Under Pillayan

"The nation too may thus have something to learn. The possibility of a non-Sinhala Prime Minister, or a Deputy Prime Minister, working under a Sinhala-born President may be only one of them. There are close to 50 Tamil-speaking members in the 225-member Parliament, and there is no reason why one of them could not be as qualified as his Sinhala counterpart for the job. The problem lies with the Tamil-speaking community, which is sourly divided. There is another lesson still waiting to be learnt."

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by N Sathiyamoorthy

(May 26, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Independent of the circumstances in which he became Chief Minister, the elevation of TMVP leader Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan Eastern Province would have made news for its own reason. His gun-totting past would have dotted pen-sketches of the man and his metamorphosis into a mainstream politician wanting/willing (?) to lay down arms, would have made compelling and competitive media profiles.

Not in Sri Lanka, where only the Government continues to trumpet its own achievement on the democratisation front. If anything, only days after the events mentioned, Sri Lanka lost the membership of the UN Human Rights Council. There by hangs a tale – or, two of them, double-tracked and running parallel, it would seem.

As Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe told a Berlin audience, "democratic process can end up conflicting with individual liberties" in evolving democracies – but the rest of the world does not recognise such half-way markers, as the UN's Human Rights Council would show. The 101 votes that Sri Lanka got, and those that it did not get, are products of global diplomacy, and are not pointers to HR violations. To conclude that Sri Lanka's HR record would have been deemed to have been good if only it had won the UN seat is a thought that should cross the mind of the Government's critics even more. There are other international bodies and their elections, and the yardstick that they set now may vitiate their own current arguments in the future, now or later. Likewise, to equate a nation's loss of UN Council seat to the failure of the Government of the day is a temptation that they should resist. It has cut both ways in the past, and can do so in the future, too.

The return of M L A M Hisbullah to the ruling UPFA fold, to be inducted as a Minister in the East should likewise be marked by violent incidents in eastern Kathankudy and consequent tension in Batticaloa may be a coincidence. Yet, coincidence of the kind has the nasty habit of repeating themselves at times, and that is cause for trouble. It is particularly so in a region that is limping back to normalcy, if this is what normalcy under the circumstances is.

It should be said to the credit of the new Chief Minister, and his political bete noire, if SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem is one, that neither lost much time in holding consultations to ease the mounting tension in Kathankudy. Read with Hisbullah's readiness to return to the Government side, and thereby averting a constitutional crisis that the East and the rest of the nation could do without, it speaks for the political maturity, to put the past where it belongs. In the coming weeks and months, such sagacity would be often on demand and under test.

That way, the reported formula for power-sharing among the three major communities in the Eastern Province, attributed to the ruling UPFA leadership, could provide a way out of the nation's ethnic imbroglio when taken in the larger context. The 'Eastern formula', if any, implying a 2+2+1-year rotation of the Chief Minister's post among the Tamil, Muslim and the Sinhala communities over the five-year term of the recently elected Provincial Council, is a welcome first step.

When the time is up for the change-over, honouring a commitment of the kind, if any, is a test that the region and the nation would have to pass, along with the parties and leaders concerned. Translated, the rival UNP-led combine, if it got to topple an UPFA Government in the East, would need to ensure that the Chief Minister's post went to the community that was entitled to the same under the reported UPFA arrangement.

It is an irony of contemporary Sri Lanka that one should be talking about the Opposition when the new government in the East is still in its infancy. Yet, given the coalition politics at the national-level, where splits and crossovers is a rule, and not an exception, 'prophetic predictions' do not make for a paying profession, however. President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Opposition Leader Wickremesinghe need to look only at the mirror – and they would have the answer(s).

With Hisbullah's return, the ruling UPFA has staved off the political crisis for now. It has also saved the party's face at the national-level, and that of President Rajapaksa at the international-level. Hopefully and conversely now, any success of an 'Eastern experiment' of the kind has elements that can be replicated elsewhere, too. In such cases, 'communities' need not constitute the components. There may be other elements, often over-looked.

The nation too may thus have something to learn. The possibility of a non-Sinhala Prime Minister, or a Deputy Prime Minister, working under a Sinhala-born President may be only one of them. There are close to 50 Tamil-speaking members in the 225-member Parliament, and there is no reason why one of them could not be as qualified as his Sinhala counterpart for the job. The problem lies with the Tamil-speaking community, which is sourly divided. There is another lesson still waiting to be learnt.

It is in this context that the continual, if not continuing work of the All-Party Representative Committee (APRC) assumes significance and relevance. The 'Majority Report' of the Experts' Committee to the APRC, as may be recalled, had recommended the cretion of two posts of vice-president, one each for the Tamil and Muslim communities. By implication, the report conceded the presidency to the majority Sinhala community.

In his considered report to the all-party panel and taking the 'Majority Report' forward, APRC Chairman Tissa Vitharana conceded the possibility of a rotational presidency. His recommendation that the two vice-presidents should be from communities to which the President of the day did not belong concedes the presidency to non-Sinhalas, as well. Already, the Provincial Councils Act provides for community-based representation on the Finance Commission – another first that needs to be taken seriously.

An 'Eastern consensus' would also serve a greater political purpose in the national context, going beyond ensuring democracy and development for the locals, which in turn are enviable goals in themselves. With re-merger of the North and the East a sure talking-point at any future negotiations for a political solution leading to permanent peace on the ethnic front, the evolving mood of the combined East would be the crux of the inevitable referendum that any such move would entail.

Better still, it could help shape the mood and method of the LTTE and the Northern polity, with which the East could begin to get politically engaged at its level. The new Chief Minister would have to only ask SLMC's Rauf Hakeem, who had talked it out with LTTE leader Prabhakaran in the past, during the ceasefire – and involve him, too. For that to happen, the TMVP however would need to feel less threatened and targeted, too, by the LTTE.

From Pillayan to Chandrakanthan, the new Chief Minister has begun his career well for a political novice, whose pen-picture as a honcho refuses to die. By making up with Hisbullah, talking to Rauf Hakeem, and visiting the Dalada Maligawa and the Buddhist prelates at Kandy, he has shown where his heart and head now are. That his Kandy visit should cause even minor ripples in the Buddhist-Sinhala community is a reflection of a mindset – not that of accepting a mind-change. It is they who still need to change more than the others – and the lessons since the mid-Fifties are there for them to read and learn from, even at this late hour.

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( The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the Indian policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. )
- Sri Lanka Guardian