What it could have been, if not for the conflict

"The 13th Amendment to the Constitution to devolve power was effected as a basis to resolve the conflict but the LTTE rejected the solution and also the opportunity to have the Amendment improved upon to make the devolution meaningful and a reality. It was only in 1990 that another effort was made during the Premadasa Presidency but it became clear that the LTTE, which had emerged after decimating all moderate Tamil leaders was not committed to finding a negotiated settlement." Image: What Lanka would have been in 2020

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by K. Godage

(February 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The question has often been asked as to where Sri Lanka would have been or looked like had we settled our so-called ethnic problem years ago. Let us examine the first effort: it took the form of a Pact between Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike and the chief of the Federal party, Mr. SJV Chelvanayagam and was referred to as the B-C Pact. It was signed on the 26th of July 1957. At the commencement of negotiations the PM informed the Federal Party that he was not in a position to discuss a federal constitution or regional autonomy or any step that would abrogate the Official Language Act.

The Prime Minister suggested an examination of the government’s draft Regional Councils Bill. The Federal Party reiterated its stand for parity but in view of the position of the PM on this matter they came to an agreement by way of an adjustment. The FP wanted recognition of Tamil as a national language and as a language of administration in the Northern and Eastern provinces in addition to Sinhala and English.

In terms of the Pact the Northern Province was to form one regional area whilst the Eastern Province was to be divided into one or more areas. Regional Councils were to have powers over specified subjects including agriculture, cooperatives, land and land settlement, education, health, fisheries, housing, social services, electricity distribution, water schemes and local road networks. The definition of powers was to be made in the Act. The central government was to provide block grants to Regional Councils.

In April 1958 the Federal Party launched a Satyagraha campaign against the introduction of the Sinhala letter SHRI on vehicle number plates and this provoked the Sinhalese and the racists took advantage of the opportunity to demand the abrogation of the Pact. On 9th April after a huge demonstration of monks and others in front of his residence Prime Minister Bandaranaike announced that the Satyagraha campaign launched by the FP had made it impossible for him to implement the terms of the Pact in the way that he had contemplated. It would be recalled that Tamil citizens were attacked by Sinhala mobs and it took the intervention of Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, the Governor General to restore order.

The next effort to arrive at a settlement came in 1965. Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake and the Federal Party leader SJV Chelvanayagam. met on the 24th of March 1965 and agreed on some issues which concerned the Tamil speaking people. Prime Minister Senanayake agreed that action would be taken by him on the following lines to ensure a stable government:

1)Action will be taken early under the Tamil Language Special Provisions Act to make provision for the Tamil language to be the language of administration and of record in the Northern and eastern provinces. Mr. Senanayake also explained that it was the policy of his party that a Tamil speaking person should be entitled to transact business throughout the island.

2) Prime Minister Senanayake stated that it was the policy of his party to amend the Language of the Courts Act to provide for legal proceedings in the Northern and Eastern provinces to be conducted and recorded in Tamil.

3) Action will be taken to establish District Councils in Ceylon vested with powers over subjects to be mutually agreed upon by between the two leaders. It was agreed however that the government should have the power under the law to give directions to such Councils in the national interest. It should also be recorded that Mr. Chelvanayagam had stated that as the Sinhalese people were opposed to devolution to Regional Councils, the District could be the unit of devolution.

4) The Land Development Ordinance will be amended to provide that citizens of Ceylon be entitled to the allotment of land under the Ordinance.

Prime Minister Senanayake also agreed that in granting land under colonization schemes the following priorities would be observed in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

a) land in the Northern and Eastern Provinces should in the first instance be granted to landless peasants in the district.

b) Secondly, to Tamil speaking persons resident in the Northern and Eastern Provinces

c) Thirdly to the citizens of Ceylon, preference being given to Tamil residents in the rest of the island.

This agreement was rescinded even before the ink dried. It was dead in the water on account of what had been agreed to as regards the subject of crown land. It had been agreed to amend the Land Development Ordinance in such a manner as would have shut out the Sinhalese from he Eastern Province. How the PM came to agree to the wording of indent (4), which curiously read "The Land Development Ordinance will be amended to provide that citizens of Ceylon be entitled to the allotment of land under the Ordinance". The "citizens of Ceylon" meant Tamil speaking people" and Tamil speaking people only. How the PM came to agree to this is still a mystery for he should surely have known that the Eastern Province had been a part of the Kandyan Kingdom and that Sinhalese had for centuries inhabited the province. The almost one hundred archeological sites prove that the Eastern Province was never a part of any traditional homeland which should be the preserve of the Tamil speaking people. It does seem that PM Dudley did not have the same knowledge of the Eastern province as did his father.

