Image courtesy Mercy Corps

Today, in an integrated and inter-dependent world, Sri Lanka does not have the leverage to reverse climate change but mitigate and adapt. Climate change is caused mostly by human actions which began with the industrialised West and followed suit by emerging economies exacerbating this. Some consider climate change to be a negative result of human efforts for development whilst others consider it as irresponsible efforts for profit making at the cost of the planet. Wherever the argument lies, Climate Change is real and an effective response is very urgent.

Human development is a necessity irrespective of one’s bearing towards the West or East.  The economic amp; development planners and the political leadership should seriously consider the sustainability of the society, region, country and then the world to achieve development that satisfies human needs without tipping the ecological balance that supports us. Overriding market capitalism that drives on the seats of global power today is an obstacle to sustainable development. This is evident in the failure of missions of the climate conferences hitherto held.  This is because large corporations in their profit centric drive for hyper consumerism generate insatiable needs and greed that are beyond the limits nature could provide. This tips the ecological balance to the detriment of mankind whilst giving profits to corporations that are masquerading as Angels of sustainability.

Sri Lanka is economically linked and inter-dependent with the world economy but physically it is an island nation. As an island nation, it has opportunities to be independent as regards its sustainability policies to protect its ecosystem. In an inter-dependent world, flow of goods by way of imports and exports do lead to over extraction and exploitation of nature and at the same time a country becomes a dumping ground for imported waste which is harmful to the ecology. Sadly, the economists and development planners’ yardstick of measurement is the GDP. If the GDP is high and derives a high per-capita income, their bottom-lines are met. Unfortunately the environmental and social cost incurred to achieve such GDP is not reflected anywhere. This leads to a situation of one step up and two steps down in respect to the sustainability of a nation.  This is the reason why in spite of all the attractive and indoctrinating rhetoric by planners and politicians, the ground reality has not changed. More often than not, modern market economic concepts are more destructive than otherwise. Professor Stuart Sim of Northumbria University in his book The End of Modernity: What the Financial and Environmental Crisis is Re-ally Telling Us says: “modernity has reached its limit as a cultural form, all because it is ―destructive of both the planet and…socio-economic systems”. This is an incisive edict by a Western scholar on the imperative of an alternative economic philosophy to answer the current situation.

Climate Change

Climate change influences human behaviour in their lifestyles, consumption patterns and migratory patterns. As a cyclic effect this influenced a host of other things like urbanization, industrialization, wars, colonization and the resultant destruction of societies: all in the name of development and civilization in an unsustainable way. The last three centuries of unsustainable development globally snowballed to what is to become now ‘the climate change’ threatening mankind and the planet.

Climate change if not successfully addressed can create havoc in society. It can have cyclic effects influencing our micro climate; impede our agriculture by flood, depletion, temperature change and scarcity of water. Socially, it can influence internal migration to resource rich and safe areas creating new socio-economic and political issues. This can also possibly deplete the forest cover by human settlements that exacerbate conflict with animal habitat and flooding and scores of new problems hitherto un-confronted. This can also create the problems of food insecurity, water scarcity, extinction of businesses amp; industries and consequent unemployment, the issues of energy, power etc.

In reality, this can potentially change our lifestyles to keep up with the changing scenario brought about by climate change. Therefore, we cannot face this problem in the ‘business  as usual’ way, instead we have to frame policies, educate people, lead societies and set examples of sustainable living to make this a positive change.

The pitfalls that climate change could bring to Sri Lanka are many and need serious and urgent deliberations. However, dwelling on them all is beyond the scope of this article and hence this attempts to dwell on the problems of food security and virtual water that is newly emergent.

Food Security

The issue of food security in the world is not a new phenomenon. It varies from country to country due to climatic and geographic factors. In an inter-dependent and peaceful world, exchange of goods between countries sustains the whole of mankind in terms of satisfying the needs for food. However, today due to population increases, affluence and climate change, sustainable sources of food is becoming a major issue that threatens the security of nations in a geopolitically unstable world. Compounding this, more attention to production and consumption of consumer goods and other ephemerals have rendered agriculture and food production secondary. Also industrialization, urbanization and consequent profit motivations have driven food production to the third or fourth place in some economies. Most developing economies prioritize investment in non food producing industries seeking economic growth without realising the fact that dependency for food threatens their national security.

Hierarchically, water and food are fundamental for human survival and all other goods come later. Therefore it is prudent to give priority to water conservation and food security over and above other needs. All other secondary goods are obtainable in a competitive market but food and water are vital assets to be secure within the domain of a nation state. Dependency for food and water on external sources are not sustainable to a nation even if they are industrial giants. At times of crisis, food and water as commodities can be withheld to make a country subservient. Therefore sustainability of water and food becomes almost important as having a standing army protecting the boundaries of a nation. The command of these resources cannot be delegated to outside sources.

Responding to this emerging crisis of food insecurity, resource rich countries which are having resources other than food are buying large tracts of agricultural lands in the form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in other countries. They are maintaining these as their national assets as contingencies vis a vis food insecurity. The host nations that focus on increasing their GDPs are rarely aware of this emerging new trend that casts potential food insecurity to the host nation in the long run.

Host nations catering to the food security of other nations by permitting FDI in the food and agricultural sector would possibly face severe political problems within the country when food is exported whilst the citizens are starving. This would define very clearly the rich and the poor gap in a society and would set one against the other in their quest for survival. Therefore it is imperative for a country like Sri Lanka to have policies that ensure food security to its citizens first and then concentrate upon economic growth that uplift other sectors.

Discussions on food security cannot be discussed in isolation of the water management of a nation, since water is the source of life that underpins food production. Sri Lanka is blessed with abundant water though there are regional disparities. It was this source of life that once made Sri Lanka the ‘Granary of the East’. Today, we are dependent on imports for some of our food items creating a potentially unwarranted security breach impinging on our national integrity.

This is common in most of the developing economies, in their rat race to achieve high GDP they forge ahead focusing more in the development of technological, industrial and service base of the economy at the expense of the development of the agricultural sector. In line with this, our economists and development planners too were keen on merely achieving higher GDP and per-capita income derivatives and focussed on economic growth. Surprisingly, to an average citizen, economic growth makes no sense unless it reflects food security or self sufficiency in food. How many citizens’ basic needs are satisfied in this country by the so-called increase in the per-capita income? In the contemporary Sri Lankan economy, the middle class sector is narrowing whilst creating a wide gap between the rich and the poor. This is unsustainable and is a clear proof of a majority living below the so-called stated ‘per-capita income’.

Economic growth increases only the profit of the investor with extremely marginal upsurge in the income level of a worker or a citizen. Apart from this, the per-capita income varies from province to province within the country and it serves only a small percentage whilst a large population is below the per-capita income level and some are below the poverty line.

Therefore considering the current economic status, it portends that, if climate change and consequent food insecurity is not addressed prudently now by adjusting our economic policies to strengthen the food security of the nation, the results would be catastrophic.

For Sri Lanka, the potential food insecurity currently experienced is reversible to ensure food security and to attain self sufficiency. The expertise and the resources as an agricultural nation that we have is still dormant and once the right atmosphere and incentives are provided, would spur an agricultural revolution in a very short time. Directing us towards being a successful agricultural nation is possible but it is dependent upon how we manage the following emergent issues:

Water Management

Being abundant in water, Sri Lanka receives rain from the sky and is surrounded by sea. We have an annual average rainfall of 2,000 millimetres covering a total area of 65,610 Sq.Km representing a total volume of 131,220 million m³. This gives an annual rain water per-capita of 6,165m³/person.

Generally, rainwater is stored as blue and green water. Blue water is what is stored in the rivers, lakes and ponds and green water is the water that saturates the soil. In managing this vast reserve of water that we get annually, we are very much behind in making optimal use of this. Considering the usage cost of this water, green water generally has zero cost since it is saturated in the soil and can be harnessed for agriculture directly whereas blue waters require irrigation and therefore incur distribution and management costs.

In addition to the above, according to studies by the UNEP, Sri Lanka has a ground water potential of 78,000M³ per annum.

Therefore, considering the availability of water resource in plenty and ready for direct use, the policy makers must frame policies encouraging the citizens to make maximum use of the green water and ground water available to produce food by engaging in home gardening and informal agriculture. This would make the cost of food cheaper; reduce food miles and its carbon-foot print to sustain the economy of the people whilst enhancing food security of the nation. Remarkably, the traditional Sri Lankan ‘Chena’ cultivation is a success story, as this makes best use of the green water and does not rely on inorganic fertilizer producing healthy and nutritious food.

Similarly, the blue water that is used for agriculture through irrigation requires strict water management due to the following factors:

• Irrigation systems require proper conveyance and distribution system that does not waste water.


• The system should solve the instances of excess water use in the upstream which preclude sufficient water reaching downstream.


• Encourage responsible and frugal use of water by famers and cultivators.

Noting the above, it should be emphasised here that successful water management especially of the blue water would help double-cropping in the paddy lands and would potentially make us self sufficient in rice.

Apart from rainwater being used in agriculture, successful harnessing of waste and grey water with proper recycling can be a potential renewable resource to augment water supply for agricultural and other uses

Soil Contamination

Soil contamination in Sri Lanka is becoming a major threat to the food chain. Intensive use of inorganic fertilizer is denuding the soil of its nutritive elements and thereby rendering them barren. Therefore to overcome this negative soil development, it is becoming ever dependent on inorganic fertilizer to invigorate its capacity to produce. Apart from this, contaminants such as the residues of inorganic fertilizer leach into the ground water thereby contaminating the drinking water sources.

In developed nations, soil decontamination is widely used as a mandatory process of environmental protection and unfortunately in Sri Lanka this is nonexistent. Instead, soil remediation is done only to improve its productivity.

With the advent of Climate Change, its influence on hydrology can potentially exacerbate the problems of soil contamination caused by excessive inorganic fertilizer use. These can also potentially impact the future of agricultural productivity in Sri Lanka and therefore strict governance and regulation is required on inorganic fertilizer use.

Dependence on Inorganic fertilizer

Sri Lanka was once a successful food producing nation. Sri Lankan farmers were once evidently successful in producing food using their centuries old traditional expertise in agriculture using organic fertilizer. Their methods had high productivity, high nutrition and were environmentally sustainable. With the introduction of modern methods and in particular the reliance on inorganic fertilizer has diminished the traditional knowledge of the farmer on one hand and on the other, has made the farmer ever dependent on the imported inorganic fertilizer.

Compounding this, next to imported food, Sri Lanka relies on imported inorganic fertilizer to sustain its agriculture. If the current trend continues, our farmers may become reliant on imported patented seeds, thus putting the last nail on the coffin by surviving on external sources of sustenance for food.

Facing the future in particular in a divided and geopolitically threatening world compounded by the on setting Climate Change, Sri Lankan policy planners must be cognizant of the impending threats not just from terrorism but from the ever expanding Corporate Business Organisations that are aiming at owning the sources of human life like food and water in the name of development and management. The collapse of Ireland and Greece are lessons in modern economies and how such collapse is substituted by corporate leaders who are unelected rulers in the name of stabilizing the economy. This evidences how Corporate Business Organisations takeover national economies.

FDI in Agricultural amp; Water Sector

FDI in these sectors should be taken cautiously as this has potential threats to the nation considering the evolving scenarios of domination by global giants in business. As mentioned before, investment in and the ownership of food production and water by foreign companies in a country with untrammelled freedom, can potentially withhold food supply to the producing nation when faced with food shortages but export to profitable markets overseas. This should instead be on the other way round by supplying first to the producing country and only exporting the surplus. National agricultural and water policies should prioritise on national sustainability as opposed to opening up the vital resources to foreign extraction that threatens sustainability. Mismanagement of this would create serious political repercussions in society, as these can worsen food and water poverty already experienced in some regions of the country.

Virtual Water

Virtual water is said to be the amount of water required to produce a unit of crop.  Virtual water is measured in cubic metres per kilogram M³/Kg. Sri Lanka compared to most other countries in the SAARC Region is water rich and its population density derives a per-capita water availability of   6,165m³/person per annum. Apart from this, forecast of per-capita water availability by the year 2025 on a District basis gives a bleak picture needing prompt action by all concerned.

The above table shows that water is a dwindling resource in Sri Lanka and some districts would experience acute water shortage. It should be noted that the impacts of climate change is possibly not accounted for in the above table and therefore needs corroboration with latest forecasts.

Colombo and Gampaha districts are highly urbanised with high population densities where major services and industrial bases of the country is located, the forecast of 449 and 971 cubic metres/ person respectively is threatening. This is due to the ever increasing use of water for industrial and other purposes which can potentially aggravate this situation affecting the environment and the population living in these districts. Location of industries with intensive water use or of high extraction can potentially make these districts environmentally vulnerable to the extent of damaging the region’s water supply. Similarly, Jaffna, Puttalam and Kandy would experience acute shortages requiring effective water management. Since major industries are not located in these districts it is less concerning, however population growth and regional developments would impose a strain on this and therefore would require strict environmental regulations to mitigate this.

Considering these evolving scenarios, future-proofing sustainable food production and water management would require well defined policies and regulations that direct not only sustainable use but also caters to the national demands.

Having understood the potential scarcity of water predicted in the ensuing years, national policy planners should take note of these new issues that virtual water can impose on the already unsustainable water availability.

In an inter-dependent free market led world, virtual water plays a bridging role between the ’water surplus’ and ‘water deficit’ countries. For example in ‘water deficit’ countries, investing in agriculture is exponentially high due to water scarcity. Therefore importing food from ‘water surplus’ countries are cheap and a prudent choice. This does not endanger their indigenous agriculture if available due to import of foods. However, in ‘water surplus’ countries, importing food is unsustainable as it destroys the indigenous food production. Producing food is cheaper in ‘water surplus countries than in ‘water deficit’ countries.

Exporting crops contains virtual water, similarly, the beverages and mineral water bottling industries contains real water. This also aggravates the water scarcity in Sri Lanka due to extraction of water from aquifers and streams for export overseas. These extractive industries impose a severe strain on the nation’s dwindling water supply sources. Notwithstanding this, export of crops from a ‘water surplus’ country is analogous to exporting water in ‘virtual form’. Therefore virtual water and its much tangible cousin, the mineral water that are exported should serve its citizens first and only the surplus should be exported. This would give an asymmetrical advantage to a country like Sri Lanka if it is used as a commodity to counterbalance the importation cost of fuel and energy etc.

It should be noted here that future wars are going to be fought over water and not over oil, therefore it is vital that this resource is conserved, protected and the system leak proofed so that it will be available to Sri Lanka to serve in a sustainable manner.

The threat of peak oil and having secure and sustainable sources of energy to run our economy is very expensive. But paying for such an expensive commodity would in the long run be possible if Sri Lanka regains its status as the ‘Granary of the East’. So that energy producers in turn would be dependent on food producers.

Today, as global scenarios evolve, inspite of the world being inter-dependent, it is also multi polar and asymmetrical when it comes to the survival of nations. Therefore, it is the responsibility of each nation to be on guard about its own survival. Sri Lanka taking advantage of being an island, developing robust sustainable policies and achieving self sufficiency in food and water would definitely get an edge to survive as a sustainable nation. Achieving this by using sustainable food and water as an asymmetrical tool would also create a sustainable balance of power in real politick in the region.

Investment in education amp; training in Agriculture and Water Management

Ensuring self sufficiency in food and sustainable water cannot be achieved without formulating policies, producing personals and relevant infrastructure.  Our investments should not only be in imported technologies but also in recreating the traditional balance and the relationship our people had with our environment and its people. Our centuries of agricultural traditions and knowhow’s should be improvised to answer current needs and the farmers should be provided with training and practical education thereby binding them with the land they till. They should be recognised for contributing for our food security like the security forces for our defence against our enemies. Farmer education should have academic amp; professional recognition for their expertise and economic amp; social recognition for what they are, so that sound farmer education, training, motivation and recognition amp; facilitation would spur an agricultural revolution to give Sri Lanka a sustainable food security.

Responding to the foregoing factors is an imperative to resuscitate our food security. To bring about this response, the policy planners should develop policies and regulations that ensure national security in respect to our food. The policy makers and other stakeholders in areas of Food amp; Agriculture and Environmental Protection and Sustainability must work in tandem to bring about this security and give the nation this asymmetric tool.

The writer is a Chartered Environmentalist, Architect and Sustainability Consultant. He can be contacted on rizayehiya@gmail.com

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Photo credit Ada Derana

This is the question of the day. This is raised nationally and internationally and answers contrast for different reasons. In this article, I endeavor to briefly answer this question from a governance perspective, keeping in mind the present socio-political realities  in Sri Lanka.

The President appointed the Commission of Inquiry on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliations (LLRC) on 15^th May 2010 with a broad mandate to inquire into and report on specific matters, in terms of the Commissions of Inquiry Act. The title of the Commission and the mandate in general suggests that the objective of the appointment of the LLRC is to find ways for reconciliation among all communities, after a bloody ethnic conflict.  It is also possible to argue that the LLRC was appointed to advise the Head of the State on how to avoid a national tragedy in the future. The Warrant has, among others the following term of reference:

“[inquire and report on] Institutional, administrative and legislative measures which  need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence  of such concerns  in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities, and  to make any such other recommendation  which reference to any of the matters that have been inquired into under the terms of this Warrant.”

