and a legitimate claim of) Tamils and the South of the Sinhalese.  

A geographical '50-50’ by way of the easy fracture 'North-South' is a gross distortion of historical and demographic realities.  Language, needless to say, is not innocent.  

With that out of the way, let’s consider the implications of Dayan’s more serious and more legitimate contentions.    

“Even today, there is no Tamil progressive or moderate tendency in or outside Sri Lanka that is willing to denounce the LTTE, Prabhakaran and Tamil Eelam openly.   Tamil politics has remained self-referential and pan-Tamil in character. Tamil nationalism is psychologically separatist even when it isn’t politically separatist.”

The above claim is followed by an expression of disappointment regarding the lack of interest on the part of Tamil politicians to forge a bloc with ‘Southern’ progressives.

Theoretically, a Tamil chauvinist or even nationalist retort could take the following form: ‘Sinhala politics has remained self-referential in character. Sinhala nationalism is psychologically unitary-fixated even when it talks devolution.”  It follows that a Tamil version of Dayan’s lament regarding ‘Progressives’ is also possible, although that would still leave us without an answer to the question ‘What is progressive?’  

Even if we were to put aside the strong objections based on history, geography, demography and doability to the Tamil separatist project and all devolution proposals that do not take issue with current political boundaries for their arbitrariness, their implicit subversion of separatist claims, the very existence of positions as detailed above gives credence to Dayan’s claims about things intractable and therefore the necessity of ‘management’.  

This is why I am in agreement with the first part of Dayan’s vision expressed as follows: ‘Sri Lanka could (should?) draw up a New Social Contract in which national minorities are integrated on the basis of equal citizenship and non-discrimination while assured of a reasonable sufficiency of autonomy through the devolution of power within a Unitary State.’  The reservations about the second part (regarding devolution) is principally on the issue of boundaries and economic logic of the same.  As mentioned above and as stated by President Maithripala Sirisena the current boundaries upon which the separatist map has been crafted, with quite some stretching on the Western coast were arbitrarily drawn by the British.  Secondly, given the reality that close to half the Tamil population live outside the so-called ‘Traditional Homelands’, devolution cannot assume to resolve any ‘Tamil issue’ in and of itself.  

Power-devolution is theoretically a democratizing proposition, but in Sri Lanka’s context, given the intractabilities mentioned above, it is a non-starter or, as the 13th Amendment proved, guaranteed to trigger bloodbaths and generate further complications, primarily because the foundational logic is flawed and therefore the edifice is necessarily weak.  

A different kind of devolution might make sense, for example one where the entire provincial boundaries are re-drawn in a way that makes sense in terms of geographical realities and takes into account current resource anomalies among the existing provinces, but again that’s not even an element that anyone is willing to entertain, leave alone discuss.  

This brings us back to ‘integration on the basis of equal citizenship and non-discrimination’.  That is a tough cat-belling, so to speak, but right now it’s the only logical starting point.  It would be about guarantees.  It would have to take into account the issue of religion and the ‘special place for Buddhism’.  Not easy since histories count, historicities count and these things have eminent toy-value for extremists and real, on-the-ground relevance.  

For example, would the removal of the tokenist privileging of Buddhism in the Constitution accompany an erasure of customary laws that are relevant to Islam and those relevant to Tamils who can cite the Thesawalami Laws?  Would we discuss the pruning of customary ‘Buddhist holidays’ from four to three (the sathara poya to pun-poya) and the privileging of Christian holidays (Sundays — 52 of them)?  

It is not easy, but it is a discussion that has to take place simply because resolution is for the most part about managing and balancing insecurities, whether or not they are legitimate.  That’s where the audit must begin and not with rhetoric.  And that’s exactly what has not happened.  This is why solutions (like the 13th) fail(ed).  The true dimensions, in other words, of all the relevant issues have been ignored.  There are no mechanisms proposed to ascertain these.  Small wonder that the entire reconciliation exercise is floundering.  In the absence or rather the improbability of magnanimity by all (and not some) the players in the story. 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene

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The LLRC and devolution

The politics of skipping the caveats

When the Government proposed setting up a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), there were howls of protests from the likes of Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu. Many of these I/NGO operators didn’t even appear before the LLRC perhaps fearing that the Commissioners would ask them to submit in full their various comments to the media, in the form of statement or political commentary. When the LLRC finally came out with a ‘Report’, they changed their tune. They said ‘Implement the LLRC Recommendation!’

