Image: President Mahinda Rajapaksa, far left looks on as Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, behind the President, Navy Commander Wasantha karannagoda, third from right, Air Force Commander Roshan Goonathilake, second from right and Inspector General of Police, Victor Perera, salute during an event to celebrate Sri Lanka's 60th Independence Day in Colombo, yesterday. "Contrary to the optimistic expectation of Sinhala supremacists, assassination of Pirabhakaran would only make an externally imposed solution inevitable. Rajapaksa should not ignore the recent joint statement of Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Gordon Brown that Sri Lanka should come forward with “a credible devolution package within a united Sri Lanka,” implying what has been offered is not a credible package. The seven-party Tamil National Alliance has rejected outright the truncated 13th Amendment."
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by Sam Rajappa
(February 05, Kolkata, Sri Lanka Guardian) The interim proposal handed over to the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, by the chairman of the All Party Representative Committee, Professor Tissa Vitharana, to achieve maximum and effective devolution of power to the provinces was succinctly described by a columnist in The Island, a Colombo daily, thus: “The APRC has laboured for 18 months and delivered a 20-year-old still-born baby by a Caesarean section.”
(February 05, Kolkata, Sri Lanka Guardian) The interim proposal handed over to the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, by the chairman of the All Party Representative Committee, Professor Tissa Vitharana, to achieve maximum and effective devolution of power to the provinces was succinctly described by a columnist in The Island, a Colombo daily, thus: “The APRC has laboured for 18 months and delivered a 20-year-old still-born baby by a Caesarean section.”
The course of action proposed was contained in the 13th Amendment to the 1978 unitary Constitution which was enacted in 1988 following the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987. To call it a proposal of the APRC would be a misnomer for it does not reflect the thinking of Vitharana or the majority view of the committee members. Along with the APRC, Rajapaksa appointed a 17-member panel of experts on constitutional affairs to assist it. The panel, comprising 12 Sinhalese, four Tamils and one Muslim, produced a majority report last year which, if implemented, would have gone a long way in resolving the ethnic crisis which has plagued Sri Lanka ever since independence 60 years ago. It was not in consonance with the secret agenda of Rajapaksa. Therefore he consigned it to the dustbin.
Interim report
The 23 January interim report was what Rajapaksa wanted from the APRC. Vitharana was asked to exhume the 13th Amendment in the hope it would please India, if not the rest of the international community which brought enormous pressure on Colombo to come out with its peace proposal after it abrogated the 2002 ceasefire agreement with the LTTE a month ago.
Like Rip van Winkle, Rajapaksa seems to have woken up from his slumber forgetting how, as a budding SLFP politician, he opposed the 1987 agreement signed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President JR Jayewardene. Much water has flown under the Yan bridge mingled with the blood of thousands of innocent Tamils caught in the cross-fire between the LTTE and the government forces.
Chandrika Kumaratunga, as President representing the same SLFP, had offered a peace package which went far beyond the Provincial Council system in 1995 and 1997. In 2000, she came out with a new Constitution which envisaged Sri Lanka as a union of regions with wide devolution of power to the regions. It could not be adopted because the UNP, the main opponent of the SLFP, refused to cooperate lest the rival party walked away with the trophy for solving the intractable ethnic problem which has reduced Sri Lanka to the status of a client state of the donor nations.
Soon after the APRC was appointed in mid-2006, Rajapaksa unfolded his own party’s peace proposal. It was nothing but a rehash of the 1978 proposal of President Jayewardene, making the district as the unit for devolution of power. It was tried, found to be a flop. When Rajapaksa offered the same as a revolutionary step to satisfy the aspirations of the Tamils, it was received with derisive laughter.
Only after that humiliation did Rajapaksa turn to Vitharana with a request to resurrect the 13th Amendment which provided for the setting up of Provincial Councils, besides making Tamil an additional official language of the nation. In spite of its being in vogue for two decades, Sinhala continues as the sole de facto official language at all levels of administration, including the Tamil majority districts.
