| by Shanie
It is this columnist’s view that if the LLRC’s recommendations are implemented in the same spirit that they have been made, the solution to the National Question will ultimately fall into place. There is no need for any rhetoric about a Parliamentary Select Committee. Any Parliamentary Select Committee with some of its members holding divergent and extremist views is unlikely to reach consensus. That is why, instead of a PSC, if there is a political will to implement the government appointed LLRC’s recommendation within a defined time-frame, then the country would have made a significant move towards achieving reconciliation. Finding common ground on political issues on the national question then becomes so much easier. It is the political will that is required on the part of both the government and the opposition.
"But most shall he sing of Lanka
In the bright new days that come.
When the races all have blended
And the voice of strife is dumb
When we leap to a single bugle,
March to a single drum.
March to a mighty purpose,
One man from shore to shore;
The stranger, becomes a brother....
Hark! Bard of the fateful future,
Hark! Bard of the bright to be;
A voice on the verdant mountains,
A voice by the golden sea.
Rise, child of Lanka, and answer
Thy mother hath called to thee." - Walter Stanley Senior (1876-1938)
( February 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Last week, we celebrated the anniversary of our independence from colonial rule. For all the nationalist rhetoric that came from political platforms, it is humbling to recall what a British Anglican priest/poet wrote about the country he had came to love. The Revd Walter Stanley Senior came over to Sri Lanka in 1906 and served in turn as Vice Principal of Trinity College, a parish priest, the first Registrar and Lecturer in Classics at the University College in Colombo. But he is best remembered for his poems and writings where he showed his emotional attachment to the country that he had adopted as his second home. In fact, ten years after he returned to England owing to ill heath and when he knew he was dying, he requested that his mortal remains be cremated and the ashes interred in the churchyard at Haputale. The interment was duly done in 1938 by his friend Canon R S de Saram, Warden of S Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia and the headstone on the well-preserved grave at St Andrew’s Church, Haputale bears an inscription from Senior’s own poem:
Here I stand in spirit,
as in body once I stood long years ago,
in love with all the land.
This peerless land of beauty’s plenitude.
and followed by the words:
‘He Loved Ceylon ‘
Senior was not a colonial romanticist. Those who knew him refer to the genuine love he had for our country and our people. His poems speak not only about the beauty of the country but also of the need for all people of the country to live together in harmony. That is why it is humbling to read this foreigner’s poems, rather than the double-speak of some of our political leaders.
India and Pakistan
Neighbouring India split into two at the time of her independence. During independence negotiations, Jinnah’s Moslem League insisted on partition and the vast sub-continent saw the emergence of the new state of a geographically separated Pakistan, one wing on the west and the other on the east of India. Thus was born Pakistan on sectarian grounds. Unfortunately, Jinnah’s vision for Pakistan was an ambiguous one. He spoke against Pakistan becoming an Islamic theocratic state and was for all minorities in Pakistan, ethnic and religious, being treated with equality and justice: but he also spoke about Pakistan being founded on Islamic principles. In the end, Jinnah lived to be Pakistan’s first Governor-General and virtual head of government for just an year. He died of tuberculosis thirteen months after Pakistan was born. When the constitution of Pakistan was finally adopted in 1956 by the Constituent Assembly it was to be the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
But in India, despite the religious controversy over the creation of Pakistan, Gandhi and Nehru were firm that India would be secular democracy. In a recent essay, Professor Navaratna Bandara quotes Stephen Cohen who wrote in 2000: ‘Since its birth as a nation more than fifty years ago, India has seemed poised on the edge of two different futures. On one side lay greatness, on the other collapse. That drama has now ended and a new era has begun. The spectre of collapse has passed and India is emerging as a major Asian power.’ Professor Navaratna Bandara adds that such recognition received from outside observers justify the commitment made by the forefathers of modern India to the concept of a secular state that takes the responsibility of modernising its society by overcoming the parochialism ingrained in the society. The vision of Nehru for a modernist, pluralist and secular India was reflected in the united stand taken by the leaders of all political persuasions in the making of India’s new constitution. They rejected communalism, provincialism, casteism and factionalism and produced a unique system of government that blended the features of unitary, federal and cabinet systems of government.