In that context, the LLRC had a mandate to examine the governance structures and its functioning to ascertain why Sri Lanka was in a “mess” in relation to ethnic harmony. The LLRC submitted its report on 15^th November 2011 to the President and unlike many other Presidential Commission reports, this report is in the public domain.

Governance Related Recommendations

The Report deals with a variety of issues including the Ceasefire Agreement, Overview of Security Operations, Land Issues, Resettlement, and Reconciliation. Judging from its recommendations, we can conclude that the LLRC has also addressed its mind to the relevance of governance for overall reconciliation efforts.  Perhaps there may be disagreements on other findings and recommendation, but, I believe, there is implicit consensus on the findings and recommendations on governance aspects.  Being a governance and human rights activist, I was delighted to read these specific findings/recommendations. The civil society has been urging the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) for many years, to respect the existing constitutional guarantees and establish Rule of Law; and raised almost identical  issues.  The government continues to pronounce that Sri Lanka has good laws, which are respected. The GOSL never accepted that there was any paucity or deficiency in rule of law or human rights protections. Centuries ago, Aristotle taught us “Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government”.

For the purpose of this article let me reproduce few governance related recommendations of the LLRC, selected and clustered by me for easy reference:

1. Media freedom, attacks on journalists etc.

(a)   The LLRC  was deeply disturbed by persistent reports concerning attacks on journalists and media institutions and killing of journalists  and the fact that these incidents remains to be conclusively investigated and perpetrators brought  to justice…. Any failure to investigate and prosecute offenders would undermine the process of reconciliation and the Rule of Law.  (paragraph 9.114)

(b)   It is essential that media freedom be enhanced in keeping with democratic principles and relevant obligations. Steps should be taken to prevent harassment and attacks on journalists and media institutions and deterrent punishment should be imposed on those who were responsible for attacks. Priority should also be given to the “investigation, prosecution and disposal of such cases to build up public confidence in the criminal justice system”. (paragraph 9.115)

(c)   Government should ensure that the freedom of movement of media personnel in the North and East, as it would help in the exchange of information contributing to the process of reconciliation.

(d)   Legislation should be enacted to ensure the right to information (paragraph 9.115)

2. Freedom of Association

People, community leaders and religious leaders should be free to organize peaceful events and meetings without restrictions. (paragraph 9.118)

3. Law Enforcement, Police and Impunity

(a)   The Commission notes the failure on the part of the law enforcement officers to investigate offences and bring offenders to book, where the offences are committed by persons with political connections. The  Commission emphasizes that all allegations should be investigated and wrongdoers  prosecuted and punished  irrespective of their political links, so as to inspire confidence among the people in the administration of justice (paragraph 9.203 amp; 212)

(b)   The Police Department is a civilian institution which is entrusted with the maintenance of Law and Order. Therefore, it is desirable that the Police Department be de-linked from the institutions dealing with the armed forces which are responsible for the security of the State.  (paragraph 9.214)

(c)    An independent permanent Police Commission is a pre-requisite to guarantee the effective function of the Police and to generate public confidence. (paragraph 9.215)

(d)   Activities of illegal armed groups are of serious concern to the Commission.  It appeared that the dominating presence and activities of such groups have created fear among the general public, contributing to an environment of impunity. Some of their illegal activities affected the basic rights of people such as the right to life. …. Action should be taken to disarm and put an end to illegal activities of these groups (paragraph 9.72-74)

The above recommendations are self-explanatory and need no elaboration. It speaks volumes of the present governance status. The LLRC was able to find the nexus between Rule of Law and Reconciliation. It has found that the collapse of Rule of Law and restrictions on civil liberties is   detrimental to reconciliation efforts.

Priority  to Tighten the Political Grip;

Probably one can argue that the whole issue of accountability (in the final stage of the war) has been ignored by the LLRC. Nevertheless, the local and international community is awaiting the response of the President, not mere GOSL, on the key findings and recommendations of LLRC. In my view, whether the government has the political will to fully implement the LLRC recommendations depends mostly, if not mainly, on whether the President and his government are prepared to respect Rule of Law.  Are they genuinely prepared?

This question cannot be answered in a vacuum without understanding the basic norms of how the country is run today.  Some of the most significant features of the present GOSL under the leadership of President Rajapaksha is as follows:

1. The concentration of power within his close circle (family and few others)


2. Tightening  the  political grip through control of free expression, media and free assembly, while  taking all possible steps to monopolize  information.


3. Politicization and weakening of public institutions including the law enforcement agencies


4. Militarization of civil life and civilian institutions.


5. The manipulation of elections, through unprecedented abuse of state resources and emasculation of opposition.

Aspects (a) to (d) above have been dealt with by the LLRC but not the (e) above. Probably there were no sufficient representations made to the LLRC on that aspect. It seems clear that the LLRC thinks these features of the regime are obstacles to engage in reconciliation among the communities. In my view, these features pose a threat to the continuity of democracy in the country, not just reconciliation.

Whether the regime is serious in implementing these vital governance related recommendations must be judged from the past conduct of the Rajapaksa regime.  The regime has failed to improve governance structures and, in fact, it has shown complete indifference to governance. If we have a quick look at its governance record, almost all the public institutions including regulatory institutions and law enforcement agencies were politicized.  The constitutional guarantees available for protection against politicization were removed with the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution.  None of the assassinations of journalists and attacks on media institutions were seriously investigated.  All the cronies of the government and their families are above the law. It has never taken steps to eliminate impunity. In my view, these are well planned strategies of the regime #8211; for a clear purpose of tightening the political hold.  If the governance related recommendations are implemented, then the Rajapaksa regime will lose its political grip and a fair political equilibrium will emerge. In my view, that is not a rick the regime will take.

Probing into bona fides of GOSL

If the police are independent, being placed under an independent Police Commission as suggested by the LLRC, and de-linked from the military, and then we are bound to see a different police. Investigations will be conducted by professional policemen and evidence will be elicited, against any suspect, irrespective of the nature of the crime. They will not be subject to the dictation of the political masters. In such an event, there is a likelihood of successfully solving political or high profile crimes. Such independent investigations can expose the involvement of main players of the regime, who otherwise, comfortably sweep such investigations under the carpet and manipulated investigations.  History has seen that when the law enforcement agencies become independent, corrupt leaders, including heads of the police department go to jail and new countries and new cultures emerge. That is exactly what happened in Hong Kong in late 1970s. Is the GOSL ready to accept it?

Take the case of killings of journalists, which have not been truthfully investigated by this government.  There are at least two people who know those responsible for the deaths; the one who gave orders and the other who carried out the orders. If the police is given a free hand to investigate and prosecute the offenders, there is a likelihood of even judicial findings against the higher officials and politicians within the government. An investigation can expose those who were responsible for those crimes. World political experience show that such exposures have even brought down governments! Is the GOSL ready to accept it?

Freedom of expression, mostly political dissent, is something not new to President Rajapaksa because he was one who frequently used those rights at the highest level, while being in the opposition. Now, President Rajapaksha (and the regime as a whole) does not welcome any powerful dissenting grouping that can challenge his political future.  However, the Government is at a natural advantage, because the people in the south honestly admire it for defeating the LTTE.  The war victory (and popularity) is often used as the most powerful tool to suppress any dissenting voices. This reminds us of the famous quotation of Polybius: “Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.”   If free expression and lawful assemblies are permitted on sensitive political matters without impediment, alternative voices will certainly expose the government’s sham political devices and much more. Authoritarian tendencies will then be challenged openly.  Is the GOSL ready?

The GOSL  has mastered the control of media, through lawful and unlawful means.  Apart from extra judicial tactics used by the GOSL with impunity, the entire state mechanism is now used for the protection and survival of the Regime. Besides, consider how the government reacts to anything that can “embarrass the government”.  With that mind set, I do not see how there can be a political will to ensure full scale free expression and media freedom.

There may be other sensitive international and legal issues why the GOSL has some reservations on implementing the LLRC recommendations.  On political expediency, GOSL will definitely answer affirmatively  to the question,  whether  Sri Lanka has an independent and credible mechanism to investigate allegations of human rights violations  and,  in particular,  the  incidents  during the last stage of the war.  In my view, the GOSL cannot implement the governance related recommendations, simply because it believes that it is a political suicide to respect Rule of Law and protect human rights. Should the public be quiet then?  As Martin Luther King Jr. said “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed”. Unless there is sufficient and intensive demand by the people of this country, on the streets,  in Sri Lanka, the GOSL will not even consider implementing these recommendations. Then, the LLRC would be a show piece for international consumption, without any relevance to Sri Lanka.

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From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty-thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty-thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty-thousand words of commentary.

By popular request, The End of War in Sri Lanka: Reflections and Challenges, a compilation of content that appeared online in PDF form, was first released in May 2010. In mid-2010, it was published in print form. Today, we are relaunching the book as a free iBook on Apple iTunes. It is available as a direct download in 32 countries and regions, and readable on both the iPad 1 and 2 using iBooks. Ironically, Apple#8217;s Sri Lankan iTunes store does not list the book, but you can easily download it to your Mac or PC using this link (138Mb iBook). Once downloaded, importing it to iTunes and synchronising it with your iPad is a cinch, and takes just a few seconds.

In his review of the book, Prof. Sasanka Perera, Professor of Anthropology and Head, Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, noted:

Therefore the pieces contained traverse a wide terrain that includes the rational, clinical, accommodating, hopeful, hope-less, post war scenarios of the future, politics of diasporas and so on#8230; To me, that variation is the reality of our post war existence. Our experience is not linear; our perceptions not black and white across the board; our take on the past and the future not a monolithic reality. What is unfortunate is that the reality of this variation has not emerged in the popular and the dominant discourse on war, conflict and peace in the country.

Another review by Channa Wickremesekera, a military historian and novelist based in Melbourne Australia noted,

The most cursory glance at some of the websites that showcases opinions from those whose first language is truly Sinhalese will show that it is still the Wimal Weerawansa’s rather than Kalana Senaratne’s who make opinions of Sri Lankans, even in cyberspace. They are still dancing the victory dance, expecting the Tamil in the room to join in singing Sinhala bailas or to leave the room altogether#8230; Groundviews, I am sure, has no pretensions to having the power to shift heaven and earth which is what, it appears at times, is required to change the direction the country is heading in. Yet, despite that seeming impotence, the collection of articles also presents a pleasing prospect. It shows that there are still at least a few of us who recognise that the end of the war has not ended the conflict as long as we do not deal with the Tamil in the room, fairly and justly. It may make a few other decent people stop and think, even feel. That would be a modest victory but a victory nevertheless.

The new iBooks edition of the book takes over 40 contributions, including high definition video and high resolution photography, and beautifully presents them on the iPad. Content automatically resizes for orientation, presenting text in a clear, crisp format. Photos by Aufidius, Deshan Tennekoon, Sharni Jayawardene and others can be viewed as thumbnails, and pop out in high resolution. Alongside the article by its producers who were the first to visit the Vanni after the end of the war, the trailer of the award winning documentary The Truth That Wasn#8217;t There plays in high definition. iBooks on the iPad also offers the ability to annotate the text and easily email these notes (which Apple calls study cards). When connected to the Internet, each article has a link to access the online version, with all the comments generated still archived.

It is quite simply a new way to engage with content, and Groundviews is pleased to offer, for free, a book that is of enduring value to scholars, historians, political scientists and the average reader. Using poetry, prose, photography and video, The End of War in Sri Lanka: Reflections and Challenges for the iPad demonstrates the potential not just of the device and Apple#8217;s iBook Author to bring content alive, but also the power of new media to present inconvenient truths in a compelling manner.

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• Launch of Groundviews 2.0: New features, enhanced readability, comprehensive search



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Photo courtesy M.A. Pushpa Kumara / EPA, via Photo Blog on MSNBC

Poya must be one of the first Sri Lankan English terms to enter the vocabulary of foreigners when they arrive in Sri Lanka. A poya day is a full moon holiday, a day when devout Buddhists go to the temple and observe sil. To non-Buddhists it is a welcome day off, but (not so welcome for some) a day when meat and alcohol are not available in shops and supermarkets, and are not supposed to be served in restaurants and hotels. Many people are critical of a system which reportedly gives Sri Lanka more public holidays than any other country, and which is seen to favour Buddhism over other religions. But most of us look forward to poya days anyway!

The day before a poya day is called pre-poya. This is a day when evening events and get-togethers are often organised – the equivalent of a Saturday night, the next day being a holiday. It is also a day when liquor stores do brisk business as people stock up for the next day.

The term pre-poya originated in the 1960s during the period when Ceylon adopted a lunar calendar. Instead of the normal Saturday-Sunday weekend, each quarter moon day was a holiday (poya), and the previous day (pre-poya) was a half-day. The days inbetween were labelled P1, P2, P3 etc. Most working weeks consisted of five days (P1 – P5), but since the lunar month is approximately 29.5 days, once every few weeks there would be an extra day (P6). This made it difficult to plan ahead; weekends were out of sync with the rest of the world; and the Roman Catholics were upset that Sunday became a normal working day.

One British diplomat recalled arriving in Colombo at this time and being greeted by a memo which began “Since there are two Thursdays in this week …”. And my correspondent Fazli Sameer recalls that the title of the contemporary Beatles song “8 days a week” became a popular source of humour! If anyone has other memories or anecdotes from this period, I would be interested to hear them.

I had always assumed that this system was introduced by Mrs Bandaranaike during the 1970s, the famous period of isolationist left-wing policies, food shortages, etc. And in researching the subject for this piece I found that several others were under the same impression. But in fact it was adopted by Dudley Senanayake’s UNP government on 6^th January 1966, and abandoned by Mrs Bandaranaike after the SLFP election victory in 1970. But the monthly full-moon poya holiday remained.

The introduction of the lunar calendar is remembered as an example of a government pandering to the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist agenda – but, compared to other examples such as SWRD’s ‘Sinhala only’ policy, a relatively harmless one. It is a distant memory now – little seems to have been written on the subject, and many younger people are not even aware that it happened.

• A is for Adhi Vesak



• Vesak and Violence Against Women



• Now our New Year has no moon



• A tragi-comedy? The UN Advisory Panel and war crimes in Sri Lanka



• Chandrika Kumaratunga responds to Dayan Jayatilleke#8217;s comment on the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge

Photo courtesy JDS

An Open Letter to Minister Keheliya Rambukwella

Mr. Minister, I don’t know whether you have seen the film called ‘my name is Khan. In it, the main character played by popular actor Shah Rukh Khan Repeats the lines ‘My name is Khan. I am not a terrorist’ at different points in the film, in order to affirm his innocence. I too am about to tell you a similar story.  ‘My name is Sunanda Deshapriya. I am not a terrorist’.  This is my theme.

The story of ‘My name is Khan’ centres around the harassment a Muslim man with the name of Khan has to endure following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, USA.  These attacks on the Twin Towers generated both fear and anger in the minds of the American people. Some extremist groups tried to unleash the feelings of anger against ordinary Muslim people living in the US.  The film’s narrative is set against this background.

You are trying to do the same thing today. You are trying to use the fear and anger generated in the minds of the Sinhala people because of the brutality of the LTTE against those of us who have been advocating respect for human rights in Sri Lanka, including respect for the rights of the Tamil people of our country.  When I say ‘you’ I do not only mean you as an individual, Mr. Minister. I include the entire gamut of people who do your bidding, including those media persons who sing your praises with no shame.

Do you know what baseless and venomous lies the media under your control has spread about me in the past few weeks? Have either you or your acolytes ever tried to behave in accordance with universally accepted media ethics and asked me for my comments on your revelations? Isn’t your talk about media ethics therefore to be understood as mere political hogwash?

In the film, Sameer, the young son of Khan and his wife Mandira is brutally killed by a gang of boys of his own age. This act of savagery became possible only because the feelings of anger and hatred that I described earlier had been let loose in their community.  There can be nobody who watches this film whose heart and mind are not captivated by the tragedy of the child’s murder and the subsequent events. In the past weeks I too have read newspaper reports about your children. How disturbed you would have been after reading such stories? Can you imagine how many deaths my family, my children, have gone through as a result of the vicious campaign being carried out against me by you and the media that serves your will?

I fervently hope that one day you will be able to think about others as you think about yourself; this is the preaching of the Lord Buddha.

You talk over and over again about media ethics. You order news websites to be shut down because they are acting without respect for these ethics. You warn us that you will bring about a Code of Ethics for the Media that will be very special to Sri Lanka.

You are levelling charges against a group of journalists, accusing them of receiving money from the LTTE and carrying out a traitor’s agenda. You say that these media persons and journalists are now living abroad.  You say they cannot be prosecuted because the Sri Lankan law does not permit it.

Mr. Minister, while your media people broadcast your words on this subject, they project images of me at various media freedom demonstrations on the screen behind them. With respect to which Code of Ethics are you displaying my photograph to illustrate baseless allegations? You say that it is because you cannot prosecute these persons who have obtained money from the LTTE under existing Sri Lankan law that you are not revealing their names.  But your media institutions carry my photograph as an illustration to this statement. What is the intention behind this? Is it NOT to implicate me in your statement? Why is it that your acolytes have permission to do what you don’t dare to do? It must be that you think you do not need to be bound by any ethical standards because you are in power.

You advise the media about the use of language. Yet the media under your control continue to use the vilest forms of hate speech against me, shamelessly and without any proof to back up whatever they are saying. You reward these acolytes of yours with awards of media excellence.

