Return of the APRC To provide an Acceptable package?

"The 'Majority Report' and the Tissa Vitharana Recommendations were both attractive and at times ambitious. They did address the aspirations of all sections but they were only internal working papers of and for the APRC and could not be made touchstones on power-devolution."

by N. Sathaya Moorthy

(December 22, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Colombo Government's reiteration of its position on ceasefire apart, peaceniks in and on Sri Lanka need not despair. Reports of a year-end conclusion of work by the APRC and the near-simultaneous appeal of some Church denominations for a Christmas-New Year ceasefire could help if they took their ceasefire call to and through a logical next step.

The last time a truce facilitated political movement, the Cease-fire Agreement (CFA) was born. The failure of the CFA on the ground, though after holding for four years, has convinced the successor Government that the LTTE needed to be tamed if it had to talk peace with the insurgent/terror group.

It is thus that the clergy could consider the LTTE to facilitate the relocation of all Tamil civilians in the areas under its control in more civilised circumstances. It may not be what the Government wanted in terms of the LTTE laying down arms, yet it could help nonetheless.

Not very long ago, the Catholic Bishop of Jaffna, Rev. Thomas Saundaranayagam, had called upon the Indian neighbour to pressure the LTTE to 'free' all civilians in the areas under its control. He was a signatory to the ceasefire call, though there seems to be other Bishops in the country who plead ignorance about the latter.

The Government, one hopes, would be pragmatic enough to acknowledge that the LTTE would not lay down all weapons and disband all sleeper-cells at one go without an 'acceptable' political package. It would also be aware that all 'residual militancy' could not be wiped out overnight – and that the latter task may be more tortuous for the nation as a whole than taking time to win a conventional war.

The international community is ready, and is rather waiting to help the affected civilians if the LTTE were to facilitate their relocation. Not very long ago, neighbouring India showed how international organisations like the Red Cross could be engaged to reach out relief material to the IDPs. If not to the required levels, there has been some movement on the development front in the East, and foreign Governments and agencies have been of help.

Yet, re-locating the residual Tamil population in the LTTE-controlled areas alone would ensure that the Government would have no opportunity to complain that the relief material ended up in the 'wrong hands', namely, the LTTE. More importantly, there would be that much less opportunity for 'Sinhala colonisation' of what the Government calls the 'liberated areas' if the rightful owners are there to lay claim.

If anything, the LTTE may then have cause for complain. It could be 'exposed' to large-scale aerial bombings and artillery shelling by the armed forces if it were to surrender the 'human shields', and not their weapons.

There could be other guarantees. To think that the All-Party Representative Committee (APRC), now engaged in finalising draft proposals on power-devolution, has ready-made solutions to all problems since Independence would be a fallacy, if not foolhardy. A fresh beginning, however, needs to be made on the peace front. It could lie in the reports that the APRC would be completing its work by the year-end, with a self-satisfying set of recommendations on power-devolution.

There are already indications that the APRC has not been able to address the larger issue pertaining to the 'nature of the Sri Lankan State', and also the attendant concerns of the 'other minorities' like the Muslim community and the Tamils of recent Indan origin. The former pertains to the current identification of Sri Lanka as a 'unitary State'. If not the APRC per se, the 'Majority Report' of the Experts Committee and Chairman Tissa Vitharana's subsequent recommendations to the APRC had addressed the latter in particular and had included the former.

It remains to be seen if the purported APRC suggestion for the abolition of the Executive Presidency, if not that for a bicameral Parliament, would find favour with the nation's polity. If they did, and depending on how far they are willing to travel, the Tamil polity may have cause to review their insistence on wanting the 'unitary' tag dropped.

The Second Republican Constitution (1978) vested 'unitary' powers not on the State but on the Executive President. By practice it vests not even in the office but on the person in power. A return to parliamentary form of Government, if accompanied by other safety-valves where found required, could thus be a way out.

The 'Majority Report' and the Tissa Vitharana Recommendations were both attractive and at times ambitious. They did address the aspirations of all sections but they were only internal working papers of and for the APRC and could not be made touchstones on power-devolution.

At the end of the day, it is the spirit of the Constitution, not sheer phraseology matters. The Tamils all along have had problems with the Sri Lankan State's ability/inability to keep a promise, as something more than a mere promise. If there needs to be guarantees, it should be on this score, not necessarily otherwise.

For the rest, the higher judiciary in the country could be expected to rise to the occasion, as and when the working of the new scheme throws up new issues. The Majority Report/Tissa Vitharana Recommendations had suggested the setting up of a multi-ethnic Constitutional Court of eminent persons to address such concerns, which would be as much political as legal.

Not that existing institutions like the higher judiciary had fared badly. The current pro-active phase of the Supreme Court had commenced with judicial intervention to end the indiscriminate security-checks on Colombo roads, running buses and Tamil-frequented lodging houses. As for as the court's North-East de-merger order went, it was based on facts on hand and laws as they stood. The LTTE was to blame. It did not lay down arms, then as now, and provided in the merger law..

The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the Indian policy think-tank headquartered in New Delhi.The article originally published by the Colombo based dailynews paper, the Daily Mirror.- Sri Lanka Guardian