The 13th Amendment: by thugs, with thugs and for thugs

There are some uncomfortable truths about the 13th Amendment, devolution of power and of course provincial councils. Let’s begin with the here-and-now.

Provincial Council elections haven’t been held in years. It is more than 10 years since the Eastern Provincial Council elections were held and more than nine since they were held for the Northern Provincial Council. Did the people in the Northern and Eastern provinces complain? Did their representatives complain? Did any who have screamed for devolution for the last forty years raise even a whimper? Did those who make a living out of talking democracy, reconciliation, good governance, devolution and conflict resolution complain? Have those who are now, in the name of democracy, agitating for local government elections, ever insisted that PC elections be held? Did anyone say ‘constitutional provisions should be implemented?’

No. Simply, no. Humbuggery, yes.

Let’s go back to 1987. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, soon to be assassinated by the very terrorist outfit he and his mother before him funded, trained and armed, in effect held a gun to the head of the then President of Sri Lanka, J R Jayewardene, forcing him to sign the Into-Lanka Accord and thereafter get the then parliament (made of parliamentarians who he forced to sign undated letters of resignation) to pass the 13th Amendment. The people were not consulted. There was no debate. Illegality was written all over the document, its enactment and implementation.  

It was an act of thuggery endorsed by a man who had excellent thug-credentials (having bashed heads of striking workers in July 1980, looked aside while thugs from his party’s trade union unleashed violence on Tamils in July 1983 and under whose watch two university students were killed in June 1984). And it was designed to further a cause of a bunch of terrorists. Simply, thuggery.

Most importantly, it wrecked rather than made easy administrative functions a case in point being agriculture, in particular agricultural extension. It has been estimated that on average no less than two-thirds of monies allocated to provincial councils have been used to pay salaries and maintain offices. Some PCs, like the Northern Provincial Council, couldn’t even spend all the money allocated to it in certain years. Simply, a white elephant. Nine of them in fact. Nine rogue white elephants.

Today there’s talk of the 13th Amendment being implemented to the letter, meaning police and land powers would be devolved. First of all, not only was the 13th Amendment imposed by a thug and illegally enacted by thug and his minions for the benefit of another bunch of thugs, it had nothing to do with ground realities. Devolution of power as a remedy to stated grievances is a monumental joke given geographic, economical, historical and demographic realities. We need not elaborate, but if you really believe in the Eelamist lie about 'traditional homelands,' you could read up on Raja Raja Chola I and how that particular marauder who had no stake in championing 'Sinhala chauvinism' described this island: 'the land of the warlike Sinhalas,' no less. 

That said it has acquired legitimacy, if not in the circumstances of enactment by affirmation through practice — all major political parties have contested provincial council elections at one time or another. Not because they agreed with the narratives of ‘grievance’ and ‘aspirations,’ but that they saw it as a means to advance political projects, as individual politicians and as collectives.

Two factors may have serves to dispel concerns regarding the 13th Amendment. First, the powers vested in the office of the president was the insurance policy against separatism. Secondly, land and police powers were never devolved. With regard to police powers, several amendments beginning with the 17th, in effect, made such devolution unnecessary. Land was not even talked about.  

Now, if we are to go with the intent expressed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, we could very well see Chief Ministers of Provincial Councils having the kind of sway that even the President does not enjoy with regard to policing in their respective domains. Now there’s also the threat of each Chief Minister having the power to override all central government safeguards with regard to the protection of forests and the preservation of archaeological sites at will.

We do know that certain Chief Ministers belonging to certain ethnic groups have been averse to archaeology perhaps out of fear that wild narratives about what happened and creative historiography will be proven beyond a shadow of doubt to be absolute bunkum. We also know that parties such as the JVP have at various points in their history talked of tearing down stupas so that building materials could be put to other use. We had Sunil Handunnetti recently ridicule Buddhists for their preferred forms of worship. What such people in the role of Chief Minister could do should be reason enough to be wary, extremely wary about devolving land powers.

Forests! There are protected areas in all provinces. Even without land powers being devolved forests are being cut down, partly in the name of development and probably more extensively on the sly. Just imagine nine politicians (and we know that it is a profession favoured by crooks, thugs and the uncivilised) with police and land powers running their own fiefdoms. Pretty? Pretty grim!

A word about the JVP is necessary. The JVP gained much ground riding the general antipathy to Indian intervention and opposition to the 13th amendment. Sixty thousand (60,000) people, INCLUDING JVP LEADERS AND ACTIVISTS died in a period of two years (1988-89). The JVP now wants the 13th Amendment to be fully implemented, i.e. with land and police powers devolved. Perhaps we’ve seen the last ‘Il Maha Samaruma’ of the JVP. Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Co., will have to answer to all the party members, supporters and others who perished during the bheeshanaya.  Will Dissanayake say ‘those sahodarayas were a bunch of idiots back then!’

What should be done with a piece of legislation describable as ‘by thugs, with thugs and for thugs’?

Repeal. Simply, repeal. 

Relevant Articles

The pluses and minuses of the 13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment and moral obligations

The forgotten 13th bears upon the 19th and 20th

What of the 13th, 19th, Circular 5/2001 and the MCC Compact?

20th Amendment without repeal of the 13th: a recipe for disaster

The 19th, 20th and sanctimonious humbuggery

Raja Raja Chola and the quicksand of Tamil Chauvinism 

The 'Traditional Homelands' tells a story  

How about including 'Reparations'  in school curricula? 

