The 13th Amendment and the international system

"The death of 60, 000 youths, of whatever ethnicity, is a tragedy to be mourned. That which is true of the LTTE is also true of the JVP: these were youths who took up arms courageously, but wielded them barbarically and after a point, needlessly. They paid the inevitable price at the hands of the state, indeed the self-same Sri Lankan armed forces, including its top brass. That’s what a state is and what a state does."
_______________

By Dayan Jayatilleka

(July 09, Geneva, Sri Lanka Guardian) My young friend and critic Malinda Seneviratne just has to be kidding. He writes in The Nation of July 5th 09, that "Dayan not only thinks the 13th is great, but trusts the President to deliver his (Dayan’s) Utopia". Now that’s wrong on all three counts. I don’t think the 13th amendment is "great". It is not the President I "trust" to deliver on it. And the present Sri Lanka with an activated 13th amendment is a far cry from any notion of Utopia I might have.

I think the Sermon on the Mount is "great". I think that the US Declaration of Independence of July 4th 1776 is "great". I think that Mao’s ‘On Contradiction’ is "great". I think that Fidel’s Second Declaration of Havana and Che’s Message to the Tricontinental are "great". I do not think the 13th amendment is "great".

I think the 13th amendment is historically significant and currently indispensable because it is the only structural reform of the centralized Sri Lankan state which devolves power, makes for some measure of autonomy and thereby provides a basis for the reconciliation of the Sinhalese and Tamil communities within a united and unitary Sri Lanka.

Furthermore, it is the only such reform to take place exactly three decades after the abrogation of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam pact of 1957 which made for Regional Councils. Those who say that the Indo-Lanka Accord and the 13th amendment were "hurried"and "externally coerced" forget the fact that from another point of view, they amounted to a Caesarean surgical intervention, bringing forth a power sharing solution that had been thwarted from 1957, through the District Councils of 1966 and the Indian facilitated negotiations of 1984 (APC/Annexure C) to 1986 (December 19th Chidambaram proposals). It is important to recall than none of these proposals for moderate power sharing were voted down democratically. They never had a chance to be. The leaders, such as SWRD Bandaranaike, were besieged by extra-parliamentary lobbies and the parliamentary process aborted by extra-parliamentary agitation. A structural blockage enforced by domestic coercion was removed by coercive external intervention – an "externally propelled re-composition" of the state I had predicted 3 years before the Accord, while in my late twenties. (D. Jayatilleka, "The ethnic conflict and the crisis in the south", in Committee for Rational Development, Sri Lanka: The ethnic conflict, New Delhi, 1984).

My strong support (not "fascination" as Malinda would have it) for the 13th amendment is because it is already in place and does not have to be (re)negotiated. It has only to be implemented and Sri Lanka’s military triumph would be politically reinforced instantly. Tamil nationalism would be split between the hyper-nationalists who reject it and the moderates who accept and participate, the Tamil Diaspora would be divided, the North-South gap would be bridged, a renewed cycle of conflict would be less likely or possible, the impressive weight of India in the world system would be solidly with us, the international pressure on us would lift somewhat, our allies and friends in the international system would be relieved and vindicated, external financing would be more readily available, the anti-Sri Lanka global campaign would be severely weakened and the attempt to encircle Sri Lanka internationally would be defeated. All these strategic benefits are obtainable right now.

It is not any particular President I trust to deliver on the 13th amendment or its equivalent or improvement. My point was that President Rajapakse can deliver because he is the least vulnerable to a Southern backlash. What I trust is the reality of Sri Lanka’s multiethnic character, that the challenge of accommodating Tamil identity and reconciling it with Sinhala and Muslim identity will remain, that it will be necessary for any government to negotiate with the Tamil parliamentarians who will be present, due to the system of proportional representation, in greater numbers after next year’s parliamentary election, that India will not go away and our need for India in the face of western pressure will not go away either, and that the 13th amendment, however elasticized, will remain the saddle-point between the Sinhala insistence on a unitary state and the Tamil demand for some degree of self –rule.

