The Institutions of Democratic Devolution I: the Unit

By: Nisala Rodrigo

The unit of devolution remains one of the greatest logjams in finding a political solution to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. The various proposals submitted to the All-Party Representative Committee demonstrate that there has been no consensus as to even the direction which discussion on the topic should proceed. Judging from the content of these proposals, there are widely different notions of a just settlement even within communities to the degree that the debate cannot simply be characterized as “Sinhala vs. Tamil.”

Perhaps the greatest obstacle is that only one community, the Tamils demands devolution for only one region of the country, the North-East. Furthermore, the demographics of that particular region confound a simple solution; although the Northern Province is almost entirely Tamil, the Eastern Province is divided between the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims. A merged Northeast results in an overall Tamil majority, and the Tamils demand a merged Northeast out of concern for their security with regard to the central government and the bloody history of the last 20 years. The Sinhalese and the Muslims of the Eastern Province for their part fear Tamil domination just as much as the Tamils of the entire island fear Sinhala domination.

The report submitted by the majority of the expert panel to the APRC was welcomed by moderate Tamils, liberal Sinhalese, and the international community, but it offended the sensibilities of some “patriotic” sections of the Sinhala and Tamil communities and brought the JVP and the Tamil National Alliance together in sanctimonious non-participation in the APRC. As promising as these responses appeared, they masked the discord within the Majority itself regarding the unit of devolution. The Majority agreed to preserve the Province as the unit of devolution, but it did not arrive at a consensus as to the status of the now-demerged Northern and Eastern Provinces and instead offered four options for the North-East. In his own proposal to the APRC, Tissa Vitharana, the Chairman of the expert panel altogether avoided the topic of the North-East.

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