They forgot, conveniently, that the LLRC had exceeded its mandate. That’s ok. A lot of people, after all, are happy to ‘exceed’. More importantly, they appear to be blissfully unaware of two things. Firstly, that the LLRC was a far cry from a body enacted to draft a constitution. Secondly, some of the recommendations require constitutional amendment and even referenda. A third ‘forget’ can be added: the Government is not bound (as per the mandate-limitation) to implement all of the recommendations. There’s can-do and cannot-do in all this. There is, moreover, ‘done’, ‘doing’ and ‘forget it’ too. There is wanted-speed and doable-speed.

 

What has excited these ladies and gentlemen, and of course some members of the Opposition, is the inclusion of the word ‘devolution’. True, it’s not ‘federalism’, that F-word dominating what passed for ‘political discourse’ when the reins of power were held by patently anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist and indeed pro-LTTE, pro-Eelam elements, but then again, in an LTTE-les Sri Lanka of ‘reduced circumstances’, if ‘straw’ was sought, ‘devolution’ was good enough a cling-on.

 

What is most interesting is the fact that true to form, they have taken the LLRC recommendation on devolution totally out of context and have never once referred to the relevant caveats. They would do well to read the points elaborated in Section 9.231 of the LLRC Report.

9.231 Devolution should necessarily be people-centric in nature and the following considerations should be borne in mind –

 

A. Devolution should essentially promote greater harmony and unity and not disharmony and disunity among the people of the country. The promotion of this ‘oneness’ and a common identity should be the principal aim of any form of devolution while protecting and appreciating rich diversity.

B. The focus should be to ensure that the people belonging to all communities are empowered at every level especially in all tiers of Government. Devolution of power should not privilege or disadvantage any ethnic community, and in this sense, should not be discriminatory or seen to be discriminatory by the people belonging to any ethnic community within the country.

C. The democratic empowerment of the people should take place within the broader framework of the promotion and protection of human rights which is a fundamental obligation of the elected government deriving from specific provisions of the Constitution and the Treaty obligations the country has voluntarily undertaken.

D. In addressing the question of devolution two matters require the attention of the government. Firstly, empowering the Local Government institutions to ensure greater peoples’ participation at the grass roots level. Secondly, it is also imperative that the lessons learnt from the shortcomings in the functioning of the Provincial Councils system be taken into account in devising an appropriate system of devolution that addresses the needs of the people. It should at the same time provide for safeguarding the territorial integrity and unity of Sri Lanka whilst fostering its rich diversity.

Let’s take these one by one. Caveat A imposes the condition of ‘harmony’. Now if devolution uses the current provincial boundaries (randomly drawn, let us not forget), which constitute the basis for the (diminished) Eelamist demarcation, if the majority of Tamils people live outside the North and East (for example), how on earth can devolution along these chauvinist lines powered by myth-models and exaggeration inspire anything but suspicion and anxiety among the Sinhalese? They would consider such devolution as ‘Threat to Existence’! There won’t be harmony. ‘Oneness’ would be wrecked.

Caveat B speaks of empowerment. This is good. It calls for much better governance and greater affirmation of citizenship-meaning. One does not need ‘devolution’ for this and if any community feels disadvantaged then all that needs to be remembered is that the felt ‘discrimination’ will continue to prevail in the other 7 provinces (where the majority of Tamils live). Devolution does not combat discrimination; better laws might. 

Caveat C is about human rights. The upholding or subverting of human rights has nothing to do with the structure of the state (for example, whether it is a federal, unitary or other arrangement). So Caveat C, like Caveat B, is an add-on that is not devolution-specific.

