| by Harim
Peiris
( October 19,
2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) For the Rajapaksa Administration which
pushed through the 18th Amendment to the constitution with barely a squeak of
protest from society, the furor over the Divineguma bill must be hard to
comprehend. The Bill is challenged in Court, the ruling is a defeat for the
government and there is now a serious public debate over the issues concerned,
with trade unions joining with protests and opposition to the Bill.
The timing of
the furore over the Divineguma Bill comes at a fairly bad time for the
government, faced as it is with serious confrontations with the judiciary,
protests by FUTA and university students and a general increase in discontent
in society. Such discontent is not easily quelled, especially from an
administration, loath to make any real policy concessions or governance changes
to accommodate dissent or diversity of opinion. The cosmetic time buying
exercises merely postpone relatively briefly the day of reckoning.
Now the
Rajapaksa administration is fairly well entrenched and the current spate of
protests, court challenges and other societal push back on the regime is in no
way a threat to its political survival. This is certainly not the beginning of
the end for what is still a government which has the consent of the majority of
the governed. But, while it is not the beginning of the end, it is certainly
the "end of the beginning". The Rajapaksa political honeymoon with
the public, post the 2010 national elections are over. No longer is there
unquestioning and uncritical acceptance of what this administration, from its
apex to its media apparatus says and seeks to do. There is increased public
skepticism, criticism and protests.
The 13th
Amendment and the PSC
The opposition
over the Divineguma Bill is obviously hard for the government to either
understand or stomach. Hence, the knee-jerk reactions such as let’s do away
with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. If such statements were made from
the political fringe, they could be easily dismissed. But when such statements
are made by presidential sibling and Defence Secretary, arguably the second
most powerful person in the country, next to the president himself, they take
on a seriousness in indicating, if not policy positions, then the thinking and
likely future direction of the administration.
At a time when
the government is calling upon the Tamil National Alliance and the other
opposition political parties to come to a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC)
to discuss devolution of power and other issues of concern to ethnic minorities
in the country, using to some extent the existing devolution provisions in the
Constitution, through the 13th amendment, statements such as those made by the
Defence Secretary only add credence to the skepticism expressed by TNA leaders,
such as by Sampanthan’s in his interview with The Sunday Island of 14th October
that the PSC joins a long list of Rajapaksa Administration’s own processes,
such as the All Party Conference (APC), the All Parties Representative
Committee (APRC), the Indian initiated structured dialogue with the TNA and
most recently the final report of the LLRC, which are all unilaterally shelved
by the administration, after they have outlived their original and real purpose
of wasting time and avoiding the need for any remedial action.
Dayan and
Sathiyamoorthy
Some respected
pro-government political analysts and columnists such as Ambassador Dr. Dayan
Jayatilake and Indian analyst Sathiyamoorthy from Chennai, made much of
Sampanthan’s address to the ITAK party congress in April, where he expressed in
short, his deep reservations and skepticism regarding the Rajapaksa
government’s political will and desire to provide any post war reconciliation
or political solution to the problems of minority communities in the Country.
Dayan went so far as to state that with such views expressed a Northern
Provincial Council election, which the TNA is guaranteed to win, cannot be
held. Notwithstanding the promise in the Mahinda Chinthanya Idiri Dekma itself
that the NPC election will be held at the earliest. However, such columnists
who generally write at length about the TNA’s policy positions and actions,
(though the TNA is very much a deal taker and not a deal maker in the post war
political landscape) should address their minds and writings to the
pronouncements of Sri Lankasecond most powerful personality and the person who
commands the troops and armed forces that effectively run the post war North,
that no devolution is necessary and such devolution as remains in our basic law
must be overturned. If that is the agenda, then of what purpose is the PSC? Do
these sentiments have the concurrence of the President? If not, why have they
not been either clarified, retracted or contradicted? When the international
community in multilateral forums and in bi lateral relations indicates their
own skepticism of the government’s intent and direction of post war policy, it
should be recognised that contradictory statements and lengthy periods of
inaction coupled with little or no real progress is rather like shooting
oneself in the foot and is self defeating.
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