 

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Offer clemency to Gandhi’s killers!

  

Posters calling for Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan
to be hanged



The execution of three persons convicted over the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi  has been stayed for eight weeks by the Madras High Court. Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, currently at the Vellore Jail, were to be hanged on September 9, 2011. The bench, offering interim relief, had observed a 11 year delay in the delay of mercy petitions filed by the convicts to the President.

In the meantime, arch Tamil chauvinist and long-time choir-boy of Tamil terrorism, MDMK leader Vaiko had thundered that if the three were executed, then Tamil Nadu would secede from the Indian union: ‘If Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case are executed as per the court order, it will jeopardise Indian unity. When the 100th anniversary of the Independence Day will be celebrated on 2047, Tamil Nadu would not be a part of India.’  

I doubt that Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi would take Vaiko’s threats seriously. Indeed, if Vaiko was a serious Tamil nationalist, then there are probably other and more compelling reasons to threaten secession.  Tamil Nadu probably has the best case for secession and this is why successive Indian governments have consistently shifted the address of Tamil nationalism from its traditional homeland to the absolutely-no-case place off the Southern tip of India, namely Sri Lanka. 

The sentencing of the three persons mentioned above has upset pro-LTTE groups. All three were members of the terrorist outfit and therefore this is to be expected.  Some object because they are against capital punishment. In Sri Lanka there’s been a deafening silence. The LTTE-loving TNA and other groups with eyes so ready to tear on account of debacles suffered by the terrorists have all kept their silence. How about the rest of us? What are we supposed to think?



Rajiv Gandhi



Rajiv Gandhi was no friend of Sri Lanka.  He wanted to ‘Bhutanize’ us.  He bulldozed into Sri Lanka to save the terrorists who his mother funded, armed and trained.  The LTTE did more than bite the hand that fed it, sure, but that’s not something that those who suffered at the hands of the LTTE would find cause to be sad about. 

When Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Sri Lanka on July 29, 1987 to ink the ‘agreement’ he had arm-twisted J.R. Jayewardene to sign (‘Can’t do uncle!’ was his dismissal of the Sri Lankan President’s plea to let Sri Lanka handle her own affairs), a Naval Rating, Vijithamuni Rohana De Silva, part of the ‘Guard of Honour’, lifted his rifle and brought it down on the Indian Prime Minister’s head. I remember that day. I was  trying to get from Gampola to Kurunegala after receiving a call from my mother, saying her father was seriously ill, but had got trapped in Kandy because a citizenry livid and frustrated at how Indian hegemony walked in and robbed our sovereignty, bailed out a terrorist and gave legitimacy to Eelam myth-making (Dayan Jayatillake called it ‘Geo-political realities’ then) had attacked and burnt some buses. I was forced to stay with friends and we watched the news.  We saw that attack.  We all felt sorry for Rajiv and at the same time empathized with his attacker. 

The three sentenced to be hanged, one can argue, did what Vijithamuni Rohana could not do that day.  If we can empathize with one, we can empathize with the other and that does not make either ‘right’.  Perhaps this is why Sri Lanka has been silent about the sentence.  We never cared much for the Nehrus (not for Rajiv, his mother or her father, the last having the gumption to complain that Sir John had not shown him the speech he delivered at the Bandung Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement) and also have very little patience or pity for terrorists. 

Still, if we can forgive V. Muralitharan aka ‘Karuna’, if we can forgive Prabhakaran’s notorious global arms procurement chief, ‘KP’, if we could have send food, medicine and other essential items to the people held hostage by the LTTE knowing very well that Prabhakaran’s thugs would rob left and right, if we could pay salaries to doctors, nurses, teachers, clerks and others in the Vanni and thereby allow Prabhakaran to claim he was running a de facto state, then we can and should forgive these three Gandhi-killers.



These three have erred.  Yes, there are erring degrees and their crime is pretty much up there among the most horrendous. Worse was done by their victim and his successors.  All that is irrelevant. They have not harmed anyone since they were arrested. They cannot harm anyone if they spent the rest of their lives in jail. Society needs to be protected from such people and if the containing facilities exist, then they should be used.



Nalini serving a life sentence at
Tamila Nadu Jail for her
part in the Gandhi assassination

It is 20 years since Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated (did someone say ‘got his just desserts’?).  A lot has happened since.  ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,’ Mahatma Gandhi once said. I’ve argued against capital punishment elsewhere and will not get into that discussion here.  If, as Vaiko claims, the hanging of these three individuals provokes a full blown secessionist struggle in Tamil Nadu, I will not stop cheering.   That’s not reason enough to want them hanged, though. 

The world would not become any safer or more dangerous the day after if they were executed.  Rajiv Gandhi will not be resurrected.  If India doesn’t know how to deal with them, send them over here, that’s what I say.

A lot of blood has been shed.  A lot of anger has been expressed.  A long time has passed.  There is a time to be wary, and a time to drop guard.  If India is scared about what these three individuals would do, then India can repatriate them back to Sri Lanka. 

I am not sure what their nationality is, but if they were LTTE cadres and were Indians, then they can be extradited to Sri Lanka.  We have rehabilitated and reintegrated into society close to 8000 ex-combatants, some trained to carry out suicide attacks, some trained to toss grenades and spray bullets on civilian cadres.  We can handle these three prisoners.  Not because we condone what they did, but because we know that more deaths will not change things and because we know that this is healing time and execution is not unguent. 

Courtesy: Daily News - Monday 5 September, 2011

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