 

Finally, Caveat D. It is about ‘building on what we have’, i.e. the local government institutions. It is about greater and meaningful participation. Such ‘democracy,’ again does not require devolution as per the 13^th Amendment, 13 Plus posturing etc., but about scripting in checks and balances into the relevant articles of the constitution. Caveat D also unequivocally salutes the need to ‘provide for safeguarding the territorial integrity and unity of Sri Lanka whilst fostering its rich diversity’. The devolution debate has gone too far with taking as ‘fact’ and ‘legitimate’ the extrapolations of Tamil chauvinism for any power-devolution to established provincial lines not be seen as a threat to territorial integrity and unity.

 

Take all these caveats and power devolution to existing lines can be safely ruled out as ‘not in line with LLRC recommendations’. The only devolution that abides by these caveats, then, is a formulation that trashes current provincial boundaries and re-draws geographical units in more scientific (e.g. based on river-basins) ways with close attention to ensuring that no community, large or small, feels threatened.

 

Given all this, one thing is clear: those who have been waving the LLRC Report have just seen one word, devolution. That, or else, they are intellectually dishonest. Take your pick!

[Published in THE NATION, April 7, 2013]

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If 19 is to equal 13 +...

According to National Freedom Front (NFF) leader Wimal Weerawansa a petition to get the 13^th Amendment abrogated was held back considering the current tensions between the Judiciary and Legislature.  Talks with the UNP and SLFP suggest that there are few takers for dogmatic positions on the 13^th Amendment.  Even the leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), R. Sampanthan, while holding fast to ‘devolution’, has expressed a willingness to go for re-demarcation of unit, i.e. three or four zones instead of the present nine provinces. 

Sampanthan has warned that repealing the 13^th ‘could cause grave and irreparable damage to the country’s future’.   It is heartening that the TNA leader, even at this late hour, is concerned about the country’s future.   Indeed his re-demarcation proposal amounts to a radical political shift from the previous fascination with white-lines or those provincial boundaries based on a map drawn by colonial rulers.   A re-demarcation, though, would necessarily amount to ‘modification’ and/or ‘nullification’ of the 13^th, an eventuality that Sampanthan opposes.  It is best that these ‘concerns’ are treated as the business-as-usual rhetorical of a politician and something that should not be allowed to rob the ‘statesman-like’ suggestion that the TNA leader has made in his interventions during the Budget Debate.

Sampanthan is of course erroneous when he says ‘the 13^th is the only constitutional provision that recognizes diversity’.  All it does is legitimate the work of a frivolous map-maker later used by Eelamist myth-mongers for their own purposes.  Communities are not held by maps, and fall out of provincial boundary.  The recognition of difference, as in the existence of different communities and people with different religious faiths, finds more than adequate mention in the constitution.  The only major differentiation that the constitution is silent on is that of class. 

Still, Sampanthan does make a valid point about efficiency in resource allocation.  The 13^th has seen enormous sums of money going waste, mostly to maintain the provincial councils rather than alleviating the conditions of the citizenry.  Moreover, the current lines rebel against contemporary economic thinking given anomalies of resource endowment across regions.  A re-demarcation then must correct for these inequalities.  In other words, logic and science as opposed to political expediency and untenable ethnic ‘enclaving’ should guide the cartographer.   It would logically take us to Ruhunu, Maya and Pihiti, an option which even in these communal politicking times should be considered.  

What would result is ‘horizontal democratization’ as some have put it, provided of course that the devolved complement of powers exceed what is contained in the 13^th.  Provided, also, that the power of the citizen to participate in decision-making is enhanced in the process.  For example, devolving the power to exercise strong-arm tactics and be dismissive of manifesto post-election from center to province won’t make things easier for anyone but the politicians. 

