Sri Lanka – ethnic polarities remain unaddressed

By Lynn Ockersz

(November 05, Colombo, Sri lanka Guardian) The newly-formed United National Alliance risks being ridiculed as persisting on a well worn political track by resurrecting the Executive Presidency Vs Parliamentary governance controversy all over again and by projecting the abolition of the Executive Presidency as its main election slogan. This is not only because the slogan has been bandied around to no avail by power aspirants mouthing the promise of a reversion to the Parliamentary system in the past, but also because it reflects badly on the Alliance’s sense of priorities.

If a balanced and impartial assessment of Sri Lanka’s experiments with forms of government is carried out, the conclusion will be inescapable that none has proved completely satisfactory thus far. True, some sort of democracy has been persisted with in this country over the past few decades but Sri Lanka has failed abjectly in the all-important undertaking of nation-building or of evolving an equal polity where the communities of the country could coexist peacefully. The latter is what nation-building is all about.

It need hardly be said that the 30-year LTTE-led separatist revolt which was crushed on May 18, was proof that nation-building never got off the ground in Sri Lanka. If an equal polity where every citizen could live in dignity had been brought into being by Sri Lanka’s ‘founding fathers’, and constantly improved on, revolts and rebellions of particularly a separatist kind would never have taken root here.

Unfortunately, Sri Lanka’s political elites seem to consist of mainly slow learners and the writing on the wall was not heeded in the past and the dire indications are that it is still not being heeded. If not, the futility of persisting with the tired debate over forms of government, would have been perceived by now.

Governments are as good as the men and women who constitute them and it is all too obvious that Sri Lanka has been singularly unfortunate in this respect so far. Rather than split hairs over forms of government, our political parties, their managers and other concerned sections would do well to ponder over how they could bring into being public men and women who could take the country in the direction of conscientious and accountable governance. In other words, they should deliberate over why Sri Lanka has utterly failed to produce a Mahatma Gandhi or a Jawaharlal Nehru so far. How could we contribute towards the process of bringing public persons of such quality into being, should be one of their principal worries.

By saying the foregoing the implication is not being made that the Presidential form of government is ideally suited for Sri Lanka or that it is free of serious blemishes and limitations. Far from it. The Presidential system needs to be constantly kept under scrutiny but the challenge before Sri Lanka is to make the institution more accountable to the legislature and through the latter, to the people.

Rather than calling for a jettisoning or a disempowerment of the system, the aim should be to install constitutional checks and balances which would help guard against power abuse by the person occupying Presidential office. Radical reform of the institution rather than its removal should be the aim.

That this should be the polity’s priority should be discernible in the fact that the Parliamentary system of government, as evolved in this country at least, has been instrumental in aggravating some of our national problems rather than proving completely effective in resolving them. A clear case in point is the ethnic conflict. Down the decades, the Parliamentary system has ensured minority representation in the legislature but has proved more of a stumbling block in efforts at resolving the conflict on account of the fact that it essentially enabled the majority community to almost single-handedly manoeuvre the levers of state power and thereby stifle efforts at evolving the Lankan state in the direction of sufficiently empowering the country’s minorities. Besides, it was under the Parliamentary system that discriminatory legislation, such as the notorious Citizenship Acts of 1948 and the ‘Sinhala only’ Act of the mid fifties, were passed, for instance, which played a substantial role in precipitating the conflict.

It is not the case that Sri Lanka has fared exceptionally well on this score under the Executive Presidency, but the possibility exists that once the ‘right’ man or woman is elected to this position, he or she may consider it incumbent on himself or herself to act swiftly in the direction of racial justice and equity, since he or she would be elected to office on the basis of a ‘national’ vote. As long as Sri Lanka remains shackled to the predominantly Westminster-style, first-past-the-post electoral system, with its focus on territoriality, as far as elections to the legislature are concerned, evolving the system of government in the direction of ethnic equity would prove difficult.

Unfortunately, in its haste to parade what seems to it a popular slogan which could capture votes at the next polls, the opposition alliance seems to have forgotten these home truths in domestic politics. Accordingly, the ethnic conflict would in all probability not receive the priority it deserves by the alliance if and when it comes to power, although it is on record that it is contemplating a process of ‘reconciliation’.

However, the stark truth is that Sri Lanka is where it was in the fifties, right now, as far as resolving the conflict is concerned. The facts speak for themselves. Today, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is not in a position to make common cause with the UPFA or the UNA. The reason is because neither Southern alliance is sufficiently accommodative of current Tamil concerns; chief among these being a sense of alienation growing out of the condition of the IDPs and connected issues. In the early fifties, the sense of alienation in the Tamil community bourgeoned into the call for a federal state. The country seems to be at an identical impasse right now.

In terms of bringing reconciliation, political actors and other concerned sections need to bear in mind that it is empowerment that finally effects reconciliation among communities. It is also the key to nation-building. The state could set a precedent in this direction by fully empowering the Eastern Provincial Council. It is truly a test case.

-Sri Lanka Guardian