Sri Lanka with a working 13th amendment is a far cry from "Dayan’s Utopia", but it is a brake on a downward slide to Dayan’s Dystopia of renewed conflict in different forms, of a resumed narrative of lost opportunities, of civic violence, stagnation and decay, of a long and bitter peace and rueful mid- 21st century ruminations of "the path we never took/into the rose garden" (Eliot).

As for "Dayan’s Utopia", it is probably far more ambitious and wildly eclectic than Sri Lanka with a modest reform, and closer to the combination of the contradictory virtues of Athens and Sparta that Plato envisaged, than anything Thomas More dreamed of. The ideological mix and social philosophy of the new wave of Latin American Left governments, the dignity, internationalist activism and military ethics of Fidel’s Cuba, the secular state of India, the reflective self-critical conscience of the intelligentsia of Israel, the elite foreign services of Pakistan and Brazil, the sophisticated intellectual and political discourse of France and Italy, the meritocracy of the public service of Singapore, the ubiquitous street corner music and movies and think tankquality periodical subculture of the USA, the architecture and aesthetics of Europe, the Platonic "philosopher-President" political leadership style of Barack Obama, the abiding natural beauty of Sri Lanka and the relaxed Lankan lifestyle of the 1960s and early ’70s that I grew up in – all these would be ingredients and characteristic features of Dayan’s Utopia.

Malinda next gets on to my argument about the geo-political reality that is India. He has a critique and a counterview. The first is that India precipitated the deaths of 60,000 youths in the late 1980s. Now that’s a partial truth. If Sri Lanka had devolved power in 1957, 1966, 1981 (DDCs), 1984 (Annexure c) or 1986 (Chidambaram), there would have been no Indian intervention. If the 1987 accord had been resisted by the JVP peacefully, there would have been no call for the Sri Lankan state to defend itself violently. In a striking mirror image, both the LTTE and the JVP violently opposed the 13th amendment and the North east provincial council. Both movements have been militarily defeated. It must also be recalled that the JVP took up the gun before a single IPKF jawan had appeared on Sri Lankan soil. Daya Pathirana was murdered in November 1986, and the entire left was under violent siege for supporting devolution which was luridly portrayed as secessionism. And this was the JVP’s second time out as an insurrectionary force, the first being in 1971, with no Indians around and a freshly elected centre-left administration in place. Thus the JVP’s violent denouement was in its DNA.

The death of 60, 000 youths, of whatever ethnicity, is a tragedy to be mourned. That which is true of the LTTE is also true of the JVP: these were youths who took up arms courageously, but wielded them barbarically and after a point, needlessly. They paid the inevitable price at the hands of the state, indeed the self-same Sri Lankan armed forces, including its top brass. That’s what a state is and what a state does.

There have been three civil wars fought against the Sri Lankan state: 1971, 1986-89, 1979-2009. The Sri Lankan state prevailed in all three. These three wars settled three basic questions. The first uprising was about the character of the State, society and the economy and it was settled in favor of the market economy and multiparty democracy. The second civil war brought up the same questions but placed at the forefront the issue of centralization or devolution and power sharing (Wijeweera’s 300 page magnum opus was all about it), and with the victory of the state that too was settled in favor of the post Accord structural reform, the 13th amendment and provincial autonomy, with all parties including the militarily defeated JVP actually contesting the PC elections. This reform remained dormant because of the full-scale war waged in the North East by the Tigers.

Malinda’s second point about India is that Tamil Nadu matters less than it did while China matters more. Yeah, but the 13th amendment matters even to China, which is why the official Sri Lankan communiqué following the discussions between the Foreign Ministers of Sri Lanka and China twice mentions Sri Lanka’s reiteration of its commitment to implementing the 13th amendment. Malinda must understand that there is an international system or world system. If during the Cold war, there were two systems, capitalist and socialist, and the international system consisted of the contradictory unity of these two systems, today there is one single world system, with all its unevenness and contradiction ( North/South, East/West). Sri Lanka is a peripheral unit of this world system. We can reduce the domination of and our dependence upon the West by balancing off our natural allies the global South and East against them, but all this takes place within the world system.