The trick then would be to follow such re-demarcation as per a 13+ formula with vertical democratization which includes measure to correct current institutional flaws, ensure greater transparency and obtain greater degrees of accountability.  Ideally, the two processes, vertical and horizontal, can be sought through a single amendment or better still a new, that is a third, republican constitution, but this may not be the proper time. Insistence on a double-push might kill both. 

As of now, justice for all in the matter of having a meaningful say in designing laws and policies that affect people’s lives depend more on largesse than on constitutional provision.  That’s not a flaw in the 13^th Amendment but the 1978 Constitution. 

So if we have to go with ‘first-things-first’, then 13+ must necessarily pick up the Sampanthan proposal.  To make it really a ‘plus’ amendment, though, the vertical ‘re-demarcation’ if you will of power lines has to be pushed for.  

 

 

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Devolution talk and devolution talkers

Are you for 13, 13-minus or 13-plus, someone asked me.  Political circles are a-buzz with the 13^th, i.e. the Amendment thrust down the Sri Lankan polity by India in 1987, defended ferociously by Indophiles and non-Tiger separatists and happily used by politicians of all color intent on furthering careers and making bucks.  The pro-13^th commentators have all come out of the woodworks, as have those who opposed it and oppose devolution to boot. 

Debate on the matter is not new.  The present buzz follows a statement by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa advocating its repeal.  Context in brief is as follows: a) the 13^th is a part of the constitution, b) the President has at various times talked about devolution and pledged to go further, i.e. ’13 Plus’, c) it has no discernible connection with expressed grievances and makes no sense in terms of demographic, developmental and historical realities. 

And yet, those who are dismayed do make some interesting points.  Dharisha Bastians (‘From 13 Plus to 13 Minus’) argues that there is presidential double-speak.  Sumanasiri Liyanage (‘The UPFA government is heading for its first defeat in Parliament’) on the other hand is a victim of his own fantasies and notions of democracy predicated on faulty reading of conflict.  Laksiri Fernando (‘Gotabhaya’s talk about abolishing the 13^th Amendment’) is fascinated with status quo (right or wrong) and erroneous in the assertion that a repeal would necessarily wreck language rights. 

Tissa Vitharana’s outburst is perhaps the most clownish, for he sees ‘foreign conspiracy’ in moves to abolish the 13^th.  The biggest conspirator with respect to the 13^th was India and that’s certainly ‘foreign’, not to mention that the darlings of those intent on dragging his leader to the Haig are also ‘foreign’ or ‘foreign funded’ AND are staunch 12-Plus advocates (their backtracking from separatism to federalism to the 13th corresponds to the decline and fall of terrorism: no coincidence!). 

Fernando’s is nevertheless the most thoughtful of the responses.  He has detailed, for example, pre-13^th devolution talk.  He has also referred to the LLRC recommendations pertaining to devolution.  He has conjured a gonibilla factor: ‘Devolution and the 13th Amendment are the ‘trophies’ that the government has been showing the international community and the UN as indications of Sri Lanka’s commitment to resolve the ethnic question in the country. Backtracking on them would undoubtedly spell disaster for the country in the international sphere.’

Now the statements made on devolution from time to time does not necessarily make it logical, necessary, meaningful or sustainable.  These statements could be shot to pieces with the as-is situation of the 13th.  Fernando argues that as-is is mendable.  This is true except for the fact that devolution to provinces is antithetical to current economic theory in terms of resource endowment and allocation.  We have to keep in mind also that the X-Country success is not necessarily replicable in Country-Y.  

As for the ‘trophies’, Fernando misses the blatant truth that Sri Lanka’s detractors are as interested in ‘solutions’ as they are concerned about ‘democracy’ In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or the Arctic.  Showcasing ‘achievement’ is simply not going to cut ice unless the relevant lines are toed. 
Grievances (and no one can deny that Tamils have them, as do various other segments of society, including Sinhalese) need to be resolved in different ways, especially through democratization. Here, Fernando’s comments on the 17^th and 18^th are extremely valid.  But we are not talking about ‘democratization’ here but ‘grievance-addressing’. 