Is it your theory and your practice that only your opponents should be held responsible for respecting media ethics? Is this how you devalue your own use of the media?

Wasn’t it your media that repeatedly broadcast the canard that at the session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September last year, the Maldivian President said that ‘Sunanda Deshapriya is a traitor to the nation’ even after it had been proved to be false and inaccurate? Where were the media ethics that you preach, then? The first ethical consideration of any journalist or media person is that of respect for the truth. Doesn’t the media under your control break this principle every day? Is the proverb ‘Practise what you preach’ not applicable to Ministers of this government?

Since a while ago I have publicly challenged your government to prove that I have received even one cent from the LTTE. The truth of the matter is that neither you nor your government nor anyone else holds on shred of evidence to prove this. If your government is capable of indicting members of the military and the Police for having accepted money from the LTTE, why should we believe that you are not able to do the same in the case of journalists who have received money from the LTTE? I accuse you of trying to unleash the same forces of extremism that Khan and Mandira faced on the murder of their son Sameer against me and all others working for the defence of human rights and media freedom in Sri Lanka today.

It is no secret that I hold an extremely critical view of the Rajapakse regime. As Media Minister, you are obliged to defend my right to hold those views. Instead, you are engaged in taking away that space from us and terrorizing us. Please remember that the right to hold dissenting views is one of ethical bases of media freedom.

On ITN, in the ‘Athulanthaya’ (Interior) programme, you said something ridiculous: That because you cannot take these charges before the law, lacking evidence, you are instead placing them before the people. What does this mean? Why must you take information that has no basis and therefore would not stand scrutiny in a court of law into the public arena? Doesn’t this show us that you are trying to build a hate campaign against me in the minds of the people?

In June 2009, award-winning journalist and Secretary of the Working Journalists’ Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted and brutally assaulted because of a similar hate campaign. You who are levelling the most absurd of charges against media persons fighting for media freedom today, what have you done to bring the perpetrators of the attack on Jayantha to justice, almost three years after the attack? Tell us if there is even one example where you and your government have brought any of those responsible for killing, beating and harassing journalists and media persons to justice.

As Media Minister, you are raising against unfounded allegations against us. But the allegations we raise against you as media freedom fighters are completely factual.

When cartoonist and media activist Prageeth Eknaligoda was abducted three years ago, it is you who confidently told us that he would return in two weeks time. Referring to Lalith and Kugan, two activists who disappeared from Jaffna a few months ago, you said that they had not in fact disappeared and that they were still alive. When Uthayan Editor Kuhanathan was brutally assaulted and almost killed, all you could say was that as the Minister for Media, when a journalist was assaulted, you could only pay him a visit in hospital.

Did you see the photographic records of the gangsters armed with poles and clubs who gathered in front of the Fort Railway Station to prevent the Black January protest demonstration from taking place? Did you see the reports that said they received packed lunches for free?   Why are the restrictions and forms of censorship applied to media organizations not valid for supporters of the regime? It is you who should respond to these questions, as the Minister responsible for the Media. Where, alas, are your ethics now?

I would be remiss if I did not remind you here that we have a far longer list of violations and omissions of justice to lay at your door.

In November 2010, you said that you needed a clear definition of who is a journalist and a media person; now, in January 2012, you say that in fact you do not know who is a journalist any longer.  Isn’t this amazing?

Look at what you say at the media briefings you summon week after week, about media freedom, about media ethics and about journalists who receive money from the LTTE and even you will feel sorry for yourself.

Let us debate about politics and about ideological differences. In this month of January that we have declared to be a ‘Black January’, let us debate about whether journalists have been murdered or not, about whether media institutions have been set on fire or not, and about whether on some of these occasions, the true perpetrators of these crimes have been left free while others have been falsely arrested or not.  I defend your right to criticize my politics. But you have no right to build a hate campaign against me based on untruth. Neither you nor your cohorts have the right to label me as a terrorist when you have nothing to prove your case.

Mr. Minister, my name is Sunanda Deshapriya. I am not a terrorist.

• The killing of journalists and the Media Minister#8217;s comments



• Investigate us, or stop the harassment and false allegations!



• The origins of the Media Accreditation Card



• Rupavahini, Ranil and the media



• Ravaya, the LTTE and the Keheliya Chintanaya

For the sixth time over, President Rajapaksa snubbed the Indian Big brother, on devolution and 13^th Amendment with a “Plus”. He wasn#8217;t an extra smart lawyer in his Attorney#8217;s life. But he still finds logical space between what he says and what he wouldn#8217;t say, to leave the Indian government on their wrong foot. When Indian External Affairs Minister Krishna says, President Rajapaksa in official conversation with him, promised to offer 13 #8220;Plus#8221; as a solution, President Rajapaksa says, he was only discussing the issue. He has “not” promised. The implied message is, the Indian Minister has got him wrong. Not his fault, hence. Or is it ?

Its no fault of the Indians also, if the Sri Lankan President can not present his own case clear and straight, for the sixth time, in almost three years. Yet its the fault of the Indian authorities, if they can not elicit even on the sixth meeting, what they want from the Head of the SL government or what he wants to give or offer. Why the lines are so blurred, is due to what each wants to avoid offering or avoid asking. President Rajapaksa keeps using his key phrase “home grown solution” for both “13 Plus and Minus” to avoid the issue of devolution. The Delhi leaders pamper “13 Plus” without clearly saying, what they would want as the minimum devolution package, in seeing an end to the Sri Lankan political conflict they have been dragged into, for reasons both geopolitical and South Indian.

So is the dilemma the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is faced with. They remain the only Northern grounded, democratic political party with a responsibility in finding a truly democratic, sustainable answer to the ethnic conflict that has robbed thousands of innocent lives over many decades and through many generations. They also remain a political party that has to represent a people who have been displaced many times over, have no decent social life yet in their own areas and is controlled by a military that eliminated their only bargaining power, there was. In short, the TNA has no organised social force behind them to agitate and demand, except the Diaspora that can not impact on or influence the Colombo government, direct.

There still remains to the advantage of Rajapaksa, the emptiness in political Opposition, both North and South. Tamil politics is divided. Its awfully divided here as well as in the Diaspora. Its divided to the extent that one extreme would not want to leave the sectarian and wasteful politics of the LTTE and the other to make deals with the most corrupt of all Sinhala regimes since independence. There is no alternative, a pragmatic alternative that would back the TNA in pushing this regime to find a decent and a viable democratic answer to the legitimate political aspirations of the Tamil people, within a “Single” Country, on a single Constitution.

Its the international pressure that Rajapaksa has to mind himself about, over the ethnic issue. His advantage also is that, the international community, those who command authority over the UN and its agencies and Western forums, do not take him to be a Milosevic, or Sri Lanka, a Sudan. The US has been funding this regime all through the war and they continue to fund it, despite accusations on war crimes and crimes against humanity. So has the EU, though GSP “Plus” was deliberated upon for over two years, before it was suspended. Not for the Tamil Diaspora to claim success, but Trade Unions in the EU to demand workplace decency and “rights”. GSP “Plus” campaign was a trade union campaign in the EU and it remains so, in the US to date. Despite demands for accountability, the major international players continue to sustain this Rajapaksa regime, politically and financially.

This needs a turn around in taking stock of who pushed whom for what and achieved what. This shows that Rajapaksa is still capitalising on the absence of social protest and pressure mobilised in our own society. In the absence of  political leadership that can not be substituted by the elite NGO sector, especially in the Sinhala society, there is a serious absence of people driven demands asking for socio political answers. Its a Sinhala society that Rajapaksa keeps saying is not easy to bring to terms with power devolution, simply because no political leadership has worked in creating an alternate social purpose, a discourse, in leading social thinking. An unfortunate lack of intellectual political leadership, to be clear and plain.

Within this scenario, India is a reluctant traveller in search of an answer, as proxy for the SL Tamil polity. Proxies don#8217;t play politics with the same desire, aspiration and on the same agenda, as the affected people who are compelled to find an answer for their own purpose of living. Rajapaksa therefore can afford to keep India waiting, projecting Sinhala opposition and his government#8217;s need to keep “all communities satisfied”, another that wouldn#8217;t happen, unless done . Thus his exit always with the promise of a “home grown answer satisfying all communities”.

What the TNA keep missing out on, is this “exit slogan” of Rajapaksa in a situation where the international community can not also be expected to bring results and can not be pushed for results. Yet there can not be a political problem that has no answer. There are no political answers possible, without a social demand. Often the answer needs a strong social demand, in the face of reluctant “rulers”. This is reason why the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) Report doesn#8217;t see the light of day. But that is also the most recent effort in finding a reasonably justifiable answer to the protracted political conflict.

The APRC is one that the President brought together in search of his desired “home grown solution” to  the “national question” way back in July 2006. The APRC was supported by an “Experts Committee”, also appointed by the President. The whole process took in 128 sittings for the APRC to finalise its proposal as a durable solution, as noted in this “column” a fortnight ago. What is more important with the APRC is that, after much deliberation it presented in August, 2007, a basis for a new Constitution that had 21 Chapters, upon which a new Constitution could be drafted. Mind you, this political consensus was achieved, despite the war was being fought with a very narrow, Sinhala Buddhist social mindset.

Based on its draft proposal, in June 2010, and that was over 01 year after the war was concluded, the APRC came out with a political consensus through deliberations between the extreme Sinhala, the moderate Sinhala, the “Left of Centre” and Right wing politics, in offering a format for a new Constitution with a reformed State structure that accommodates devolved power. Again, their Final Report handed over to the President, goes beyond the 13^th  Amendment, though it does not discuss the issues of devolution, in restricting itself to the 13^th Amendment. They also propose a fairly well argued Second Chamber, one that is definitely better than what the President now hints as the “Plus” in his “13 Plus” idea. His idea of a “Senate”.

Here is political consensus that represents all the communities, including President Rajapaksa#8217;s Sinhala Buddhist sentiments that now only needs the signature of the UNP and the TNA. The UNP that played safe and cautious by avoiding the APRC will not be able to go against such broad political consensus. What with the JHU, the MEP and the SLFP also consenting, with the EPDP, the SLMC and the CWC endorsing it.

The APRC Final Report thus stands as the best and the only consensual political draft that can oppose and negate the Rajapaksa ploy in wanting a “Parliamentary Select Committee” (PSC) to discuss the same issues, these political parties debated and discussed for 04 full years. Why should not the APRC Final Report be presented in parliament, instead ? It is as important as the LLRC, being a presidential committee. This is where the TNA is not forceful in its politics against the Rajapaksa regime. There is no purpose in the TNA also resorting to technical and legal arguments in opposing the PSC, which of course is a waste of time and energy. Yet the importance is in countering the Rajapaksa move with a political move that offers and option, by demanding that President Rajapaksa present the Final Report of his own APRC, instead. The TNA should lobby support here among other political parties and trade unions, in Delhi, among the international community and in the Diaspora demanding that Rajapaksa presents the APRC Final Report in parliament, for final consensus instead of a time wasting PSC.

The APRC Final Report carries almost all what the Rajapaksa says, he wants included in a durable solution. A home grown solution, all round acceptance and also his “Senate” as a second chamber. Why the same Rajapaksa who appointed the APRC is now troubled over that can be politically understood. But why is the TNA hesitating over that ?

They need not react to Rajapaksa and they need to get out of their dependency on Delhi and international players. Instead have those external players dependent on them as the only unarmed, independent, democratic Tamil political party on the ground. They#8217;ve got to be seen and politically felt in the North and in the East, and speaking to the Sinhala South. To date they have allowed for a singular Northern lobby, taking the East for granted, allowing the Rajapaksas to capitalise the East. The TNA too have to have both feet on the ground here and play politics in Sri Lanka, first. That is what awaits an opening for a solution, in providing the Tamil people the dignity of life, as equals in a decent society.

• APRC: The Year of the Rat has begun



• What Can We Expect from the APRC?



• Strange proposals and broken promises: Constitutional reform in Sri Lanka



• On the government#8217;s political solution and ‘Southern Suaveness’



• Rohan Edrisinha on the APRC Proposals and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution

In this video, Prof. Harendra De Silva #8211; one of Sri Lanka#8217;s best known paediatricians #8211; speaks about the challenges to child health and safety in Sri Lanka. Speaking about malnourishment, Prof. De Silva talks about the continued manifestation of malnutrition (referring to both under nourishment as well as obesity) among children, with one of the worst records on this score in the region.

Prof. De Silva also touches on the sexual abuse of children, focussing on the sexual abuse by members of the immediate or extended family, which is more prevalent that abuse by strangers, including foreigners. As noted on the web,

Discerning that a comprehensive and directed movement to prevent every kind of child abuse in Sri Lanka would not readily arise from among the few concerned non-government agencies and professionals, Professor de Silva doggedly pursued the need for immediate national level intervention. His efforts culminated in the founding of the National Child Protection Authority in 1999, the first of its kind in South Asia.

Noting that the biggest challenge to addressing sexual abuse is the denial in society, for example when the perpetrators of child sexual abuse are members of the clergy. The statistics are chilling. Prof. De Silva notes that his studies reveal that 10% of the male population in Sri Lanka admitted to having sex with a child. He goes on to reveal how child sexual abuse impacts adult life, and the effects of the psychological scarring as a result of abuse.

We also talk about the recent debacle where the National Child Protection Authority and the Police went after an Indian nun and the Sisters of Missionaries of Charity. As was noted in the media,

“The NCPA should have taken due regard of the confidentiality of the institution and in this particular instance it had been damaged,” said Father Noel Dias, senior attorney and Vice Judicial Vicar of the archdiocese of Colombo. “The arrest is illegal and the undue publicity given has caused immense hardship to the nuns concerned and also to the entire Catholic Church,” said Neville Abeyratne, a Catholic attorney who defended the nun. “The outcome of this case has proved that the sisters are doing a humanitarian service and they are not interested in taking any action against NCPA due to their mission to serve the needy,” said Abeyratne.

Prof. De Silva provides some insight into this case and the complexity of dealing with child trafficking and adoption. He also speaks on the enduring need for the protection of women who become pregnant after being raped.

• In conversation with Prof. Anil K Gupta: Grassroots innovation and development



• In conversation with Prof. Sumanasiri Liyanage



• The divide between Muslims and Tamils: Perspective of an IDP



• How hard is it to admit fault, Ambassador Wickramasuriya?



• In conversation with Joshua Roman: Videos and photos

Dr. Panagamuwa#8217;s workshop was tucked away down a corridor of the Mannar Hospital in the north west of Sri Lanka. When I arrived, the doctor, dressed in his distinctive green theatre overalls, was rushing around making sure his patients were attended to. One of the patients was Mary, a young Tamil woman whose leg had been amputated following a landmine explosion. I watched Dr. Panagamuwa check over the adjustments he had made to her new artificial limb. He spoke to her in Tamil and when he got stuck with a word or phrase, his young assistant would step in to help communicate. #8220;I didn#8217;t think he was a doctor,#8221; Mary told me afterwards. #8220;He#8217;s not like a normal doctor.#8221; She was in a hurry to catch the last bus home, much easier now with her new leg.

Together with both Tamil and Sinhalese doctors from England, Dr. Panagamuwa started the Meththa Foundation, a charity would focus on using his highly specialised skills. Meththa started small, raising funds through house parties, cricket matches and dinner dances. In July 2009, Dr Panagamuwa visited Mannar and having seen the number of amputees lining the corridors of the hospital he decided to set up his workshop. #8220;War means injuries,#8221; he told me and said that as long as there was a need he would continue to work in Mannar.

Dr. Panagamuwa started off as a surgeon in Sri Lanka, but after the JVP insurrection of 1989 he decided to settle in England with his wife and two children. #8220;When I left Sri Lanka, apart from the new discipline, one of the first things I noticed there was the wastage of perfectly good components.#8221; Because of regulations in England prohibiting their reuse, expensive components had been discarded. “These rules benefitted Sri Lanka,” he told me and managed to adapt them for patients’ needs here.

Dr. Panagamuwa’s workshop was divided into two compartments. In the front portion he attended to the patients and at the back, his team of young technicians worked at noisy machines, drilling holes into new artificial limbs for amputees. One thing that struck me as I watched Dr. Panagamuwa working was that unless patients voluntarily told him how they had lost their limbs, he didn’t probe into the causes. #8220;What does it matter how the patient got injured from a clinical point of view?” he said. “We try to get them to a point where their disability is no longer the central part of their life. We want that to be behind them.#8221; If patients did want to talk about what had happened to them he listened and tried to find out how best he could help get them walking again. #8220;I want to treat them the same way we treat people in England. With the same ethos. Listening to people, being by their side. I tell them, Try this and see. If you don#8217;t like it, we will give you another choice#8220;.

Dr. Panagamuwa understood how his decision to set up a base in Mannar could be perceived by some members of the diaspora. The question why a Sinhalese doctor is working in Mannar? is one he knew was being asked by some not only from the Tamil diaspora, but also the Sinhalese community. Having spent a few days with Dr. Panagamuwa in Mannar and traveling with his team to Pooneryn, the answer was plain: because there was a need. #8220;Some of the younger people are calling me uncle now,” he told me, “and that is the highest tribute that they can pay me#8221;.

Editors note: For an overview of the Longing and Belonging series and trailer, please click Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts. Also see The science of planning in Jaffna and From London to Jaffna for the first time.

• Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts



• Longing and Belonging series: The science of planning in Jaffna



• Chikenguniya Spreads In Jaffna



• A recent trip to Vavuniya: For the future looks dark and gloomy



• Longing and Belonging series: From London to Jaffna for the first time

Shashi Tharoor is the prize-winning author of twelve books, both fiction and non-fiction, including the classic The Great Indian Novel (1989), India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997), Nehru: The Invention of India (2003) and The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century (2007). He is an elected member of the Indian parliament, former Minister of State for External Affairs and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Our hour-long conversation at the Festival was anchored to The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century, a collection of essays on India which I noted flows naturally from his earlier collection Bookless in Baghdad.

We begin our conversation with an exploration of relative truths, and whether under India#8217;s national motto (#8220;Satyameva Jayate#8221; or literally, #8220;Truth Alone Triumphs#8221;) a dalit#8217;s truth, for example, is perceived to be as true as Shashi#8217;s, and how if not, the construction of truth occurs in 21st Century India. We move on to a detailed description by Shashi about how Information and Communications Technologies in general and the mobile phone in particular have changed the modes of production, access and dissemination of information in India, and through that, impacted many aspects of social, political and cultural life. Shashi talks about the Indian government#8217;s vastly different attitude to telecommunications from the 1980#8242;s to date. He also noted that the impact of mobile phone on Indian life flagged his book is woefully outdated today, given the strides made in regulatory reform and the growth of markets since it was first published.

We move on to cultural symbols and 21st Century India#8217;s cultural fabric, with a question anchored to a letter by one Shahnaz Habib quoted in Shashi#8217;s tome who asks #8220;why are there so few Muslim or Christian symbols in our public spaces if cultural assimilation has been so successful#8221; and goes on to note that she wishes for Shashi #8220;#8230; the knowledge of what it feels like to be a minority#8221;. I noted that given Sri Lanka#8217;s own post-independence history of ethnic marginalisation, this was quite a resonant turn of phrase, and asked Shashi to place his locate his optimism over India today against real, systemic problems of governance and government.

In his book, Shashi#8217;s essay on Indians who shaped his India includes only two women. Flagging Kiran Bedi, Kalpana Chawla, Hema Malini, Rekha, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Arundhati Roy and even Aiswarya Rai, I asked him why he didn#8217;t consider more fully the role of women in the shaping of India. His answer naturally progressed to the furore over his essay on the sari, and whether he regretted as a columnist ever saying or writing something (Shashi comes back to this point when a member of the audience, during question time, asked him about his #8216;cattle class#8217; tweet!)

The rest of our conversation probes a number of areas #8211; from diaspora engagement (NRI#8217;s to ABCDs!), the freedom of expression and the censorship, including of online media, to Shashi#8217;s deep scepticism over Indian elections as an event juxtaposed against his faith in Indian democracy as a larger process that warts and all, works. He also took a number of interesting questions from the audience that gave him an opportunity to reflect on Indian life and politics today.

The organisers of the Galle Literary Festival kindly provided the following podcast of our conversation. Total playing time is around an hour and five minutes. To download the file, click here. The audio file is around 685Mb.

• Shyam Selvadurai: Literature, identity, politics and the Galle Literary Festival



• Humans vs. elephants: Sri Lanka#8217;s tragic on-going conflict



• Watch Moving Images at Kandy International Film Festival (KIFF)



• A conversation with Kumudini Samuel



• New Festival to Promote Unity in Sri Lanka

The throng of devotees and tourists visiting the Nallur festival had receded and life slowly returned to normal in Jaffna. I stayed behind to see if I could persuade others visiting from abroad to be a part of my Longing and Belonging series. I was especially interested in those that were engaging in a sustained manner, in contrast to the charming young family that I had met at the height of the festival. This however proved to be a challenge. I met many who were engaging with projects in the north, but who were uncomfortable with being open about their views, preferring instead to keep a low profile.

One man who was willing to be involved was Dr Narendran, an associate professor who had worked for many years in Saudi Arabia, and who was now back in Sri Lanka, spending most of his time here.

We talked over coffee at the famous Malayan cafe in the heart of Jaffna town about his ideas for an agriculture and animal husbandry project on the islands off the Jaffna peninsula. His plans were still in their infancy. The government had offered him large tracts of state owned land to use for his project. It occurred to me that Dr Narendran had no qualms about working closely with the government, something I knew would be unpalatable for many of the diaspora that I had met during my visits to London.

Later, we took a taxi to the arid environment of the islands, which Dr Narendran compared to the deserts of Saudi Arabia. As we talked about his plans I thought that while I didn’t agree with everything that Dr Narendran had said to me during the time we spent together, he wasn’t expecting me to either. I sensed he knew I likely held different views, but that didn’t deter him from speaking to me with respect. He just wanted me to listen. I have to be honest here #8211; some of the things he said to me, for example, about the Tamil diaspora taking responsibility for their part in dealing with the devastation in the north made sense.

Meeting Dr Narendran and other individuals on this assignment underscored what he had told me #8211; that the diaspora is not a homogenous entity. It is a diverse group, with myriad perspectives, motivations and experiences. Dr Narendran was positioned somewhere along that spectrum of views.

Also see From London to Jaffna for the first time and Diaspora shorts

• Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts



• Longing and Belonging series: From London to Jaffna for the first time



• In the midst of the Adi Vel festival



• The campaign to save Rizana Nafeek: Ways to help



• Rizana#8217;s future: what WE CAN DO.

Photo courtesy World Bank

“If a tree falls in a forest and lands on a politician, even if you can#8217;t hear the tree or the screams, I#8217;ll bet you#8217;d at least hear the applause.”

Paul Tindale

Something is of universal value if it has the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. This claim could mean two importantly different things. First, it could be that something has a universal value when everybody finds it valuable. This was Isaiah Berlin#8216;s understanding of the term. According to Berlin, #8220;#8230;universal values are values that a great many human beings in the vast majority of places and situations, at almost all times, do in fact hold in common, whether consciously and explicitly or as expressed in their behavior#8230;#8221;. If such were the case, it would seem logical that ‘a benign quality of life’ would constitute a most fundamental universal value.  From there arises the various issues of fertility, pleasure, or democracy as universal values.

The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income.

The quality of life may be benign, free from perturbation and stress or malign, constantly exposed to perturbation and stress. These two states are two poles of a continuum that describes this  ‘quality’.    Thus the maintenance of a benign environment that protects the human being should be the primary concern of any development programme.  After all, it is for the benefit of humanity that all development programmes are mooted.

The human being is a biological entity. The ideal state for such an entity is when it is healthy and free from any harmful or injurious input.  Both science and tradition have identified many inputs that are harmful or injurious to the biological being.  Since the ideal conditions for biological organisms are being free from these negative inputs and since development must be a movement towards the ideal state that enhances our quality of life; we can summarize that #8216;Any process or activity that leads to the reduction of the biological quality of life cannot contribute to real development#8217; or that #8216;any process or activity that produces physical or chemical inputs demonstrable to be injurious to human well being leads to mal development.  Such a stand will allow people rather than abstract concepts to attain greater importance in the assessment of ‘development’.  Thus no amount of economic gain, media or propaganda should be able to justify the erosion of the well being of people.

Development, beyond the provision of human well-being, becomes a particular word view or set of values.  In today’s declining quality of life, the development paradigm addressing public health or agriculture is still driven by the same values that created the problems.  How to incorporate the scientific reality of the erosion of public health and environmental sustainability in setting development goals?  Will certainly be a question that calls for urgent answers.

Traditional society worldwide represents a wide diversity of expression, reflecting a long history of co-evolution with the local landscapes. The product of these incredibly long processes of #8216;informal research#8217; is codified as traditional knowledge and practice.  The inroads of modern consumerist society, the present claimant to globalization, are rapidly homogenizing many traditional societies, in pursuance of development.  Often it is neither democratic nor requested by traditional people.  There is no recognition of the fact that each society has a worldview that must be recognized and incorporated into the international agenda of development.

In addition to being sensitive to the needs of the land, there must also be recognition of the fact that agrarian societies with long histories, posses the credibility of having sustained themselves successfully under the rigor of survival in the natural world.  The concern for the future is that the model chosen for sustaining future global agrarian society is an energy and resource demanding production system.  The sustainability of which is dependent on the timely delivery of external inputs.

Agrarian societies have existed on this world for a very long time.  Many in existence today have historical records that attest their capacity for sustainability. The challenge is to understand their structure well enough, so that it provides the paradigm for development.  Development, in this context will mean capacity building within the traditional paradigm.  The aspects of globalizing such a plurality are challenging, it requires addressing phenomena that have meaning to all members of such a plurality.  For instance, climate change is a global phenomenon that has the potential to affect all agrarian society.  Sustainability of the production base is another.  Yet no investment is being put into developing the traditional approaches to agriculture.  Development funding is still narrowly focused towards ‘Economic Development’ and ignores all other considerations of ‘Development’.

Perhaps it is time to revisit development once again.  Economic yes, but it must also be ecologically and socially valid.   In Sri Lanka the tragedy of uneducated and greedy politicians, tutored by conniving bureaucrats mindlessly cheering the process of ‘economic development’ is evident. The fact that they do not consider any other aspect of sustainability, must demonstrate the bankruptcy of a national vision and of any responsibility to the nation.

A development process that creates massive infrastructure, mega buildings etc. requiring enormous quantities of energy to maintain them, without considering the long-term cost of providing fossil based energy, cannot contribute to sustainable development.  It will result in the construction of more and more polluting energy plants dependent on external sources of fossil energy that we will have to purchase from an ever-expensive market. Borrowing money for such an extravagant lifestyle is no way to make the future sustainable.

Our political pundits are fond of using terms such as Universal Values and Accountability to window dress the ongoing charade. It is even more tragic to read the words of politicians who claim to represent the Buddhist view when they state:

“The so called development based on greed and excessive utilization of the natural resources of the world, …Excessive consumption of meat is a sacrilege of vegetation and animals… To build artificial towns that are only a travesty is the motivation (of developers).”

And then go on to support enthusiastically the addiction of the nation to energy consumption. What hypocrisy!

To see the consequence of the current ‘ Economic Development’, that our politicians so unquestioningly participate in, should be obvious to the educated.  Energy addiction is the worst form of addiction as it impacts a whole nation, not just the individual. To miss the obvious connection between ‘Economic Development’ as sold today and the need for ever-increasing deliveries of power, is to blind or ignorant.

As for accountability in Sri Lanka, the response of Mahatama Gandhi to the question of what he thought of ‘Western Civilization’, might be well applied. His response was  ‘What a good idea !”. The challenge before us is, how to make manifest this ‘good idea’ of accountability in the sea of impunity and corruption that we are mired in.

• Desire, Violence and Leadership



• Future of Farming in Sri Lanka



• Right to Food: Ecologically based agriculture



• Agricultural Madness



• De-globalisation: A paradigm for sustainable development?

The Nallur festival was in full flow. Kavadi drummers played for the crowds of devotees that swelled around Jaffna#8217;s famous temple. Dotted around me were visitors from abroad. It was wonderful to see they were back, tracing lost roots and reconnecting with family and friends. I wanted to meet them and to understand what it was like being back.

One of these was a young Tamil family from London. For the two daughters, it was their first time in Sri Lanka, visiting what they called their mother’s “home country”. The family had been helping a local charity, the Hindu Board of Education, from afar and were in Jaffna to visit the orphanage and to take in the Nallur festival. The two girls had struggled all week with the heat, the mosquitoes and the crowds, but they didn#8217;t complain. They took time to talk to the children in bits of Tamil that they had learned and handed out chocolates to them after lunch. It was their way of #8220;giving back#8221; they told me. Listening to the girls compare the Nallur experience to the carnivals that they had grown up with in Britain brought a smile to my face. It was reassuring to see them there, to hear their London accents in Jaffna, and to explore the possibilities of how they could #8220;give back#8221;.

Editors note: For an overview of the Longing and Belonging series and trailer, please click Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts

• Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts



• New Festival to Promote Unity in Sri Lanka



• A Tribute to our Unsung Heroes



• Liberation



• Hear My VOICE: Arumugam Varatharajan ~ “I want to feel “belonged”

Sunday: A day of perfect rest. My cousin and nephew visit. She had brought string hoppers and fish curry, cooked in perfect Sri Lankan style. No, it was perfect Jaffna style. No, no, it was perfect Karainagar style. I could remember the taste from over 40 years ago when she would insist that I eat up the fish curry and string hoppers before running off to play hide and seek behind coconut palms. It was the very same taste, I am certain. That is nostalgia you see, in driving up neural resonances, it is far more powerful than fine wine and loving sex.

I call my friend and ask her to book my Jaffna bus ticket.

Monday: Spent the day at the University of Colombo, School of Computing (UCSC). We discuss difficulties in automatic translation between natural languages.

Tuesday: Morning, again at UCSC. We discuss the four undergraduate projects that I support remotely – how to predict if two proteins interact, how to calculate if a small molecule might bind to a protein, on interactions of genes in the rice genome and on building a Sinhala-English translation system. It is great to work with these bright kids!

At lunchtime, my friend brings me the bus tickets. She explains the intricacies of how buses with bubble shock absorbers offset the effect of bumpy rides. “Beyond Vavuniya, roads are still very bad, no?”

Fine night bus ride to Jaffna; I was sitting close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation between the driver and his gOlaya [apprentice], from which I learn much. Half way between Puththalam and Vavuniya he calls the driver of the bus behind him “paaththu vaa machchaan yaanai oNdu nikkuthu [watch out there is an elephant]” ; a bus coming from the other direction makes a Morse code signal which warns him of a traffic police patrol ahead; a random policeman stops the bus near Mankulam and the driver says “maathayaa anthuran naedhdha, ethaa apE bus ekE aavE [Sir, don’t you recognize us, you travelled by our bus the other day?],” and we are waved through #8212; a corrupt cop whose bribe has been pre-paid.

Omanthai still has a border. Locals (holders of national identity cards) stay in the bus, foreigners like me have to get down and obtain clearance. The soldier photocopies my passport. “What is the reason for going to Jaffna?” he asks. “I am a don, doing what dons do.”  “Contact number please?” I tell him. “That is a Colombo number, no? Give me mobile number.” Embarrassing – I do not know it. He gives me a funny look. “What kind of a don are you?” is written all over his smile. He asks me to call his phone, and gets my number from the missed call. Military intelligence is no longer an oxymoron to me.

Something else is interesting. I spoke in Sinhala, and the soldier spoke in English. Contrast this to an experience from HillTop many years ago where I had a disagreement with a member of clerical staff. After a brief argument, I complained to the clerk’s boss. In the three-way conversation that followed, the boss and I spoke to each other in English, but we both spoke to the clerk in Sinhala. The direction of power flow thus established, even though the clerk was technically right, I won.

Wednesday: Going into Jaffna University, I s­ee the name of a building: “Kurushestra.” My friend Aachcharya works here I remember. I go in and speak to a helpful young lady. “Where is Aachcharya?” “He has gone to teach.” No surprise there. We find him and go to their common room for a cup of tea and general gossip.

Something about that lady bugs me. She seemed to be everything that Tamil poets had declared how pretty women ought to look like (hair #8211; clouds, forehead – crescent, eyebrows – concave, eyes – fish and so on). I could not bluntly ask her for her email or facebook account. That could hurt cultural sentiments of the place. But I still need to track her down later. Coming out of Kurushestra, I make a quick sketch of the lady in my diary.

nbsp;

Thursday: An enjoyable workshop, with several good talks and an effective poster session. The hosts have done a brilliant job – great lunch, too. I learn a lot from the Dean about the challenges they face. Readers can see some pictures from the workshop here.

Friday: The new Vice Chancellor is gracious enough to spare some time and talk to me about the University’s plans to set up engineering education at Kilinochchi. Conversation with her tempts me to think of investing in a retirement hut next to the Iranaimadu tank.

Late afternoon I go to the Rio ice cream shop near the Nallur temple, now a prominent tourist attraction, and bump into my friend, Accuratus Numeratus, greedily eating a very large ice cream. He is sweating a lot and is eating the ice cream very fast, as though he purposefully wants to cool down. “What’s up, mate?” I enquire.

He was at the Parameswara junction, taking a photograph, when a soldier had threateningly challenged him: “You, you… photo taking?” A young soldier was expressing suspicion at Numeratus over the use of a camera. Numeratus bursts out in anger: “I am a don doing my don job, returning to my country after 22 years, what is the harm in me taking a photograph? It is not written anywhere this is not allowed, is it?” He shows his Dolphin identity card, making sure his thumb partially covers his name, but ­clearly exposing his job title. That outburst, Numeratus managed to do in fluent Sinhala, with perfect intonation superposed on his phonetics. The soldier backs off, and says “sorry, sir”. Numeratus puts his hand on the young man’s shoulder and says “Oh kaman nae, malli [It’s OK, brother]”.

When the soldier walks away, Numeratus quickly gets into the nearest tuk-tuk and gets himself driven to the ice cream parlour.

“So what is the problem, eh?” I tease him. “There is peace in the country. There is nothing called minority. Everyone is equal. The soldier was curious, you told him off, you called him malli – in fact, my friend, given your age, you should have called him putha [son] #8212; so what exactly is your problem?”

“I will be gone tomorrow,” he explains, “I had the skill to talk my way out of that situation. Just think about people having to go through with such intimidation day in, day out. No wonder these people feel like living in an open prison, don’t you see? Every visitor to Jaffna reports unfilled pot-holes on the roads, but they don’t notice that just beneath the surface, you find much unhealed wounds. Wounds kept open so that salt may be rubbed into them.”