The very structure of that negotiation was flawed for the PM should never have agreed on a one and one meeting with the Federal Party leader, he should have been supported by a team and the demands further negotiated. It was indeed a lack of experience and the absence of experienced mediators that sadly put paid to that effort. There is good reason to believe from what has transpired subsequently that Mr. Chelvanayagam could have been forced to compromise on his demand for an amendment to the Land Development Ordinance.

That effort in 1965 was perhaps the closest we came to a negotiated settlement. After 1965 there was no attempt to arrive at a negotiated settlement till the Indian government intervened and talks were held between the GoSL and the LTTE in Timpu, Bhutan but that effort too failed. In the period after that with the Indian government climbed on board and ‘Annexure C’ was proposed and it took four years for a formula for a settlement to emerge; that was in 1987 and that was an agreement not with the LTTE but between the governments of India and Sri Lanka. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution to devolve power was effected as a basis to resolve the conflict but the LTTE rejected the solution and also the opportunity to have the Amendment improved upon to make the devolution meaningful and a reality. It was only in 1990 that another effort was made during the Premadasa Presidency but it became clear that the LTTE, which had emerged after decimating all moderate Tamil leaders was not committed to finding a negotiated settlement. It indulged in a treacherous Pearl Harbour type attack on the forces and broke the ceasefire agreement. The LTTE also murdered in cold blood 640 policemen who surrendered to them on the orders of a naive government on promise of safe passage by the treacherous LTTE. Its goal was uncompromisingly Eelam.

President Kumaratunge was the next to make an effort to find a solution; she unfortunately went into it without drawing on our previous experiences with the LTTE and also in an unstructured manner, sending friends who were absolute novices to negotiate with the LTTE; she quite naturally floundered badly. But to her credit it should be said that she sought to amend the constitution to reach out to the Tamil people and to address their grievances in 1995 and 1997 but no consensus could be reached in the south and those two attempts also floundered.

She next took the issue to Parliament and the two principal southern political parties met over 40 times and formulated amendments to the Constitution to address the problem. This was in the year 2000 and in that year President Kumaratunge was re-elected for a further five years as President. She had sought to tag along a provisional clause to the agreed amendments to the constitution to stay in office till her second term expired. The UNP did not agree and torpedoed the whole effort. This was an irresponsible act and in hindsight this is affirmed. Her next effort took the form of a Parliamentary Committee headed by that amiable and honourable politician of the old school, the gentleman Mangala Moonesinghe. That report too could not be made the basis of legislation. The nest effort at direct talks with the LTTE came about in 2002 with the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration. This was the only structured attempt at negotiations on the part of the government of Sri Lanka. It was indeed a whole new approach. The government entered into a CFA which was unfortunately flawed because the so-called ‘honest broker’ was not wholly honest but partial to the LTTE. A government ‘Peace Secretariat’ was established to support the Talks, The government put together a peace support group comprising of the US, the EU and Japan, with India supporting the process from ‘behind’. The government agreed to a monitoring mechanism of the CFA, held six rounds of Talks with the LTTE, was able to get the LTTE to commit themselves to exploring a federal solution within a united Sri Lanka. The core support group backed the process by holding a pledging conference in Japan where a sum of 4.5 billion US Dollars was pledged for post conflict reconstruction.

The LTTE which had been virtually dragged into the process by Norway and the international community was the reluctant party from the very beginning. It violated the CFA over 3800 times, brought in arms shipments with impunity. The LTTE also decimated a Military Intelligence wing assassinating 43 personnel. It used the CFA to entrench itself in government held territory on the pretext of doing ‘political work’. It took over territory (Manirasakulam and subsequently the Mavil Aru Anicut and cut off water to thousand of acres paddy land). It reneged on its agreement to establish a committee to study de-escalation and to reduce the High Security Zones, it reneged on its agreement to form a committee headed by Prof. GL Peiris and the late Balasingham to address the core issues and finally pulled out of the Sub Committee established with an LTTE nominee as Chair, for reconstruction and rehabilitation in the war ravaged areas of the North and East, after a sum of US Dollars 70 million had been pledged by the international community for this effort.

The above stated facts should be more than adequate to prove that the LTTE has never been interested in a negotiated settlement; what has been particularly unfortunate in this context is that the EU and other members of the peace support group have been parroting their call for a negotiated settlement despite the fact that all the evidence points to the fact that the LTTE is NOT interested in any negotiated settlement but only in the establishment of a separate state by the force of arms and by resorting to naked terrorism.

This provokes me to indulge in an exercise to see what Sri Lanka may have been had Governments in Colombo resolved this problem many years ago before the advent of Prabhakaran and his LTTE or what Sri Lanka could yet look like in 2020. (See the pictures retrieved from an e-mail doing the rounds).