What all these people forget is that the lines we are talking about here are white-drawn.  They have nothing to do with the longer history of the country (where demarcations – Ruhunu, Maya and Pihiti --made political but more than this geographical sense) or make sense in terms of present day prerogatives (economic hub, resource-complement, seaboard and so on).  Secondly, I am willing to wager that if asked to enumerate ‘grievances’ and tie each of them to territory-based ‘resolution’, they would be stumped, particularly given the fact that the majority of Tamils live outside the North and East. 

It is in this sense that the line Fernando quotes from the LLRC Report (‘appropriate system of devolution’) and the one he misses (‘acceptable to all’) need to be considered.  We can have devolution, not to resolve grievances that are not devolution-resolved but for better and more meaningful development.  That would necessitate re-demarcation of provincial boundary.  That’s the ’13 Plus’ we could aim for.  If there’s anything that thumbs a nose at reality, then it is better to scrap.  No 13, no 13 Plus, no 13 Minus.  Zero.  

 

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A note on smart-ass devolutionists

When they called it ‘separatism’ is sounded like a cuss-word.  Separatists took time to get smart.  Perhaps it would be more correct to say it took them a long time to recover smartness.  S.J.V. Chelvanayakam hit the correct idea when he said it was possible to extract anything from the Sinhalese as long as it is done slowly, an idea he captured in the pithy ‘A little now, more later’. 

Leaving aside the notion that whoever did the ‘taking’ would be taking from all Sri Lankans and not just the Sinhalese, the slogan only pushed separatism to embrace terrorism while it rubbed the Sinhalese majority quite the wrong way.  Had Chelva thought but not said, separatism may have benefitted, but chauvinists and land-thieves often trip over themselves. G.G. Ponnambalam’s ‘Fifty-fifty’ for a little lover 10% of the population may have been the product of greed gone crazy but it also framed the dimensions of aspirations for more than half a century.  By 1976, Chelva himself lost his way, the Vadukoddai Resolution being nothing less than a go-for-broke adventure that wanted it all; not power-sharing but land and coast grabbing.  Blood-letting was the unscripted inevitable.  Close to a hundred thousand lives were lost. 

When the LTTE was in fully cry Tamil moderates (so-called) either out of fear or awe or outright salutation went gear-down on devolution.  The statements of the ‘moderates’, both individuals and parties (in coalition and isolation) make for a symptomatic reading on this aspect.  The TNA’s election manifestoes of 2001, 2004 and 2010 would do in fact.  Post-LTTE, devolution has been resurrected out of consolation-need more than anything else, one might argue, if not for Chelva’s Action Plan of incremental construction of Eelam. 

The 13^th Amendment’s most important contribution to the Eelam cause has been its utility as reference point. India fostered terrorism in Sri Lanka. India gave refuge, armed, trained and funded terrorism.  India took some sparks poured gallons and gallons of fuel, whipped up a roaring fire and then brought fire-size down (for a while) and now insists that where the fire is now is foundation-point for resolution. No mention now of what it is that is sought to be resolved.  No talk either of the fact that foundation-point is still a fire that anyone including India, Tamil Nadu, Tamil and Sinhala chauvinism included can add fuel to. 

Today’s Prescriber is undoubtedly India.  Today’s prescription-approvers are the Chelva-Tamils and wooly-headed Marxist-Leninists who are in a permanent state of denial about all that being passé.  Other approvers include anti-Buddhist heirs of the Colonial encounter who are smarter than their 16^th-20^th Century ideological and political forefathers.  Their logic seems to be based on the notion that if you rob from the Sinhalese it is the Buddhists who lose the most due to the sheer numbers.  They are smart, because they are not running around burning temples in the way the Portuguese did or extracting conversion through the carrot of privilege and the skewing of institution and process against Buddhists.  If you have any doubts about this, just check who the most vociferous approvers are, their ethnic identities, their ideological preferences and their faiths. 