The contrasting stories of Pakistan and India after independence are a reflection of the vision of their respective political leaders. Had Jinnah lived longer, Pakistan may have perhaps emerged as a more secular and more democratic nation. Only perhaps. We do not know. But the post-Jinnah political leadership of Pakistan certainly did not share the vision of India’s post-independence Indian leaders. That is why Pakistan has had a succession of coup d’etats, assassinations and political instability. India, on the other hand, despite the assassinations of Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi (all by sectarian militants) has emerged as a strong and vibrant democracy. It is the maturity of Indian democracy that was expressed at the General Election following the brief period of Emergency rule in the nineteen seventies. We were reminded of this at the recent Galle Literary Festival where Jayantha Dhanapala moderated a session involving writers Nayantara Saghal and Katherine Frank, who had both written political biographies of Indira Gandhi. Columnist Nan has quoted significant extracts from this session in Sunday Island last week. It affirms Indira Gandhi’s and India’s commitment to democracy.
Home Grown Solutions?
Sri Lanka can learn valuable lessons from the history of both India and Pakistan; and on post-conflict reconciliation from South Africa and Northern Ireland. But for both we need a political will, a willingness to learn lessons from others. Our political leaders keep repeating the phrase ‘a home grown solution’ like a mantra. They do it as a cover for doing nothing. One really does not know what is meant when this phrase is used. They cannot be ignorant that nearly all solutions proposed over the years in our country have been fashioned by political leaders within our country. The Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam and Dudley Senanayake-Chelvanayakam Pacts in the early years were worked out between our own political leaders. In 2000, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga constitutional proposals were born out of several rounds of discussions between our own political parties without any intervention by parties outside ‘home’. Soon after Mahinda Rajapakse became Executive President, he appointed an All Party Conference chaired by Tissa Vitarana and an Experts Committee headed by Raja Goonesekere. The Experts Committee duly presented its report (with three members submitting a dissent). The APC which was later transformed into the All Parties Representative Committee submitted an interim report and later a final report in 2008, four years ago. That home grown report has not been officially released and is presumably gathering dust in the President’s Office. We do not know if the President has read it. We know that he has read the LLRC report because all the newspapers carried a picture of the President reading the LLRC report from an armchair, but there has been no photo exhibit of him reading the APRC report. The APRC laboured for over two years, met at some seventy sessions, all out of public funds. That report therefore belongs to the people and the President is wrong in withholding its official release for public discussion.
The same goes for numerous other reports which rightly belong to the people. The LLRC itself has commented on Udalagama Commission report which dealt, among other matters, on the killing of the five students in Trincomalee. It seems that what we are looking for is not any new home grown solution but the ignoring of home grown problems and the home grown recommendations for their solution in the hope they will disappear. Is it a case of arrogance of power? Apart from the Udalagama Commission recommendations, the LLRC also made interim recommendations in September 2010, over one year ago. In their final report, the learned Commissioners have commented on the non-implementation of their interim recommendations and have made further recommendations for reaching national reconciliation.
Implementing Recommendations
Fortunately, for whatever reason, the LLRC report has been released and there has been wide public discussion on it. In his address at the National Day celebrations at Anuradhapura, President Rajapaksa said that he had already started implementing the LLRC recommendations. He did not tell us which of the recommendations have been implemented but at least his statement implies that he accepts them, even though the widow of slain Cabinet Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle and a current government parliamentarian, is quoted in The Island this week as stating that the LLRC was ‘biased’ (presumably against the government). The good lady has obviously not read the report when she states that the LLRC has ignored LTTE terrorism.
Dr. Fernandopulle’s criticism of the LLRC report follows similar criticisms made earlier by some of the constituent parties of the governing coalition. One hopes that the agitation by parties who do not have a track record of wanting reconciliation between the various communities in our country on the basis of equality and justice will not again be used to dump the LLRC report as being controversial. The LLRC has proved its sceptics wrong by making recommendations that would go a long way not only towards promoting reconciliation but also towards finding a solution to the National Question. One hopes the LLRC’s recommendations fall within the President’s definition of ‘home-grown’; the President’s National Day statement that he has already begun implementing the LLRC recommendations is encouraging. One also hopes that he will take the next step by publishing his road map for implementing the LLRC recommendations – all of them. If the government rejects any of them, those too should be made known with the reasons why they are being rejected. It is only such transparency that can convince the people that the government is genuine in its quest for reconciliation.
It is this columnist’s view that if the LLRC’s recommendations are implemented in the same spirit that they have been made, the solution to the National Question will ultimately fall into place. There is no need for any rhetoric about a Parliamentary Select Committee. Any Parliamentary Select Committee with some of its members holding divergent and extremist views is unlikely to reach consensus. That is why, instead of a PSC, if there is a political will to implement the government appointed LLRC’s recommendation within a defined time-frame, then the country would have made a significant move towards achieving reconciliation. Finding common ground on political issues on the national question then becomes so much easier. It is the political will that is required on the part of both the government and the opposition.
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