By offering this tried and failed formula, Rajapaksa is playing for time to fulfil his unfinished mission of liquidating the LTTE and decapitating Velupillai Pirabhakaran, unless caught alive. In that case, he promised to hand him over to India to stand trial for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the President’s brother who is the Defence Secretary, and the Army Commander, Gen. Fonseka, have offered to complete this task within the next six months.
Contrary to the optimistic expectation of Sinhala supremacists, assassination of Pirabhakaran would only make an externally imposed solution inevitable. Rajapaksa should not ignore the recent joint statement of Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Gordon Brown that Sri Lanka should come forward with “a credible devolution package within a united Sri Lanka,” implying what has been offered is not a credible package.
The seven-party Tamil National Alliance has rejected outright the truncated 13th Amendment. The UNP and the JVP, electoral ally of Rajapaksa, have dissociated themselves from the proposal. The APRC cannot be faulted for saying that Provincial Council election cannot be held for the time being in the separated Northern Province because of the security situation prevailing there but its proposal for a Northern Provincial Council to be appointed by the President has no basis in the 13th Amendment. Rajapaksa wanted to pack the appointed Northern Council with political jackanapes like Douglas Devananda of the EPDP, a member of his Cabinet, and Anandasangare, the renegade TULF leader, for toeing his line.
The Rajapaksa government has been propped up by an amorphous group of politicians, officials and military top brass and he cannot go against their wishes. It may be recalled that when the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement was signed and election held to the merged North-Eastern Province under the umbrella of the IPKF, the TULF, led by people like Amirthalingam and Sivasithamparam, considered moderates by New Delhi, did not participate as they found the provisions of the 13th Amendment woefully inadequate to meet the aspirations of the Tamil people. Rajapaksa, while appointing the APRC, also appointed an experts panel drawn from the three major communities in Sri Lanka, namely, the Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim. It shows that the President realised the need for a comprehensive proposal that goes beyond the 13th Amendment. The majority report of this panel did justice to his expectations by coming out with a set of proposals which could be called a credible devolution package within a united Sri Lanka. It is the company Rajapaksa keeps that made him throw it out and ask for one based on the 13th Amendment.
Vitharana literally burned the midnight oil to keep to the 23 January deadline set by the President and worked hard with the panel of experts and produced a 10-page report which even Pirabhakaran would have found it difficult to reject. According to privileged sources, the in-depth suggestions met most of the genuine demands of the Tamils. Since solving the problem before wiping out the LTTE was not the intention of Rajapaksa, he got most of its salient features excised and reduced it to a two-page report before presenting it to the public.
Military approach
Rajapaksa and those surrounding him justify Colombo’s military approach to solve the ethnic crisis saying that the LTTE would not settle for anything other than a separate Tamil Eelam and that Pirabhakaran was not really interested in a negotiated settlement. Sadly, the international community has come to believe such canards spread by Colombo. It was Pirabhakaran’s boycott call of the presidential election that propelled Rajapaksa to become the President of Sri Lanka. Soon after he assumed office, Pirabhakaran, in his annual Heroes Day address, described Rajapaksa as a pragmatic person and called upon him to come out with a proposal that would meet the reasonable aspirations of the Tamil people and gave one year’s time.
The LTTE, it may be recalled, had put forward its Internal Self Governing Authority (ISGA) proposal as far back as 2003. Colombo is yet to initiate a dialogue with the LTTE on its proposal.
Sri Lanka cannot wish away the historic fact that the Tamils living in the North-Eastern Province constitute a nationality, whereas Tamils, including the Plantation Tamils, living in Colombo and elsewhere in the country, constitute a minority community in the country. If Rajapaksa considers a federal solution anathema to the majority Sinhala community, he could fall back on his party’s previous President, Kumaratunga, whose draft Constitution describes Sri Lanka as a Union of Regions. By choosing the military path, Rajapaksa has led the country to a precipice. Behind him are the wolves.
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