The smartest of course are those who say without saying.  There are, for example, those who take ethnic identity and religious faith out of the equation and talk ‘development’.  They know that the Indian Thesis crumbles in the fact of history, geography and demography.  The history that is relevant to the discourse has always been that associated with the claims pertaining to traditional-homelands.  Those who are devolution-smart talk therefore about a history of relative self-sufficiency and administrative decentralization which they conveniently argue indicate that power-devolution was always with us and indeed made us. 

Anyone who has studied the extensive and intricate hydraulic system of this land as well as laws about resource exploitation and allocation would understand that while there were times of division, invasion and even anarchy, for the most part there was centralized control and decision-making.  Had it been otherwise, there wouldn’t have been an anicut built in Minipe.  We wouldn’t have the Yoda Ela or the Jaya Ganga.  Kings would not have employed large quantities of resources to build large irrigation structures, temples or places of learning in places far away from the capital.  Rivers would not have been diverted through a series of anicuts. Such schemes were not built subsequent isolated communities conferring with neighbours about how best to use the water flowing down a river. 

True, there is a vast mismatch of resource-allocation today. Certain things don’t get done.  The devolution-smart say triumphantly that in a devolved polity things would get done.  A decentralized administrative structure would suffice in most instances, but they don’t want to admit this.  Neither do they acknowledge the fact that devolution would not have given resource-poor areas the kind of access to education that centralized decision-making has.  There is also remarkable silence about the bridges, reservoirs, hospitals and other infrastructural facilities and services that would have remained distant dreams had it not been for centralized decision-making if not for anything the sheer lack of resources and other necessary capacities.  Nothing is said either of the fact that populations are not static, that they move, that we’ve moved a fair distance from (relatively) self-sufficient village-units, or that aspirations have spilled out of the idyllic ‘village’ and perhaps will never be containable in those territorial dimensions again. 

What is needed is an overhauling of the entire governance structure and a streamlining of institutional mechanisms and processes to encourage enlightened decision-making.  That this is an uphill task is used as logic for devolution.  That’s being lazy and indeed irresponsible for there are no short cuts to peace and wholesome citizenship.  In this case, any kind of devolution that takes current provincial boundaries as given (never mind their artificiality and pernicious association with homeland-claim – a convenient exaggeration of existing demographic patterns) will etch in such hard lines the Eelamist positions on the Sri Lankan political landscape that it would in effect transform into irreversible fact. 

We can do better.  We must.

[first published in the Daily Mirror, July 5, 2011]

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Grievance first, devolution later (if at all)

Kalana Senaratne, in an article titled ‘Will there be peace before death?’ published in www.groundviews.org, begins an interesting essay on the 13^th Amendment with the obvious preamble that the end of a war is followed by the resurfacing of problems that could not be resolved through the use of force.

Kalana offers that the answer to political problems rests in our own attitudes and perceptions, and in our ability to compromise.  He singles out two issues; that of ‘devolution of power’ and ‘promotion and protection of human rights and equality’; as challenges that confront us and ones on which people hold strong and uncompromising views.  He is correct.  These have been talked-to-death issues over at least two decades and the two have often been conflated for reasons of political convenience.  They can be but are not necessarily related.  Kalana makes this distinction. 

He dwells at length on the issue of devolution, picking the debate over the 13^th Amendment as an illustrative case of the condition he laments over; i.e. perceptions and (in)ability to compromise.  I am yet to come across as clear and accurate a delineation of the contending positions, pointing to the fault lines that have time and again caused fissures in discussion and crumbled compromise when it comes to devolution.  Being an opponent of the 13^th Amendment and devolution along the lines proposed by both Eelamists and their academic and other apologists, I will focus on the issues that Kalana raises regarding objections to the 13^th.