“You are reading too much into this,” I try to calm him down.

“But it also brings memories, man,” he went on, and told me a true incident that happened nearly three decades ago. “Do you know the place Punchi Borella?” In my young days, I used to take the 103 bus from Maradana to Borella a lot #8212; to the YMBA, where chess tournaments were held.  “Yes, I know,” I replied.

“One day, long ago, a young man, twenty years of age, was sitting in this 103 bus and a thug got in, drunk and smelling of arrack. The thug is of blood type S, and the young fellow is of type T. The thug holds the young man by his collar and shouts, `You are type T aren’t you? I am going to kill you, and teach your people a lesson.’”

“The young fellow had the presence of mind and amazing courage to shout back at the thug: `beepuhaama aes penen naedhdha?’ [can’t you see properly when you are drunk?] Do I look like a T, what an idiot you are?’ The young fellow’s outburst came out with perfect intonation, superposed on fluent Sinhala phonetics, just as Numeratus had done half an hour ago in Jaffna. The thug seems convinced and leaves the bus. `hary yung [OK, let’s go],’ shouts the conductor and the bus moves. The young man sweats profusely and trembles, thanking for his survival the Gods he never believed in.”

“And then, this is the punch line,” Numeratus continues after a brief pause, “the conductor walks up to the young man.”  “With his hand on the young fellow’s shoulder, the conductor quietly says into his ears: `bErunaa nE, hondhai? [escaped, no? good]’”

Postscript: In my return journey to Colombo one of the bubble shock absorbers broke and I had to hitch a ride in a far less comfortable bus. At Pettah, getting into a local bus, sleep deprived and with a severe back ache, my Sinhala fails me.

I ask to go to Biththaramalla (instead of Baththaramulla).

This 103 conductor and I share a hearty laugh.

[Author’s note: Part I of this diary, of a visit mainly to Peradeniya just over a year ago, can be read by clicking here]

• Jaffna People Back To Barter Business



• The Story of Learning Lessons by Counting Costs



• Like Slaves In Jaffna



• Questionnaire And Licenses In Jaffna



• For the love of books: A story from Sri Lanka

Photo courtesy asianews.it

“I was on my motorcycle going through this area behind a couple on a motorcycle. The woman was pregnant and they were out probably to do some shopping. The couple was coming fast. They signalled to me and I moved aside to let them overtake. I suddenly saw the couple fall down for no discernible reason and the man writhing in agony. He had been hit by a bullet from the army’s side. I stopped and the pregnant woman pleaded with me to take her husband to the hospital. Most people passed us by engrossed in their own problems and such things had become a daily occurrence. The man whose lower jaw had been blown off was vomiting blood and the situation looked hopeless. What had happened was that when we passed that area on motorbikes, it was our custom to dip our heads as low as possible to minimise our chances of being hit by an army sniper. Because the man had ridden fast and taken a curve in overtaking me, he lacked the balance to dip his head as a precaution.

The stricken man’s wife was helpless. To carry the man to the medical post at Valaignarmadam required a third person on the bike so that the injured man could be sandwiched between us. My bike being too small for that, I asked the wife to help the man onto the bike so that he could sit behind leaning his head on my back. In this manner I took the man to the hospital. By the time I reached there he was dead. It was then that I noticed my own state. A good part of my person was drenched in blood and covered in flies. The flies formed also a thick layer upon the dead man. This brought home to me the absolute squalor of the place.

I was once travelling on the main road when unexpectedly I saw an RPG shell fired by a soldier across the lagoon landing in front of me. I considered and decided that there was no point in stopping and rode on and another RPG shell fell behind me. I warned people travelling in the opposite direction not to proceed as there was an ambush waiting. But no one seemed to take notice. How does one explain such behaviour? On the one hand there is constant danger from shelling and from small weapons fire and ideally children should be inside bunkers. But on the other, you see children playing on the beach and even flying kites, indifferent to sudden death that strikes unawares.”

UTHR(J), Special Report No: 34, Let Them Speak: Truth about Sri Lanka#8217;s Victims of War, December 2009

Moderating the session with Dr. Abuelaish Izzeldin, the author of I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor#8217;s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity at the Galle Literary Festival this year was memorable not so much for what Dr. Izzeldin said, but for the audience reaction. It may have been the only session where the speaker was applauded after every response and received a standing ovation at the end of the session.  From the vantage point of the elevated stage, I could see dozens – women as well as men – in tears, or fighting hard against them. The questions had a predictable preface – Dr. Izzeldin’s book made people cry.

With a redesign of The Nation in the offing, columnists were asked to limit their submissions to around 800 words. Around 580 of this column reiterate an inconvenient truth about the human cost of victory. There are hundreds of families, not unlike Dr. Izzeldin’s, not far from where you read this. Dr. Izzeldin survived. Many in Nandikadal did not. Dr. Izzeldin went on to write a book. The horrific stories of those caught between the advancing Sri Lankan Army and the frothing madness of the LTTE aren’t as well-known, even though they are in the public domain. Perhaps grief is easier when its focus is farther away in geography, time or identity? Perhaps the optics and politics of grief, recognition and memorialising – the monuments, statues, renaming of roads, commemorations, garlanding – that take place in the South for war heroes are accepted as more authentic and necessary than the grief of a family in the Vanni whose children were killed or conscripted?

Dr. Izzeldin was visibly moved when he spoke. I remain unconvinced he has come to terms with his own catastrophic loss, and hope he finds peace. For us in this country, we are told we are at peace. Moved by the violence of distant lands, we care not to read our own stories. There are many. Grief is not the exclusive domain of anyone, or any one community. But grief today is unequally recognised, and the space to grieve is unequally framed. If a family in Gaza is able to move us to tears, can 580 words depicting a larger horror move us to tears too?

And if we don’t care enough to read, to ask, to know and to grieve, we must acknowledge that we too are authors of violence.

###

This article was first published in The Nation newspaper on 29 January 2011.

• Like Slaves In Jaffna



• Inquiry into a Sri Lankan Man’s Stolen Bicycle



• A recent trip to Vavuniya: For the future looks dark and gloomy



• Let this be the moment that defines us



• War IDPs

Photo courtesy Reuters

Hey, MAN! Yup you. Got a minute? Because I would like to talk to you. Yup, to you.

Because you whistled out a love song in my honour from your guard-post on Bauddhaloka Mawatha as I was hopping out of a tuk-tuk to get into work this morning. You were on duty. You and I are not in love. And you can’t hold a tune if your life depended on it.

And so I am curious as to why you did it. Did the tune spring out from your lips and into your pants and give you the rise that eluded you earlier this morning? Did it score you points with your chums at the post? Did it make you feel good? Strong?  Manly?

Did it make you feel like a MAN?

Are you curious about how it made me feel? Well it didn’t make me feel too good to be honest. I felt small. I felt a knot of anger hurting my insides. I felt self-conscious, and so I focussed intently on looking left, right and then left again before crossing the road.

There. Does knowing that make you feel even better? More stronger? More manly?

Does it make you feel more like a MAN?

It doesn’t always make me feel small you know. Like late December buying string hoppers for dinner from Hotel Sealord I looked across just in time to see you put your ample tongue in and out and around your mouth slapping saliva about before mouthing an unmentionable in my honour.  On that day the knot of anger uncoiled and spoke up. In fluent ‘Captain of the Sinhala debate team at school’ Sinhala I asked you a) to repeat yourself; b) whether you had similar thoughts about your sister and c) whether you’d like to speak about it with my brother who was parked outside. On that day you were the one that felt small and self-conscious. You picked up your helmet and walked out quickly, as if you were choosing to be the bigger person.

MAN that you are.

On that day, I felt good.

The thing is I don’t always fight back. It depends on the time of day and place. Who I am with. Who you are with. Sometimes the Feminist just can’t let it pass, and so I confront it and take a hit for the greater cause. Sometimes the working mother who was up at 4.30am is just too tired, and I so walk past it pretending I didn’t hear, see or feel you.

Some of you are chivalrous and kind to me. Like you, my tuk-tuk driver. You’ve driven me about for years. You’ve had near fisticuffs on one occasion in defence of my honour. And yet I sit and watch as you drive me about, how your eyes leer at every other woman wearing anything above her knees and how you swerve into them so they won’t miss the leer in your eyes. You would never do that to me. You know me. Like you would never do that to your mother, sister, wife or daughter. In fact you’d probably beat-up any man who does. But the unknown woman. She is easy isn’t she? Easy on your conscience that is.

Right MAN?

I am raising a son you know. But wait a minute, you already know that. Because last week, as I was straining my neck to find him in the swarm of little boys at the school gate, you stretched out and firmed out your hand and laid your fingers splayed across my sari-clad thigh. This, while your wife was trying valiantly to hold onto your son’s hand to keep him from running onto the open road crammed with manic school vans.

Anyway, back to my son. I am doing my best to teach him to respect women. The ones he knows and the ones he doesn’t. The ones that will speak out and the ones that will keep their heads down. In time I will teach him that there are many ways to harass, abuse and violate, and that it starts and ends when he uses his body, his voice and his mind to make someone feel less than she or he is. I will do everything in my power to raise him to be a man.

A man.

• Violence Against Women: This is my story



• Hear My VOICE: Velupillai Yesupalan ~ “My father is my role model”



• The Wedding: An imagined portrait of an unusual day



• Hear My VOICE: Bonsika Vadivel Vasanthan ~ “Please bring my father back to me”



• Barbed Wire

Editors note: Groundviews is very pleased to host the web premiere of Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts by Kannan Arunasalam. We#8217;ve featured Kannan#8217;s visually stunning and compelling work before in Koothu, kerosene and paper: portraits of resilience, part of the Moving Images series commissioned by Groundviews. Over the coming week we#8217;ll progressively upload Kannan#8217;s short videos, so check back often. Finally, if you have a good broadband connection, we highly recommend that in the trailer below, you turn on HD and view it full screen.

###

August in Sri Lanka is a month of religious festivals in the north and also a chance for the diaspora to return and reconnect with their homeland. What better time I thought than to try and meet members of the diaspora returning to visit Sri Lanka.

My own journey started six years ago, and since then I’ve made Sri Lanka my home, putting down new roots in the country of my birth. It’s fascinating for me to observe others go through what I went through years ago.

I’m was now looking at ways in which the diaspora are engaging with development work in Sri Lanka, to find out what challenges they face and how their experiences might help others who are also thinking of returning.

I began my assignment in Jaffna at the annual Nallur festival. Last August it drew thousands of devotees. This is my hometown and the sights, smells and tastes took me back to my own childhood, growing up here. Jaffna is also home to some Tamil Diaspora and I could understand why they return to experience these things that are still very much a part of their culture. It was nice to see they were back, tracing lost roots and reconnecting with family and friends.  I wanted to meet them, to understand what it was like being back.

One of these visitors was a young Tamil family from London. For the two daughters, it was their very first time in Sri Lanka, visiting what they called their mother’s “home country”.  The family had been helping a local charity from afar and were in Jaffna to visit the charity, as well as to take in the “carnival” atmosphere of the Nallur festival.

I also met Dr Narendran, an assistant professor who had worked for many years in Saudi Arabia, but who was back in Sri Lanka with ambitious plans for agriculture and animal husbandry on the islands off the Jaffna peninsula. We talked over coffee at the famous Malayan Café about his plans and later he took me along to the arid environment of the islands, which he compared fondly to the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

From Jaffna I travelled to Mannar where I met Dr Panagamuwa, a Sinhala doctor from Birmingham and a specialist in rehabilitation medicine. He had set up a limb-fitting workshop at the Mannar Hospital, coming under his British based charity, the Metha Foundation. Together with his team of technicians, he attended to the needs of amputees and the disabled. The vast majority were victims of war, but there were also polio sufferers and injuries caused by everyday accidents.

The three individuals have very different stories to tell as were their connections to Sri Lanka. Meeting them underscored what Dr Naredran had told me, that the diaspora is not a homogenous entity #8211; it is a diverse group, with myriad perspectives, motivations and experiences. There were others too, with very different views, and who were not willing to return.  Even the ones who are returning to visit seemed to have reservations. I met many who were engaging with projects here, but who were uncomfortable being open about their views, preferring instead to keep a low profile.

They ones that were prepared to be filmed, inspired me to capture their reflections on being back and engaging with the needs of the north of the country. The three short films under my Longing and Belonging series on the Sri Lankan diaspora aim to encourage constructive discussion on what is no doubt a complex and sensitive aspect of Sri Lankan politics. Tapping into the large resources of the diaspora would greatly benefit the people of Sri Lanka. Not all will be willing to come, but those that can be won over, need to feel more welcome.

• Paper: The incredible story of Uthayan in Jaffna



• Koothu: Theatre and leprosy in Jaffna



• Kerosene: How does a taxi driver take the sick to the hospital when there#8217;s no fuel around?



• Two testimonies from families released from Menik Camp



• Watch Moving Images at Kandy International Film Festival (KIFF)

Our affiliate Vikalpa did a short media monitoring exercise anchored to the front page reportage of the Indian Foreign Minister’s official visit to Sri Lanka and the press conference in which the President#8217;s commitment to going beyond the 13th Amendment was reiterated by him. The following is a translation of the report that first appeared on Vikalpa.

In addition to the translation below, which deals with the Sinhala and Tamil media, it is interesting to note the differences in reporting the Indian FM#8217;s statement regarding the 13th Amendment between the state-run Daily News and the privately owned Daily Mirror.  The Daily News does not have a single mention of the President#8217;s avowed commitment to go beyond the 13th Amendment anywhere on the front page. The headline quoting the Indian FM, notes that the LLRC report is a basis for reconciliation. There is a photo showing the President, with both his hands, grasping the outstretched arm of the Indian FM. We use the same photo above. A story on how the President invited the Indian FM to Thai Pongal celebrations at the President#8217;s official residence (Temple Trees) appears beneath this photo in the Daily News. There is no mention of any statement regarding the 13th Amendment, even in passing.

The Daily Mirror also does not go with a lead story on the President#8217;s commitment to go beyond the 13th Amendment. Yet at the bottom of the front page, it publishes a lead story on this issue, noting that

#8220;President Mahinda Rajapaksa has assured visiting Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna that the government would deliver on its promise to implement the 13th Amendment plus, Mr. Krishna told a news conference yesterday#8221;. (Emphasis ours)

The story on the front page goes on to note that,

#8220;Mr. Krishna said the Sri Lankan government hoped to extend the 13th Amendment to include a comprehensive devolution of powers#8221;.

Given the media monitoring below, all government owned print media (and also pro-government print media like the Island newspaper) the day after the Indian FM#8217;s press conference sought to downplay the President#8217;s avowed commitment to go beyond the 13th Amendment. In some newspapers, there was simply no reportage on this vital pronouncement at all. For the Editors of the state owned Daily News and Dinamina and the privately owned yet pro-government Island for example, the President#8217;s commitment to go beyond the 13th Amendment is a non-issue, or perhaps more accurately, so much of an issue that they seek to erase it from the front pages of their newspapers! 

Out of sight, out of mind is the government media#8217;s mantra to deal with the 13th Amendment, and going beyond it. Could it also be this government#8217;s real take on it?

Translation from the Vikalpa media monitoring article

A press conference was held in Colombo on 17 January 2012 at the end of an official visit by Hon. S.M. Krishna, the Indian Foreign Minister. The front page reportage of his statements on the 13^th Amendment in the mainstream Sinhala and Tamil print media are examined in this brief media monitoring report.

Lakbima, Lankadeepa, Divaina – Sinhala, private media

There is only one lead story featuring the comments by the Indian FM Krishna on the Sri Lankan government’s new stance regarding the 13^th Amendment. The daily Lakbima quotes the Indian FM and says in its lead story,

“The solution to the problems the Tamils face, the Sri Lankan government agrees to go beyond the 13 Amendment says the Indian Foreign Minister”

In addition to this quote, there are a number of other quotes attributed to the Indian FM flagged in this lead story.

• It is very important that the Sri Lankan government comes up with a political solution that addresses the problems of the Tamil people.


• President Mahinda Rajapaksa has already agreed to a political solution that goes beyond the 13^th Amendment.


• The President has expressed his commitment to going beyond the 13^th Amendment at a discussion centred around the devolution of power.


• There are a number of vital recommendations in the LLRC report, and enacting them is important for communal harmony and unity as well as reconciliation.


• It is important that the government continues with its efforts to engage with the Tamil National Alliance.

In addition to the above, the daily Lankadeepa featured a news story on its front page regarding the Indian FM’s comments, though it was not the lead story. It noted that,

“The President has promised a political solution that goes beyond the 13^th Amendment says the Indian FM.”

Note that the Lankadeepa states that the President had promised a political solution that goes beyond the 13^th Amendment to the Indian FM. Yet the Lakbima reports that the President only ‘agreed’ to go beyond the 13^th Amendment. Lankadeepa further notes that the President had expressed his commitment to a political solution on these lines to the Indian FM. Points that aren’t noted in the Lakbima front page lead story are featured in the Lankadeepa front page news story.

• That the time was now ripe for a stable political settlement not unlike the leadership shown to end the war.


• India is always keenly interested in what steps are taken towards a political settlement.


• The Sri Lankan government on a number of occasions had said it was committed to a political solution based on the 13^th Amendment.


