Accepting reality and building trust

"The government that won the war against the LTTE needs to consider trusting the Tamil people, sharing power with them and thereby securing their loyalty and commitment to a united Sri Lanka in which they are equal citizens with an equal sense of belonging."

by Jehan Perera

(September 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution has been a landmark event. The government obtained the necessary 2/3 majority in Parliament by a comfortable margin. The number of opposition parliamentarians who appear willing to take flight into the government seems to be increasing by the day. Therefore the government has every reason to be confident of its stability and strength. This is probably the strongest government that Sri Lanka has ever seen and is likely to see. It has no serious opposition at the present time. Those who try to confront the government rather than find ways to engage and work with it are likely to be brushed aside at best.

Government members have said that further constitutional reforms will be coming in sequence. Future reforms are likely to include changing the electoral system from being one based on proportional representation to one that has mixed elements of both the first-past-the-post system and the proportional system. Another likely reform would be in regard to the 13th Amendment which established the devolution of powers through provincial councils as the solution to the ethnic conflict. There are elements of the 13th Amendment that have been controversial since its passage in 1987.

The provincial council system has been criticized from two opposing perspectives. Some believe that the devolution of powers to the Provincial Councils is an effective way to ensure a measure of power sharing between the ethnic communities. As the Northern and Eastern provinces in particular have a majority who comprise Tamil and Muslim voters, devolving powers to those Provincial Councils enables the ethnic minorities to wield those devolved political power within those provinces. But the supporters of the provincial council system are disappointed at the lack of resources provided to them and to the lack of implementation of important sections of the law.

Others however have been critical of the Provincial Council system as providing too much of power them that could be used for anti national purposes. The critics point to the power over land and police in particular, as these can be used by the Provincial Councils to promote separatism. They have argued that if the Tamil militant movement was able to become so powerful without the provincial councils being vested with those powers, it can be imagined how much more powerful any rebel movement would be if they had access to land and police powers as well. This apprehension has led to successive governments denying police and land powers to the Provincial Councils.

Formalising practice

Now that the government has obtained for itself a 2/3 majority to change the constitution, it can be expected to move swiftly to remove police and land powers from the list of powers that the 13th Amendment assigned to the Provincial Councils. The government would be encouraged by the ease with which it was able to pass the 18th Amendment. Amending the 13th Amendment would be even easier as it has been controversial with large sections of the population. Such a constitutional amendment would also change hardly anything on the ground. As in the case of the 17th Amendment that was overridden by the 18th Amendment, it would merely make formal what had previously been the practice.

At the same time, as the government moves to address its own concerns regarding ethnic separatism and how best to contain it, the government also needs to reassure the ethnic minorities that their own concerns will be addressed. The recent history of Tamil separatism and the LTTE’s war to achieve an independent state of Tamil Eelam, would justify the government’s concerns about devolving power to large units such as the provinces. On the other hand, if the government is to treat the ethnic minorities on an equal footing and as equal citizens, it needs to address their aspiration to be politically empowered in the areas in which they live.

In this regard, the government could consider strengthening the system of local government. In most well functioning democracies in the West and in Japan, local governments have lot of power. They run their own school systems and also the local police. As local governments are relatively small, empowering them would not generate a fear of separation. This would be part of a confidence and trust building process. If this works well more broad based devolution could be tried later.

A system of empowered and re-activated local government authorities may not be to the satisfaction of the who have aspired to provincial level autonomy and even to independence in Tamil Eelam. However, present day realities have to be accepted. What the country has now is a post-war government that has vanquished all its opponents. The 18th Amendment was about the further centralization of power within the Presidency. It was not about power sharing either with the ruling party or the opposition parties. The ethnic minorities would be unrealistic to expect anything more.

Diaspora Role

Diaspora groups in particular need to come to terms with this reality. Some of them are conducting global elections in their countries of residence to set up a transnational government of Tamil Eelam. This might give the individuals who hold position in that entity with status in their places of domicile. But such activities do little or nothing to help the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. On the contrary, they aggravate the mistrust within the government of a possible resurgence of the Tamil separatist movement. This further hardens the government’s stance against the devolution of powers.

Recently I had the opportunity to meet members of the Tamil diaspora from both Canada and the United States. These members of the diaspora were moderate in their views. On one occasion there was a discussion between young Tamils and Sinhalese from the diaspora who belong to the Young Canadians Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka. They interacted with each other with a vision of a new Sri Lanka to which they would make their own positive contribution. On another occasion, those of an older generation spoke of the hardships they had undergone living in foreign lands bereft of their traditional family linkages. But they still had a commitment to help the people back in Sri Lanka to restore their lives. The government needs to trust this goodwill of the diaspora and act in good faith in turn.

One of the outcomes of the end of the war has been the government’s decision to continue to increase the military budget and to further increase recruitment to the armed forces. In most countries the end of war is welcomed as providing an opportunity to reallocate both economic and human resources to civilian welfare. But in Sri Lanka, it is military spending that appears to have been given first priority. This may be due to the government’s belief that a strong military that makes its presence felt in all parts of the country is needed to ensure national security. However, the experience of democratic countries including Sri Lanka is that the reliance on forcible means is more likely to generate resistance and resentment in the longer term.

The government that won the war against the LTTE needs to consider trusting the Tamil people, sharing power with them and thereby securing their loyalty and commitment to a united Sri Lanka in which they are equal citizens with an equal sense of belonging. Due to its strength, the government is in a good position to act on the basis of confidence rather than fear. Those who are truly confident are able to trust, which is what makes human society possible. Unless there is trust, neither families nor countries can stay together. During the years of war trust broke down in the country. The most serious trust deficit arose between the government and the Tamil community. Now that the war has ended there is a unique opportunity for fears to be allayed and trust to be regained. This calls for a new approach that guides all actions.