He observes that some of the arguments against the 13^th Amendment are presented mischievously. For example, the on-the-ground failure of the 13^th is not a sufficient argument against devolution, Kalana points out, because ‘failure’ can be attributed to ‘the inability and/or unwillingness to implement,’ and ‘waste of resources less a problem of the document that a problem regarding those who were supposed to implement it’.  He is absolutely correct here.  Just because some Christian or Buddhist fundamentalist does something horrendously uncivilized in the name of Jesus of Lord Buddha, respectively, it does not mean that the respective faiths or their founders are uncivilized and/or erroneous.  The 13^th can be rubbished on other grounds that have nothing to do with identity-issues and which indeed are foregrounded by issues of democracy, human rights etc. 

I find Kalana’s observation regarding myth and reality to be spot on. This is what he says:

‘One would not believe in the concept of a ‘traditional homeland’ or in a merged North-East, and would dismiss these ideas as political myths. But the fact that the majority of the North and the East consist of Tamil speaking people is not a myth, along with the fact that this demand for power-sharing had always been the predominant demand of the Tamil minority, or its representatives, elite or otherwise.’

Yes, ‘Tamil-speaking’ and this, let us not forget, was political sleight of hand on the part of Prabhakaran and a little game that Ashroff, the founder of the SLMC was happy to play.  The two communities, Tamil and Muslim, in terms of linguistic commonality do make the majority.  It doesn’t mean that the total land area of the North and East is mostly ‘Tamil-speaking’ though.  The linguistic issue can have a language-related ‘solution’ and the legislation for this already exists. Political will has been slow off the blocks, but it is not standing still either.  Citing ‘language’ when convenient and leaving it out when it is not is bad, insincere and ‘rubbishable’ politics. That kind of conflation is good for Eelamists, not for any sensible person who genuinely wants resolution or is agreeable to deferring to superior logic. 

Yes, the demand for power-sharing has always been a biggie as far as the Tamil minority is concerned.  So?  All kudukaarayas (drug addicts) consistently want heroin.  When they run out of money they rob.  It is quite ok to demand, but for demand to be reasonable, it must flow from grievance.  Having said this, I do agree that ‘devolution’ cannot be rubbished off the political stage easily, but for different reasons from what Kalana offers.  Devolution has been politically accorded a kind of currency that is not congruent with the grievances that it seeks to redress. Furthermore, the grievances have been so frilled that their true dimensions need to be re-obtained.  This is why I say that we are putting the card before the horse when we talk about devolution and grievances. 

My contention, as the title indicates, is that ‘Devolution’ is not a necessary town that the nation-train has to pass on the way to a conflict-free, peaceful and harmonious future.  I am not saying that we must not take a route that takes us through Devolution, but that the issue of devolution has been poorly framed. 

The question of whether or not the 13^th Amendment makes Sri Lanka a federal entity or not is academic at a certain level.  Kalana believes that the 13^th is harmless.  One doesn’t write into law and implement all harmless things.  That makes constitutional enactment a joke.

The bottom line here is that we have to work up from minority grievances.  ‘Devolution’ cannot only be about efficiencies (the 13^th is inefficient for reasons other than those that Kalana states), it has to allude to the grievances.  We are not talking about aspirations here because that’s an as-high-as-the-sky kind of thing.  We are talking instead of real grievances of a community that is clearly aggrieved.  We are talking of redressing these grievances and doing without disregarding demographic realities, political doability and in ways that make economic sense. 

It is important to understand, as Kalana argues, that resolution of grievances (through devolution or in some other manner, as made ‘appropriate’ by grievance-dimension) must go hand-in-hand with ‘constitutionalism, the rule of law, the establishment of independent institutions and a firm resolve to promote and protect human rights and equality’, not just to placate minority anxiety but in creating the conditions conducive to a wholesome citizenry.

It all begins from the beginning that time was made to forget by a politics that I suspect did not necessarily like it: GRIEVANCE.  Forget it and all ‘solutioning’ is easily reducible to crass politicking. 

Kalana is absolutely right: an opportunity, a tremendous opportunity, has arrived, now that there is an absence of violent conflict; but success depends on how well that opportunity is used, or utilized.’  I would add, it depends on how honest we want to be about what we gripe about. 

[This article was first published in the 'Sunday Island' in May 2010]

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