• That India believes talks between the Tamil National Alliance and the government can be conducted under the guidance of a Parliamentary Select Committee.

In addition to this, the Indian FM’s press conference was also reported in the daily Divaina newspaper.

“The President said he will completely enact 13 says the Indian FM.”

The report also goes to the mention that the Indian FM had noted in the press conference that a political settlement is needed to address the Tamil problem, and that the devolution of power through the 13^th Amendment is appropriate in this regard. Further, the report mentions that over 90 minutes of discussion during the afternoon of the 17^th was spent between the Indian FM Krishna and President Rajapaksa discussing the Tamil problem and solutions to it.

Dinamina – Pro-government newspaper

Dinamina has also devoted its lead story to the Indian FM’s press conference. Interestingly, in the lead story published on the front page itself, there is no mention at all about the Indian FM’s statement regarding the 13^th Amendment. Most of the story is devoted to how the Indian FM had stressed that the LLRC’s reports recommendations are implemented. In addition, the lead story notes that Indo-Sri Lankan relations are strong, that the TNA-Government talks are a good thing, flags the Info-Sri Lanka MoU’s and that solutions for problems facing fisherman were also discussed. In addition, the front page carries a full colour, large photograph of the President and the Indian shaking hands, with the President grasping the Indian FM’s extended arm with both hands.

In fact, the paper incorrectly calls the Indian FM the Indian Foreign Secretary.

That the Indian FM mentioned one point regarding the 13^th Amendment during this press conference is mentioned in a single sentence in the lead story. However, even this single reference to the 13^th Amendment is published on the continuation of the front page lead story on page 4. It is published in the penultimate paragraph of the lead story. It reads,

“In addition, the Indian FM mentioned that he had met the President for successful talks and that he had expressed his idea for an amendment that went beyond the 13^th Amendment.”

When placed in the context of the lead story, this sentence is rendered rather meaningless, and at best is a prevarication over what the Indian FM said. That it comes right at the end of the lead story must also not be forgotten. The Dinamina notes that the President “expressed his idea” to go beyond the 13^th Amendment. Other Sinhala newspapers reported this as a commitment to go beyond the 13^th Amendment, or the completely implementing the 13^th Amendment.

Sudar Oli, Virakesari, Thinakkural – Tamil, private newspapers

The Sudar Oli newspaper has reported the Indian FM’s statement regarding the 13^th Amendment as its lead news story on the front page. The headline notes that “Ready to go beyond the 13^th Amendment: The President agrees with Minister Krishna”. The report goes on to note that the Indian FM had said,

He believes talks between the TNA and the government as well as the recommendations of a Parliamentary Select Committee would help in moving towards a political settlement.

That implementing the recommendations of the LLRC report was an important step to strengthen the government and build harmony.

Virakesari and Thinakkural go with similar lead stories on the front page. Virakesari goes with two colour photos on the front page to accompany the lead story. The continuation of the lead story on page 10 also occupies a lot of space on the page. In the Thinakkural, the lead story on the front page is entirely devoted to the Indian FM’s statement on the 13^th Amendment. In addition, the lead story quotes the Indian FM as noting that it is important to implement the recommendations of the LLRC report, the problems facing fisherman, development, the housing scheme in the North and the MoUs with Sri Lanka.

Thinakkaran – Pro-government newspaper

As flagged above, all the three privately owned Tamil newspapers reported the Indian FM’s statements as “going beyond the 13^th Amendment”. However, the Thinakkaran newspaper’s lead story reports that the President said he would exceed the 13^th Amendment (the Tamil phrasing suggests that this is just a little beyond the 13^th Amendment) for a solution. The lead story suggests that the Sri Lankan President had told the Indian FM that after discussing what is possible beyond the 13^th Amendment, a solution would be arrived at.

In addition, three key points are flagged in this news story.

• The signing of five MoU’s between India and Sri Lanka


• That the Indian government values the LLRC’s report


• That the Parliamentary Select Committee is a good platform for the solution of the national question

• Daily Propaganda



• Curated updates from Indian Foreign Minister#8217;s official visit to Sri Lanka



• News Flash: I was not visited by a pink elephant



• In conversation with Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne



• Update on Menik Camp flooding: More images and reports from the ground

On 4^th December 2011 the Sunday Island carried a headline: “Mahinda ready to meet General Fonseka’s family over pardon” #8212; with a picture alongside showing President Mahinda Rajapaksa seated in an armchair perusing an official document – a document in royal red and marked by a recognisable state seal. It is the juxtaposition of the headline and image that drew my interest. In my reading as an analyst attentive to indigenous cultural threads, this combination suggested several interrelated motifs, namely, that

1. President Rajapaksa is the epitome of sovereign power, vested with the rights of clemency on high, just like Sinhalese kings of the past who could be supplicated by condemned subjects who crawled on their knees to the palace gates (mahāvāsala) and begged for pardon for their evil-doings or crimes;[i]


2. President Rajapaksa is akin to a manorial lord of the past, a patrimonial figure who is readily accessible on his verandah to subordinate officials, tenants and other people seeking favours from this font of noblesse oblige;


3. President Rajapaksa is a son of the soil, native to core. After all, what can be more native than a hansi putuva? He is, therefore, as personable as approachable.

Picture from Island newspaper thus carrying official approval

In sum, what one sees here in this interpretation is native kingly power on high within a hierarchical situation, marking a flow of authority from an apical fountainhead to persons and ‘satellites’ below. The imagery on this front-page suggests motifs that I have incorporated within my theoretical construct, “the Asokan Persona” (Roberts 1994b: 58-72). But within today’s modernist setting the imagery also conveys themes that I would describe as “populist.” The essay will clarify each of these concepts in turn.

The Asokan Persona as Analytical Model

The Asokan Persona is a distilled picture of the conceptions of authority and symbols of status and power embodied in a cakravarti figure in Sinhala society over the past centuries. It assumes varying contexts of hierarchy and focuses upon the relationship between a superior and a subordinate. It seeks to delineate the images of authority and status that inform such interpersonal exchanges. It argues that such conceptions of authority and status are both embodied in, and reproduced within, the mechanisms of social distancing and the verbal and kinesic symbols of status.

It is not simply an issue of a superior being imposing his power on subordinates. The whole point of the paradigm is to mark the manner in which the everyday practices of subordinates, some of which are taken-for-granted, incorporate and reproduce the status and power of the superior person and/or position. In this manner the Asokan Persona takes one into the realm of hegemonic practices in the sense in which the concept “hegemony” is used by Antonio Gramsci – whereby those subordinate and inferior participate in their own subordination (Roberts 1994b: 57-58, 70-71).

King Rajasinha II of Sihalē

One illustration of the meaningful practices which embody the Asokan Persona and perpetuate its reproduction over time is the Sinhala word pirivarāgena as it is understood in several contexts. This term describes the entourages around powerful personages. Such a term not only arises in political contexts as well the adulation around film stars, cricketing greats and other people of prominence; but also comes into play in reading the artistic and sculptural imagery in Buddhist temples because the figure of the Buddha is often surrounded by deities or devoted disciples in positions pirivarāgena.

Note, too, that the numerous deities of the Hindu dispensation who have been absorbed into the Sinhala Buddhist practices of supplication derive their authority from the receipt of the Buddha’s varam or varan. Varan means “delegated authority” and implies hierarchy. It encodes encompassment or incorporation within hierarchy, even if one is a powerful being like a deity who in turn receives supplication from lesser beings (humans). Thus, the deities are encompassed by the Buddha Dhamma (Obeyesekere 1966; Roberts 1994c, 1994d).

Equally significant in these illustrations is the fact that such meaningful terminology crosses the domains of “politics” and “religion.” This is what one would anticipate for an Asian context where the two have always been intimately intertwined and where the separation of ‘State’ and ‘Church’, politics and religion, has not proceeded in the manner that eventuated in modern Europe in the early modern era and after the French Revolution of 1789.

Populism and Fascism in Comparative Perspective

Populism describes a political current which places the masses (the volk) within a nation state on a pedestal and claims to work for their greater good (Worsley 1969; Wiles 1969 and Stewart 1969) . In world practice in recent centuries it refers to a cult of the masses which vests the figure espousing and embodying the popular cause with an enormous concentration of power. Populism was especially pronounced in several Eastern European countries between the two World Wars. In this period, the populist “cult of the masses” overlapped often with what has been called “peasant essentialism” (Brass 1990).

Eastern Europe in this period saw the emergence of several peasant parties, some drawing inspiration from “the historical messianism” associated with the Russian narodnik movements (Walicki 1969: 62-90; Wiles 1969: 171-76; Ionescu 1969: 104-09). Romania presents a significant illustration that offers qualified comparative insights for those familiar with Sri Lankan history in the last seventy years. Here, the Left intellectual Constantin Stere (1865-1936) moved away from orthodox socialism and drafted an essay in 1908 entitled #8220;Poporanism or Social Democracy?#8221;.  Addressing Romania’s agricultural context, Stere did not see any future for industrialization programmes or a proletarian emphasis in politics; and argued instead for a #8220;peasant state#8221; where small agricultural plots would serve as the basis for economic development.

From this moment Stere and Dobrogeanu Gherea spearheaded the campaign to gain voting rights for the Romanian peasantry through the slogan poporism. Though Stere has been described as a “constitutionalist populist” (Ionescu 1969: 102), the influence of narodnik currents of thought also implanted messianic threads conducive to a cultic dependence on a leader figure.

Leader-figures were particularly prominent in the organisation known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael which was set up in 1927 by a religious mystic, Cornelia Zelea Codreanu. The Legion’s ideology was ultra-nationalist, anti-communist, anti-Semitic and fascist; but, unlike other contemporary fascist movements in Europe, it presented an overt religiosity centred upon the Romanian Orthodox Church. Its fascist character was sharpened in 1930 when Codreanu formed the #8220;Iron Guard#8221; as a paramilitary branch of the Legion (Wiles 1969). This core group’ assumed such importance that its name became synonymous with the Legion. Then, in 1935 its leaders adopted a new name: #8221; the Totul pentru Ţară#8221; party, literally #8220;Everything for the Country#8221;, but commonly translated as #8220;Everything for the Fatherland#8221; or occasionally #8220;Everything for the Motherland#8221; (for background, see Wiles 1969; Bucur 2007 as well as Wikipedia).

Cordeanu

The Iron Guard’s support base seems to have been strongest among students and peasants. However, it garnered only 15.5 percent of the vote at the elections in December 1937, coming third behind the National Liberal Party (35.9%) and the Peasants’ Party (20.4%). At this point in 1938 the factionalized and fractured state of democratic politics and the widespread resort to violence from many sides, especially the Iron Guard, encouraged the constitutional monarch, King Carol, to intervene with a coup d’etat which rendered him dictator. Carol is described as having played “a very similar populist card as Cordeanu during a period of political and social instability [in order] to rally support for his personal authority” (Bucur 2007: 100-01). In the event his dictatorship did not last long because the onset of World War II in 1940 and foreign pressures altered the political scales in Romania in ways that are too complex and/or irrelevant for our comparative reflections.

The Romanian tale between the two World Wars can be supplemented by the events that unfolded in Italy and Germany between 1918 and the early 1930s. The rise of Mussolini and Hitler, as we know, was facilitated by the parliamentary process of elections in their respective countries. The vote and a parliamentary base provided their respective parties with the platform to seize power. While there must surely have been differences in the factors aiding the advances towards dictatorship in both countries, the critical point here is that the democratic process enabled both these fascist parties to muster popular support and thereafter legitimize their authoritarian regimes with a plebiscitarian hue that was not wholly dissimilar to the world’s first “popular dictatorship,” namely, that established by Napoleon Buonaparte.

Sri Lanka: 1956-2012

The establishment of universal suffrage in 1931 as Sri Lanka moved towards political independence encouraged political activists to cultivate popular appeal through vote banks, patronage and rhetoric. After independence was secured by DS Senanayake and his aides in 1948 through a pragmatic course that utilized the geo-political context, the UNP grouping which he had founded as an elite-led cross-ethnic coalition was challenged in the mid-1950s by the Mahajana Eksat Peramuna, another coalition fostering two major political currents: (a) the force of cultural nationalism centered upon the Sinhala language, indigenous imagery and Buddhism; and (b) the grievances and demands of the underprivileged directed against the privileged classes.[ii]

The demands of the have-nots were bolstered by powerful socialist and Left currents of thought that had their roots in the Marxist parties that had taken shape in the island from the 1930s. Their vociferous attacks blended neatly with the nativist disparagement of the privileged as a Westernized and de-nationalized body of people. The MEP slogan of “Sinhala Only” therefore distilled both currents of thinking and promised avenues of advancement to both the Sinhala-speaking have-nots and those aligned with the coalition.

In the event the MEP led by an elitist Oxford educated aristocrat, SWRD Bandaranaike, swept to power through a momentous triumph at the general elections of 1956, completely out-muscling the right-wing UNP in a landslide victory. For this reason one can speak of the “1956 revolution” and the “1956 ideology.” A central dimension in this movement was the rhetorical emphasis on the duppath podhu janathā, namely, “the poor [suffering] people,” – a slogan that reverberated throughout politics in subsequent decades and also promoted the emergence of the Janatā Eksat Peramuna (see below).

A sub-theme in the political rhetoric of the 1940s and 1950s was the attack on the “kachchery system” and the administrative order established by the British with the Ceylon Civil Service at its apex. The campaign depicted the system as “feudal” and “colonial.” The Leftist and nativist/nationalist hues sustaining this drive should not obscure the fact that this pressure was a power-grab. The political spokesmen were targeting the separation of powers installed by the British in what was in effect a major political shift. What one see from 1956 is a gradual process by which the administrative services were taken over and subordinated by the parliamentarians and politicians (paving the way eventually for encroachments on the judiciary in more recent decades).

Marxist dogma was a central force in this process. When I interviewed Colvin R. de Silva in the late 1960s,[iii] he insisted in typical lucid vigour that the United Left Front required executive heads of departments who were in sympathy with their socialist programmes. In brief, democratic centralism must prevail in the firmament. So it came to pass: this process `was set in train when the ULF came to power in 1970. This turn in politics was then taken further with a twist of its own when JR Jayewardene established the de Gaullist constitutional order of 1978 with some assistance from scholars like AJ Wilson.

The “1956 revolution” was a triumph for the SLFP party led by the Bandaranaikes and the forces of linguistic nationalism in ways that have been deeply etched into the subsequent politics of confrontation. The alienation of the Tamil peoples which it encouraged was further entrenched (1) because the principal other contender for parliamentary power, the UNP, also adopted the linguistic and cultural slogans of 1956; and (2) because the Trotskyist parties abandoned their principled demand for parity of status for both languages and joined the SLFP in the coalition known as the United Left Front (ULF) in 1964.

So, the ingredients were in place for the Tamil political activists of most shades to become disenchanted with the idea of federalism and to move towards a demand for a separate state. The Republican Constitution installed by the ULF in 1972 was the final nail in this trend. The principal Tamil party, the TULF, adopted secession as their goal through the Vaddukoddai Resolution in May 1976.

There was a parallel development in the 1960s to 1980s that has had a significant influence on today’s politics. This was the emergence of the JVP in the Sinhala-speaking regions. The insurrectionary JVP of the period 1967-71 was almost composed of youth in the age bracket 15-30. In this first phase the JVP was a fusion of two ideological legacies: they were both the children of the Old Left and the children of 1956. Directed by the limited avenues of economic advancement for those educated only in Sinhala within a decrepit economy, they absorbed Naxalite-Maoist-and Latin American revolutionary theories as a path to a seizure of power.

The abject failure of their boy’s own adventure in revolutionary action in 1971 did not deter their hard core members. After 1971 those that survived their failed take-over honed their discipline in jail. When fortuitous circumstances led to their release in 1977 some elements regrouped. Further political transformations, notably the emergence of Tamil separatism under the LTTE and then the intervention of India through its imposition of the IPKF in mid-1987, provided the reformed JVP with the opportunity to mount a campaign in defence of national sovereignty. Their second insurrection of 1987-90 was in effect a civil war in the south, involving unbridled ferocity on both sides.

Though socialist ideas informed JVP motivations within this phase, the 1956 ideology of linguistic nationalism and indigenist currents of thought, gilded with Xenophobia, dominated this campaign in the late 1980s. Note, too that the last quarter of the twentieth century was featured by an intellectual currents identified as Jātika Chintanaya. Articulated by such advocates as Gunadasa Amarasekera and Nalin de Silva the Jātika Chintanaya sentiments were also threaded by a form of indigenist populism.

Subsequently, after the second JVP insurrection was had been crushed by brute force in 1989-90 and a revamped JVP emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s as a parliamentary party, the new JVP was not that different from the Jātika Chintanaya. In the 2000s, however, the SLFP itself was re-invented in the mantle of 1956 once the Rajapaksa clan displaced Chandrika Kumaratunga (nee Bandaranaike) at its masthead. The stance adopted by Mahinda Rajapaksa was directed towards the rural folk and was explicitly anti-elitist in rhetoric [as distinct from practice]. In dressing itself under the banner of “Mahinda Chintanaya,” it effectively stole the sarong and vest from the JVP even as the two allied together in the 2005 parliamentary elections in order to trump the rejuvenated UNP.

