Home grown solution or a solution to elude

Fiddling politics of Mahinda Rajapakse

 by Rajasingham Jayadevan

(January 17, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Mahinda Percy Rajapakse is reluctantly advocating a home grown solution to the national question of devolution of powers to the minorities. As though the concept is something unprecedented and creative and no one had advocated in the past, the President is promoting the theme without spelling out what is special about his mission.

At this week’s informal meeting with the Foreign Correspondents, responding to a question on devolution he has stated: ‘I am for the 13th Amendment (to the Constitution) plus’. The very President on his return from his recent disastrous visit to the United Kingdom went on to state that he wanted to reveal his plan for devolution in his Oxford Union speech. Since his return from the UK, he had all the opportunities to reveal the secrecy on the solution to the national question but he has failed.

He could have walked into the national TV station and revealed his intent to resolve the conflict in a broader based statement or even could have said something when he spoke in the parliament recently.

1st January came and went followed by the January 1st for the Tamils (Thaipongal) on the 14th January.

The President did not have the courage to come open, but only muttered his piece of thinking at the unofficial foreign journalist meeting when a question was raised in this regard. The issue of devolution of powers is so important that even his casual remarks to respond to a question were widely reported in the media.

One has to see whether he has formally seeded his so-called home grown solution at the meeting with the foreign journalists. Unfortunately his home grown solution did not root at the meeting with the local media on the previous day to promote it as home grown, instead was only referenced at the unofficial meeting of the foreign media.

This shows the lackadaisical approach of the President to the burgeoning national question to run an inclusive state with the much wanted extensive devolution of powers.

The President’s muttering did not reflect any home grown concepts. It is the position of India that any political resolution must be 13th amendment +. Indian External Minister S M Krishna has clearly advocated this position at the Indian parliament last year. Unable to put forward his honest thinking on devolution, the President is only responding to external pressures and is not willing even to consider any of the home grown solutions stacked in the archives since independence of Sri Lanka in 1948.

Even the latest resolution proposed by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) presided by his own minister Prof Tissa Vitharane is silently dust binned despite the upbeat statement of the learned Prof in April 2009 that it will be considered upon the defeat of the LTTE. The Professor too is maintaining dumbfounded silence about his wasted effort and with his cake cutting 80th birthday party at the Cabinet meeting last year, the APPG effort found its inevitable burial.

The interesting part of the home grown solution promoted by the President is that, it was seeded only at the foreign correspondent’s meeting. This seed has been heavily treated not to grow any further than the rightwing thinking of his vision of un-accommodative politics and unwanted conditions have been created for the minority parties to come united to help grow his constrained vision.

In order to push through a vague and fancy dressed devolution package to accommodate his minority hates of his government, the President is doing everything to down size his response to the burgeoning issue. Except for dictating his terms to the Tamils, he has not reached the opposition UNP and the JVP to reach a bipartisan consensus.

Even if 13th amendment + resolution are considered in a limited way, it will be pushed through the throats of the minorities by massaging the constituents of his coalition government. In his kitchen cabinet meeting with the foreign correspondents, he had further said police powers will not be devolved. Before a process of dialogue, President’s informal comments are aimed to dilute and weaken the very purpose of honest devolution of powers.

If and when the President presents the terms of reference and the road map for the already constrained devolution proposal, it will set the home grown process for an imported resolution to the conflict.

This confirms international pressure is a vital ingredient for any political resolution. Unless a coordinated international pressure is mounted through India, Sri Lanka will drag its feet further to undermine any efforts to decentralise powers and move away from its fiddling governance practices forever.