There are three views on Sri Lanka’s external relations and role in the world: de-linking, involution/isolationism, coupled probably with a belief in the chimera of a co-religionists bloc of states; dependency on and appeasement of the West; a multi-vector policy which engages the West (especially the USA) while maintaining Sri Lanka’s dignity, but anchored in the neighborhood, the Asian region and the global South, while practicing a policy of multi-polar balancing to maximize our autonomy and defend our interests. Options 2 and 3 (and I am an adherent and practitioner of Option 3) take place within the framework of the international system, unlike Option 1 which takes us outside it. What Malinda and others who share his view fail to appreciate is the fact that while some players may wish to go beyond it, the 13th amendment and concern for reform that accommodates Sri Lanka’s Tamils in a power sharing arrangement, is a bottom line consensus within the international system as a whole.

Malinda says "we are not in 1987 now... We lived through a time when a federal arrangement was thought to be inevitable…We were told that the LTTE was a reality that will not go away and therefore we have to accommodate terrorism. Things change".

The thing is that those who encourage us to implement the 13th amendment are not those who lectured us on federalism and the need to accommodate the LTTE. Those folks talk of war crimes tribunals, unfettered access, an UN role in political reconciliation, economic sanctions etc. These are the folks who were defeated in Geneva on May 27th. We are being encouraged to swiftly implement at least the 13th amendment, precisely by those who did not belong to that camp, and stood by us, helping us in various ways during the war. It is these friends who will be undermined and who will pull back if we fail to, leaving us vulnerable to the Tamil Diaspora driven West.

"Things change" and that’s not been breaking news since 5 BC, but why assume as Malinda does, that they change in only one direction? Things sure have changed: we have a universally respected US president (with a "transformational mystique") who commented on Sri Lanka in his remarks on the White House lawn, we have a UN Security Council informal briefings and press statement on Sri Lanka; we have rumblings from Chile to South Africa and Mauritius.

Malinda’s solution is the 17th amendment but he’s talking apples and oranges. If implemented, the 17th amendment would take us halfway back to the de-politicized public service we had before 1972, when the architects of the new Constitution chose to abolish the independent Public Service Commission that prevailed until that time. This would be no small deal but it does not address the Tamil problem. The independent Public Service Commission was in existence when "Sinhala Only" was implemented in 1956, the Bandaranaike –Chelvanayagam pact was thwarted in 1957, ethnic rioting took place in 1958, and the Dudley Chelvanayagam pact for District councils was aborted in 1966. As the policy mainstream became more mono-ethnic, monolingual and mono religious, Tamil politics sought space at the periphery. The 17th amendment only tangentially impacts upon the crucial problem of power-sharing between centre and periphery and is therefore no substitute for the implementation of the 13th amendment.

Finally, one of the basic errors of Malinda and his co-thinkers is the conclusion that Tamil ethnic politics died on the banks of the Nandikadal. There can be a military victory over a military challenge but there cannot be a purely military victory over a political challenge. An enemy army can and must be defeated, an armed opponent can be killed, but a political challenge requires a political response and an idea can be defeated only by another idea. The idea of Tamil Eelam can be defeated only by the counter-idea of reformed and restructured Sri Lankan state which may remain unitary but contains an irreducible autonomous political space for the Tamil people of the North and East. It cannot be defeated by the idea of Sri Lanka shorn of even the 13th amendment. Armed Tamil secessionism can and has been defeated, but the politics of collective Tamil identity cannot be militarily defeated or suppressed; it can only be politically addressed.

(These are the strictly personal views of the writer).

-Sri Lanka Guardian