Having secured this ‘democratic’ victory, the Rajapaksa regime split the JVP by its offer of spoils to some leading lights within that party. It also embraced the small party known as the Jātika Hela Urumaya, which is widely regarded as an ultra-nationalist organisation directed by Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism. In effect, the new SLFP of the Rajapakses became the dominant expression of Sinhala heritage and power in Sri Lanka’s political firmament, a force that is often depicted by radical and moderate commentators as “Sinhala supremacist.”[iv]

The Rajapaksa brothers were a key element in the combination of forces that engineered the comprehensive defeat of the LTTE as a military force in the island by May 2009. This momentous change has been a major benefit to most people in the land and therefore contributed immensely to the prestige and authority of Mahinda Rajapaksa. His roots in the south east encouraged local people, including sycophants, to see him as modern day Dutugemunu and to clothe him with the honorifics bestowed on famous Sinhala kings in the past. Moreover, political rhetoric these days is regularly threaded by a reiteration of extreme Sinhala nationalist positions, spiced with the occasional strain of Xenophobia and the bashing of some Western state(s) and/or NGO’s.

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s emergence to supreme power in the recent past was accompanied by a considered distancing from the elites of Colombo. His appeal has been to the rural bourgeoisie and underprivileged. The successful expansion of the Rajapaksa-led SLFP’s clout by patronage and electoral process was confirmed in his clear victory over Sarath Fonseka at the Presidential Election of January 2010 and then consolidated at the parliamentary elections of April 2010. Note that it is a standard practice within Sri Lanka’s political dispensation for a ruling party to call the presidential elections before those for parliament. The presidential executive can tilt the parliamentary process.

Returning recently to his village Happawana-Harumalgoda after a life in exile, the radical Dayapala Thiranagama noted its transformations since he was child in the 1960s: “it no longer bears the hallmark of destitution and abject poverty” and it “will continue to change at increasing speed.” But this is a footnote to his verdict that “President Rajapaksa enjoys a solid political support among the Sinhalese rural masses, which hitherto no other political leader has been able to command” (Thiranagama 2012). Coming from a Left radical whose article also conveys reservations about the anti-democratic trends in contemporary politics, this is a significant pointer to the character of “the Rajapaksa regime” (a considered phrase that I have deployed elsewhere as well #8212; note Roberts 2009).

What, then, one sees in Sri Lanka is the development of “populist authoritarianism” built upon Sinhalese nationalism and a rural-cum-rurban vote within a context where the Sinhalese have constituted some 69-80 per cent of the population over the last fifty years. Since virtually every political party in Sri Lanka has been oligarchic in its internal structures and favours a top-down mode of operation, sometimes augmented by dynastic threads and the Marxist concept of “democratic centralism,” the overall tendency in Sri Lanka’s politics has been towards the periodic creation of “populist authoritarianism.”

Picture from Colombo Telegraph

Picture from BBC

The authoritarian character of the present Sri Lankan state is also supported by the 1978 constitution as consolidated by subsequent amendments and the subservience of both the judiciary and the leading administrators. Those aspects of political behaviour and those symbolic images that I have called “the Asokan Persona” contribute to this process. They point not only to the overconcentration of power, but also raise the spectre of a further shift towards a dictatorship. Recall my opening comparisons: populist authoritarianism is sometimes described as a form of “plebiscitarian dictatorship” because of its Bonapartist motifs and its mass appeal, mass support that is sometimes confirmed by referendums. So, the issue arises: are we in danger of sliding in this direction under the impulses of the Rakjapaksas and the forces they have assembled?

This danger is not only accentuated by the 1978 constitutional structure and its subsequent amendments, but also by the censorship and intimidation of the press that occurred during Eelam War IV in 2006-09. This period saw regular disappearances and assaults on several press personnel, a few killings (notably that of Lasantha Wickrematunga) and pressures which forced others to leave the country (JDS 2009; Kurukulasuriya 2010). The overarching fears are captured in the metaphor “the white van phenomenon.” This force encouraged some measures of self-censorship and caution in the reportage of the independent media. Though disappearances have abated in some measure since mid-2009, the overarching fears and constraints, and acts of censorship, still continue. Middle-class personnel have even advised me to be cautious in my journeys and writings in Sri Lanka. It would not be amiss to talk of “threads of fear and caution.”

So, what are the prospects of a Rajapaksa dictatorship eventuating and what restraints remain? Apart from Sri Lanka’s geo-political situation in the Indian Ocean space dominated by Big Brother India and the overarching moral pressure of the cumulus clouds we call “the West”, what are the internal restraints?

As hypothetical surmise, I mark three major factors that would restrain such a development. The first is the character of populism in Sri Lanka as it has taken root in the Rajapaksa walauwa and its corridors. President Rajapaksa believes in his popularity and the popularity of the Rajapaksa dynasty. He desires to sustain it and pass it down the lineage as a legacy. This means that it has to be periodically affirmed through general elections. Therefore familial subjectivity and family interests will influence the future.

In this future such a subjective inclination will mesh with the inclinations of the Sri Lankan people. In contrast with the neophyte democracy of Romania in the 1930s, Sri Lanka has ‘enjoyed’ universal suffrage and elections for 80 years. General elections are an institution and deeply entrenched as an expectation among the generality of people. Any breach of this practice will jeopardise the perpetuation of the populist/popular character of the Rajapaksa lineage.

General elections and Sri Lanka’s version of democracy have also institutionalized a multi-party system. However weak the opposition parties, and however oligarchic/dictatorial their internal organisation, they exist as entities. Their presence provides a source of resistance to any dictatorial take-over. True, the Rajapaksas have successfully incorporated many former opponents into their regime through patronage, spoils and largesse in ways that have created a sprawling government establishment. But there are limits to populist authoritarianism through such patronage. In helping A to get a coveted post, one can alienate B who anticipated that very post. Dissatisfied clients gravitate to the opposition parties; or they await the opportunity to do so. The vast patronage system can leak like a sieve when the popular tide turns

What all this means, therefore, is that Sri Lanka is presently burdened with a form of populist authoritarianism that is necessarily short-term, one that has to calculate how to reproduce itself at the next general elections. This tendency in its turn generates its own problems and can cater to the expression of Sinhala majoritarianism within a context created by island’s demographic composition and its distribution in space (Roberts 1978). We are hung in the cleft between Scylla and Charybdis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brass, Tom 1990 “Peasant Essentialism and the Agrarian Question in the Colombian Andes,” Journal of Peasant Studies 17/3: 44-56.

Bucur, Mario 2007 Carol II of Rumania,” in Fischer, Bernd (ed.) Balkan Strongmen, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, pp. 87-119.

De Silva, K. M. 1996 Reaping the Whirlwind, Penguin.

Dewaraja, Lorna 1972 The Kandyan Kingdom of of Ceylon, 1707-1760, Colombo, Lake House Investments, Ltd.

Ionescu, Ghita 1969 “Eastern Europe,” in G. Ionescu amp; E. Gellner (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 97-121.

Iordachi, Constantin (ed.) 2009 Comparative Fascist Studies. New Perspectives, London: Routledge.

Journalists for Democracy 2009 “Sri Lanka: Thirty-four journalists amp; media workers killed during present government rule,” http://www.jdslanka.org/2009/08/sri-lanka-thirty-four-journalists-media.html.

Jupp, James 1978 Sri Lanka — Third World Democracy, Frank Cass and Company, Limited, London.

Knox, Robert 1911 An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon, ed. By J. Ryan, Glasgow, Maclehose and Sons.

Kurukulasuriya, Uvindu 2010 “I finally boarded the plane,” 2 April 2010, http://www.fojo.se/international/freedom-of-expression-around-the-world/uvindu-from-sri-lanka.

Obeyesekere, Gananath 1966 ‘The Buddhist Pantheon and its Extensions,” in M. Nash (ed.) Anthropological Studies in Theravada Buddhism, New Haven, Yale University Southeast Asian Series.

Pieris, Ralph 1956 Sinhalese Social Organisation, Colombo, University of Ceylon Press.

Stewart, Angus 1969 “The Social Roots,” in G. Ionescu amp; E. Gellner (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 180-96.

Roberts, Michael 1978 “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation,” Modern Asian Studies, 12: 353-76 [reprinted in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, 1994].

Roberts, Michael 1984 #8221; #8216;Caste Feudalism#8217; in Sri Lanka?  A Critique through the Asokan

Persona and European Contrasts#8221;, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 18: 189-217 [reprinted

in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, pp. 73-88].

Roberts, Michael 1994 Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Roberts, Michael 1994b “The Asokan Persona as a Cultural Disposition,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp. 57-72.

Roberts, Michael 1994c, “The Asokan Persona and its Reproduction in Modern Times,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp. 73-88.

Roberts, Michael 1994d “Four Twentieth Century Texts and the Asokan Persona,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp. 57-72.

Roberts, Michael 1994f “The 1956 Generations: After and Before,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp. 297-314.

Roberts, Michael 2004 Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, 1590s to 1815, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications.

Roberts, Michael 2009 “The Rajapaksa Regime and the Fourth Estate,” 9 December 2009, http://www.groundviews.org/2009/12/08/the-rajapakse-regime-and-the-fourth-estate/

Roberts, Michael 2010a “Hitler, Nationalism and Sacrifice: Koenigsberg and Beyond… towards the Tamil Tigers,” 19 March 2010, in http://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/

Thiranagama, Dayapala 2012 “Ending the Exile and Back to Roots: Fears, Challenges and Hopes,” 2 January 2012, http://groundviews.org/2012/01/02/ending-the-exile-and-back-to-roots-fears-challenges-and-hopes/.

Walicki, Andrzej 1969 “Russia,” in G. Ionescu amp; E. Gellner (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 166-709.

Wiles, Peter, 1969 “A Syndrome not a Doctrine: Some ElementaryTtheses on Populism,” in G. Ionescu amp; E. Gellner (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 166-709.

Worsley, Peter 1969 ‘The Concept of Populism,” in G. Ionescu amp; E. Gellner (eds.) Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 212-50.

• Interview with Michael Roberts



• What’s wrong with Michael Roberts’ enthusiasm for a “knock-out blow?”



• Fire and Storm: Essays in Sri Lankan Politics by Michael Roberts commends citizen journalism during war



• CHALLENGES TODAY: WEEVILS IN THE MIND



• The LTTE – A Spent Force?

As Rooney Mara playing Lisbeth Salander in ‘Millennium’ says by way of greeting, “hey hey!” Let’s see what we have here. Having accused me of “idealisation of the current government of Sri Lanka” and in response to my challenge to come up with any evidence, MCC’s devastating riposte is that “By idealisation I mean Dr Jayatilleka’s exalting of President Rajapaksa above the normal run of Sri Lankan politicians.”  So, that’s MCC’s definition of idealisation. Now I just don’t have the time to ask him for examples of ‘exalting’ because he is bound to repeat the exercise.  His evidence encompasses the title of an article by me, and the accompanying photograph. MCC obviously has the strangest idea of how the media work. I couldn’t have cared less if my article had been illustrated by an Andy Warhol print, a Calvin cartoon or a photograph of Amy Winehouse. That choice is made by the editor or one of the editors. As for the title of my article, MCC’s theoretical literacy does not obviously extend to the category of ‘moment’, in contradistinction to a more durable and protracted slice of history such as stage or phase. A ‘moment’ is conjunctural, and the echo was of the ‘uni-polar moment’ in post-cold war world politics, which proved to be just that, a moment, and not a long, durable stage of history. Such is the nature of ‘exaltation’ in MCC’s lexicon.

What I have said of Mahinda Rajapaksa is no more or less than this. He inherited a serious challenge that he did not create. It was the main challenge to the Sri Lankan state and its citizenry taken as a whole. Several previous leaders, strong personalities all had failed to overcome that challenge. Mahinda Rajapksa did. In respect of the most serious challenge—of defeating a formidable terrorist army, restoring territorial unity and integrity and national sovereignty – that puts him ahead of JR Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa, DB Wijetunga, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe. That does not put him ahead of any of them in any other respect. Now if this is ‘idealisation’ or ‘exaltation’, all of us university teachers do it every time we grade a student higher than the others in the class, in one or another subject.

What I have also said is that when a leader wins a protracted war against a hated enemy, is felt to have liberated the great multitude of people from the threat of weekly terror bombings, and has reunified the territory of a country and a state, he or she dominates the political history of that country for a period.  Sri Lanka still inhabits that slice of historical time. Whether that time will be long or short depends on whether the masses of people perceive that some variant of the threat remains or a new yet similar one has appeared; whether it is the pre-eminent concern; and crucially, whether the existing leadership is the best of the actually available choices to deal with it. The arc of the ‘Mahinda moment’, defined as the moment of Mahinda’s hegemony, is past its asymptote or zenith, but has far from hit the ground and flat-lined.

The passage that MCC flourishes with a triumphant air, as would a conjurer who has pulled a rabbit out of a hat, is clear in its intent, which is transparently not that which MCC attributes to it. If anything it has manifestly the opposite intent since it warns of pressures “resulting in a more hawkish, less flexible, less intuitively smart, more brittle and therefore more vulnerable Sri Lankan state.”   Plainly, I refer here to neoconservative or radical Rightwing pressures, including those emanating from the ‘deep state’.  I see nothing in such a warning that is contrary to a left perspective. Currently we see that several caucuses are openly critical of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s re-stated commitment to 13^th amendment plus. Whatever one thinks of that reported reiteration, it is more significant that there is criticism of it from the radical Right and the social chauvinist Left.

What I have gone on to suggest is that from a political analyst’s perspective, it is exceedingly unlikely that Mahinda can be superseded, and from a Left or progressive perspective, it is undesirable that Mahinda be superseded, by any project or personality who would roll back the positive achievements of Mahinda Rajapaksa, which are those associated with the classic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. To illustrate: I do not think that Vladimir Putin could or should be replaced by a project that would take Russia back to the Yelstin era, which is where imperialism wants it to go. I would prefer a coalition between Putin and Zyuganov’s Communists, and/or an eventual electoral succession by that Communist party, but certainly not by the pro-western liberals.

In short, it is my understanding of the left and progressive project in the post Cold war era, that a strong state is necessary and worthy of defence as is a strong reassertion of state sovereignty. This alone is not enough, and in many places it is not even the primary task, but it is an essential factor and condition. It must be fused with a pro-people socioeconomic programme and advanced forms of democratic representation and participation. Concretely, my understanding of a progressive model, a model for the Left, is Lula’s Brazil. However, in many cases, such a ‘new social democracy’ is unfortunately not an option or not yet one. Sri Lanka is one such place. In cases such as this, a ‘national-popular’ option, or a close nationalist–populist approximation, with a commitment to a strong state and state sovereignty, is as good as it gets, and that which any leftist must support, though far from unconditionally or uncritically, and often on an issue-by-issue basis.

MCC says that “Dr Jayatilleka’s support of the Rajapaksa government is not selective; it is touchingly uncritical”. He contradicts himself in a plain, simple and quite un-dialectical fashion when he precedes that with “in fairness I must say he is kinder to the son of his former political patron Premadasa” and quotes me as writing that “Today President Rajapaksa is the best representative of National Democracy and the UNP reformists identified with young Premadasa, the best bet for (pluralist) Social democracy.” Now, given that the government has tilted explicitly against Mr Premadasa’s Reformist faction and in favour of Mr Wickremesinghe who MCC correctly identifies as “part of the status quo”, an ‘uncritical’ support of the government on my part could not possibly be compatible with a long standing and quite public critique of Mr Wickremesinghe and equally undisguised support for young Mr Premadasa.  This stance, taken together with my open support of provincial level devolution, comprises precisely a stance of selective support.

MCC says that “The most important issue, and one on which the good doctor is silent, is how to best harvest the peace dividend. The government and its charismatic President should use the euphoria of victory to enlarge the democratic space instead of closing it.” He (Michael, that is, not Mahinda) should read GV more. That is precisely that which I have argued in this and other forums. The rest of what MCC suggests I should do is already done by opposition parties of the right and Left. My main focus at the moment is the struggle to protect Sri Lanka’s sovereignty as that of other states of the global South, and to fight for a multi-polar world. As for his long digression on Serbia and Kosovo, he will forgive me if I prefer Fidel’s unambiguous interpretation over his, as exemplifying the correct Left reading.

“The heart of Dr Jayatilleka’s polemic concerns the alignment of Lanka with the countries he deems anti-imperialist” writes MCC. The countries I “deem anti-imperialist”? C’mon Michel, how else would you deem, or suggest I deem, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Uruguay, Bolivia and Iran?

MCC also gets things a little confused. I did lecture by invitation every year round, at the joint training programme of Sri Lankan and US Special Forces, but these were in Sri Lanka #8212; never the USA #8212; with my host, the iconic special operations warrior and gentlemen-soldier, Gen Gamini Hettiaarachchi, insisting on sending Commandos of the VIP protection group to escort me, to my mild embarrassment, because, in his words, “we have our own assessment of the LTTE’s assessment of you”.  Now MCC thinks that this somehow does not befit someone who considers himself on the left, but my strong settled conviction – and I was hardly alone in this internationally#8211; of the LTTE as a fascist force, dictated the broadest possible cross-class, cross-ideological alliance of forces, local, regional and global, to defeat the main enemy and resolve the principal contradiction. (This rested on my reading of Dmitrov, Togliatti, Mao and Ho).

I note that MCC uses the term radical within inverted commas, when he refers to Cuba. If Cuba’s is not a radical regime, whose is? If Cuba isn’t radical enough for MCC, what about the other, newer radical regimes of the ALBA group in Latin America, all of which support Sri Lanka in its defence of its sovereignty? If Fidel and Raul Castro, Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa are not radical in MCC’s book, who is, apart from Lionel Bopage?

MCC then goes on to an exposition of economics. My point is that these anti-imperialist states support Sri Lanka because they rightly privilege the defence of national/state sovereignty, territorial unity and integrity, deriving both from their political ideologies and projects (which they are well aware, are not the same as Mahinda Rajapaksa’s) as well as their reading of the post-Cold war world. They take sovereignty seriously, resist notions of ‘humanitarian interventionism’ and formulae of ‘international inquiry mechanisms’, and strive for a multi-polar world.  Their authentic leftism takes politics and the political resistance to imperialist hegemony seriously, while MCC’s vulgar ‘economistic’ deviation is pre-Gramscian, pre-Leninist and fits snugly into the category that Lenin termed ‘imperialist economism’.

I support Mahinda Rajapaksa for the same reason and to the same extent that these regimes do and I urge all progressives in Sri Lanka to do so too, while not implying for a moment that such support should not be supplemented or even superseded by trenchant criticism from a more advanced standpoint#8211; hence my advocacy of a social democratic alternative with a national democratic dimension.

MCC exclaims that “Lanka’s proper title is: The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, but very clearly its economy is capitalist and its parliamentary system bourgeois”. Yeah, so, this is news? Who contested that? Have I ever made a claim that it was something other or more than that? Is Brazil’s economy other than capitalist? The progressive objective today should be to transform Sri Lanka’s economy into one more closely resembling Brazil’s social democratic capitalism, and I remain proud that I was part of a project which antedated and anticipated Lula’s, to achieve this—that of President Premadasa, martyred by the fascist Tigers. That achievement proved ephemeral, and the episodic character of the Premadasa experiment demonstrated that any real social advance in Sri Lanka required as prerequisite the decisive defeat of the LTTE. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s achievement was a necessary but insufficient condition for building a multiethnic nation at peace with itself. His achievement can be surpassed only by a project that is a synthesis between that which is positive in what he has achieved by way of national unification, and that which he has not and probably cannot.

MCC’s finale is touching indeed.  He cautions that “Dr Jayatilleka would do well to remember that his idealisation of his paymaster compromises his ambition to be an independent public commentator and intellectual. His many articles and comments in Groundviews show his position all too clearly: he is visibly damned by his history.”  Oh, no, we’re back to “idealisation”. His words of wisdom are a trifle ill-timed anyway. I have just been sent a fascinating theoretical essay by Colin Wright, entitled ‘The violence of the new: Badiou’s subtractive destruction and Gandhi’s Satyagraha’, published in the journal Subjectivity Vol 4, 1 (2011, Palgrave journals, Macmillan). The essay includes a passage on my work and lists at the end of the text the following authors as references: Agamben, Badiou, Balibar, Fanon, Feltham, Gandhi, Godard, Hallward, Jayatilleka, Lenin, May, Sartre, Weber, Wright, Zizek. And that’s the full list.

So it looks like my intellectual ‘ambitions’, such as they are, are doing ok for now. As for ‘history’, I don’t claim to be clairvoyant as does MCC, so it perfectly possible that history will treat someone who wrote a book on Fidel Castro, reviewed in Radical Philosophy as in the journal of the Royal Institute of international Affairs (Chatham House), far less kindly than one who wrote a book on Lionel Bopage. Oh by the way, the Bibliography on Ethics of the US Army War College also lists my book on Fidel. All seasons, eh, Michael?

• Once more into the breach



• Defending Sri Lanka: Response to Michael Colin Cooke



• Marking The Mahinda Moment In Lankan Politics



• PRABAKARAN MUST BE LAUGHING



• HAS MAHINDA RAJAPAKSA BEEN A TRAITOR TO SRI LANKA?

“The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.”

Milan Kundera[1]

“…. Some [intellectuals] served as spokesmen for power or for a constituency, trimming their beliefs and pronouncements to circumstances and interest: what Edward Said once called “the fawning elasticity with regard to one’s own side’ has indeed “disfigured the history of intellectuals.”

Tony Judt.[2]

His Excellency Dr Dayan Jayatilleka has been good enough to respond to my critique of his position with regard to the merits of the current government of Sri Lanka.[3] Let me first deal with his view of my original comments on his intellectual and political practices; then I will go to the heart of his response.[4]

Readers of Groundviews know, better than most, Dr Jayatilleka’s fondness for name-dropping. Famous names in themselves are harmless; it all depends on the use or misuse one makes of them. Therein lies the rub and my title: A Man for all political seasons.

He says:

“MCC accuses me of “idealisation of the current government of Sri Lanka”. That’s plain silly, and he would find it impossible to back it up with a single quotation or example, while none of those he has furnished amount to anything remotely approaching idealisation.”

He adds that he defends the elected government of Lanka and its leadership selectively and hardly uncritically. (Groundviews, January 16, 2012)

By idealisation I mean Dr Jayatilleka’s exalting of President Rajapaksa above the normal run of Sri Lankan politicians.  Let’s look carefully at Dr Jayatilleka’s polemic Marking the Mahindra Moment in Lankan Politics (Groundviews, September 11, 2011). The title itself is epic; the picture attached shows the President at his most handsome and commanding. An image reinforced by emphasis on the following facts: Sri Lanka is a competitive democracy (true), and the President currently has a 90 per cent rating approval (true).  Yet, interestingly, no analysis is made of this in the light of the country’s past experiences of initial euphoria and subsequent disillusionment with other charismatic rulers. Critics of the regime are dismissed, being out of touch with the people and (inevitably) lackeys of the West. Why? According to Dr Jayatilleka, during the period of Wickramasinghe’s ‘appeasement’ of the West and the Tigers, “Mahinda proved lucid, balanced and in touch with the people’s accurate perception of the enemy.” (Groundviews, September 11, 2011)

These patriotic qualities are just as important in post-war Lanka:

“Any attempt to contain divert, pressure, outflank or exceed President Rajapaksa’s quintessential if protean centrism, would be socially suffocating, choking the pores of free expression, resulting in a more hawkish, less flexible, less intuitively smart, more brittle and therefore more vulnerable Sri Lankan state.” (Groundviews, September 11, 2011)

Dr Jayatilleka goes on to say that not only is President Rajapaksa a steadfast, patriotic ruler, he might be the best person to construct a more liberal and democratic Sri Lanka, because “after all, what is a more liberal and social democratic Mahinda Rajapaksa than the fusion of Mahinda Rajapaksa as President and Mahinda Rajapaksa as youthful, dissenting, rather rebellious left-of-centre Parliamentarian, in government and Opposition, backbench and cabinet, in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s.” (Groundviews, September 11, 2011)

Reading this, the word protean (also used by Dr Jayatilleka) comes to mind: “Of pertaining to, or characteristic of the sea-god Proteus of classical mythology; taking or existing in many forms, changing and variable”.[5] Protean centrism (a concept favoured by Dr Jayatilleka) means that the political centre is wherever the President wishes to take the country #8211; praise not bestowed on critics of the President or other political parties and figures in Lanka, be they of the right, left or centre. In fairness I must say he is kinder to the son of his former political patron Premadasa:

“Today President Rajapaksa is the best representative of National Democracy and the UNP reformists identified with young Premadasa, the best bet for (pluralist) Social democracy”.[6]

Dr Jayatilleka’s support of the Rajapaksa government is not selective; it is touchingly uncritical.

His summary of the threats to the nation state might be as follows:

(a)   Diaspora and Tamil Nadu based pro-Tiger secessionism and external hegemonic interventionism and (b) Ranil Wickremasinghe and his UNP as the domestic political alternative. (Groundviews, January 16, 2012)

The reality is the LTTE as a military force is finished and its support base is in tatters. Ranil Wickremasinghe is neither a traitor nor even a mild threat to national security; he is part of the status quo. Western pressure was in the form of words, not actions. One cannot compare this to the pressure placed on Iran.

Criticism of government policy is something a democratic government should be able to deal with – part of its very essence. The most important issue, and one on which the good doctor is silent, is how to best harvest the peace dividend. The government and its charismatic President should use the euphoria of victory to enlarge the democratic space instead of closing it.

Why does Dr Jayatilleka not criticise his patron for removing the Presidential limit of two terms (the 18^th amendment)? The President himself, not an independent commission, will oversee the running of elections. The executive powers of the President, already considerable, have now been expanded to the selection of the judiciary and officers of the armed forces. The vital oversight committees for the allocation and spending of public monies were usually under the chairmanship of the opposition parties. They are now under the control of ministers appointed by the President. All this undermines the checks and balances affecting the executive arm of government, the judiciary, the state bureaucracy and the armed forces.[7] Choking not enlarging the very #8211; ‘pores of free expressions’.

One must reject simplistic binary notions on national liberation struggles versus a nation state. Life and politics are complex. One cannot equate the homicidal quasi-Maoist Shining Path with the struggle of the FRETILIN against the Indonesian army. One can condemn (as I did) the wanton bombing of Serbia by NATO in 1999, yet not dismiss Noel Malcolm’s research on the rights of the people of Kosovo.

Research that showed the history for the Serbs started in the seventh century, when they settled in the Balkans. They only conquered (not settled in) Kosovo in the 13^th century. They ruled Kosovo for 250 years, until it became part of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-15^th century. So there is no more continuity between Byzantium Greece and modern Greece as there was between a medieval Serbian state and today’s Serbia. The Serbs reconquered it in 1912. When they did, the Serb population in Kosovo was less than 25 per cent. Kosovo was incorporated (i.e. not conquered) by the Yugoslav state. Till the breakup of that Yugoslav state it was not only a part of Serbia but also a part of the federation of Yugoslavia. It had its own parliament and government and was represented by at the federal level not by Serbia, but by its elected representatives.[8]

This is not nonsense but historical facts. Serbia and Croatia deliberately started to break up the Yugoslav state; it encouraged separatists in Bosnia breaking down Bosnia’s rich multi-cultural heritage. The barbarity of the Serbian proxies in the siege of Sarajevo was unspeakable. Their atrocities and Western reluctance to stop them in Srebrenica is now on the public record and to deny it is sheer political mendacity. The killing of thousands of men and the forcible movement of tens of thousands of women and children from their homes (many of the women were raped multiple times) are no longer creditable allegations, they have been proven. Are we going to deny the women whose husbands and sons were killed, their day in court? Instead of dismissing this it should be acknowledged and criticised. What needs to be also made clearer and prosecuted is the role of Western forces in the massacre. As I have said these examples resonate but not in the way Dr Jayatilleka wants them to.

The heart of Dr Jayatilleka’s polemic concerns the alignment of Lanka with the countries he deems anti-imperialist. They have formed a block against the liberal forces from the West who want nation states to have negotiated settlements with minorities in their midst. Lanka under the leadership of Rajapaksa rejected this approach. The diplomats of Lanka foiled attempts at any censure in the UN of the conduct of the war. This was done with the support of anti-imperialist countries. Lanka and Russia helped by other member states of the UN, successfully deflected human rights concerns expressed about Chechnya and Lanka. Dr Jayatilleka played a prominent role in this, and even cites a critic, David Lewis,[9] who it seems supports Dr Jayatilleka’s contention as to the real choices that prevailed when he supported Rajapaksa. (Groundviews, January 16, 2011)

What does Lewis actually say? He sees the peace process as flawed from the outset. Key sections of the Lankan elite were hostile to it. There was no consensus amongst the political elite for the peace agreement. Once Ranil Wickremsinghe lost power in 2004, the support for the peace process began to fade. And fortune was on the side of Lankan government: the rise of China in the region, along with that of powers like Brazil and Russia, who were economic and political competitors with the Western powers. They also had restive minorities and were more inclined, therefore, to support the Lankan state. And post 2001 it was easy to use Western rhetoric on the war on terror to gain logistic, financial and political support.

I would emphasise that the Lankan state’s best recruiting tool was the LTTE and its autocratic leader, the late Velupillai Pirapaharan. The LTTE suppressed political pluralism and freedom of expression. If Eelam were achieved it would be plausible to assume that it would be an oppressive one-party state. The Lankan state could with equal plausibility make the claim that they were fighting a terrorist group. (Lewis, 644-655). Lewis fails to mention that the Lankan military and the LTTE both paid only lip service to the peace process and violated its tenets many times. During the peace process, the Lankan military, with the help of its Western and ‘anti-imperialist’ backers built up a formidable fighting force of around 100,000 men who were fully equipped and had the logistical and tactical support of a modern air force and navy. By 2005 they were ready.

Pirapaharan’s skills as a tactician were on par with those of Lord Cardigan, notorious for ordering the suicidal charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean war. Why else would he and the LTTE have forced the Tamils in the North and many in the east not to vote, thus allowing Rajapaksa to defeat Wickramasinghe by a whisker during the 2005 election? After 25 years of war only a sliver of country was in Pirapaharan’s hands. The Lankan military had surrounded his fiefdom by air, sea and land. He would have lost a lot of his equipment because of the tsunami; compounding this, the eastern forces of the LTTE under Karuna had defected.

For all Jayatilleka’s claims of Lanka being in the anti-imperialist camp and of diplomats like him being active ‘norm entrepreneurs,’ their victory depended on the logistic support provided by the ‘imperialist’ camp. The Americans provided a radar-based maritime surveillance system, electronic surveillance and military intelligence. The radar system was crucial in intercepting and sinking ships that carried military cargo for the LTTE.[10] Israel provided war planes and patrol boats.[11] India and China provided military hardware. Billions of dollars of aid were provided to the Lankan military.

Evidence of this comes from straight from Dr Jayatilleka’s mouth. The good doctor, a diplomat and public intellectual, is also (according to him) an expert on military history and strategy. He has (he tells us) lectured at every military academy in Lanka, and tells us that he was in the belly of the empire at the Special Warfare Centre at Fort Bragg, where for several years running he was a lecturer in the joint training programmes of the US and Sri Lankan Special Forces.

“I have some cherished mementoes and insignias presented on every occasion. Perhaps you should tell it to those of the SAIC in Washington DC where I was one of the 2 invited panellists with one other being a member of the US Joint chiefs of staff, at a session on the evolving strategic landscape of central and south Asia.” (Groundviews, January 28, 2009)[12]

A man truly for all political seasons!

The LTTE’s financial and logistical support was being cut off and it was at this point that Pirapaharan and his advisers decided to fight a conventional war. There was only one possible outcome; it just took a little longer than it should have. It is in this context one should see the decisions made by Rajapaksa.

I have already dealt with the issue of human rights violations committed by both parties to the conflict in my earlier article. Taking 1971, 1977, 1983, 1987-89 and the thirty year civil war, the total is hundreds of thousands of deaths. Recognition of this and reconciliation are priorities. Ignoring this retards the progress of democracy and the economic development of the country (Groundviews, January 16, 2011). At the moment that is not happening, and if long-term strategies are not implemented a situation similar to the Palestinian conflict is likely to result: the permanent presence of troops and sporadic outbreaks of worsening violence (Lewis,. 665).

Dr Jayatilleka refers to my apparent failure to appreciate the fact that world’s “radical” regimes (Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil, China) supported the Lankan state in the war against the LTTE. He concludes, witheringly: “Debating Marxism with such a man is a waste of time”. (Groundviews, January 16, 2011)

The answer, alas, is economic. The reality is that there is only one market, meaning a marriage of imperialist and anti-imperialist interests. Emerging superpowers like China and India are trying to secure key resources, putting them in direct competition with established economies. This fact governs the attitude of China (with its soft loans and strategic investments) to Lanka. And China, India and Brazil are implicitly dependent on the West in their attempt to sell vast amounts of consumer goods, services and resources. In addition, they buy Western technology and economic assets.

Lanka was one of the first countries in the world (after Chile) to open its economy to foreign investment and finance. It did this in 1977. It has been a part of the global circuit of capitalism for well over thirty years. Why, otherwise, would the International Monetary Fund agree to a bailout package of $2.6 billion dollars to Lanka two months after the war had been won? The World Bank (a prime prop of imperialism) released its annual funding of $465 million to Lanka in 2011. It would never finance a truly anti-imperialist government like Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela. Titles of countries and the name of political parties in a lot of instances do not reflect a country’s real economic makeup. Lanka’s proper title is: The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, but very clearly its economy is capitalist and its parliamentary system bourgeois.

I have no desire to debate Marxism here, but I say again that the use of left-wing establishment names is inappropriate in a discussion of Rajapaksa’s political programs and ideology. Dr Jayatilleka would do well to remember that his idealisation of his paymaster compromises his ambition to be an independent public commentator and intellectual. His many articles and comments in Groundviews show his position all too clearly: he is visibly damned by his history. It is time to listen to other voices from multi-cultural Lanka. Voices of tolerance and reconciliation: speaking of justice both social and economic. Lankans who express those views should not be subject to intimidation nor branded as traitors to the nation state. It is time these other voices were heard; then a true dialogue might begin. In doing this we can all defend Lanka not the current elite’s version of it.

• A Man for all political Seasons: Dr Dayan Jayatilleka



• Mahinda, Marxism and Michael



• Poll: Prospects for Peace in Sri Lanka in 2007



• Chandrika Kumaratunga responds to Dayan Jayatilleke#8217;s comment on the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge



• Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Second-Term: A New Beginning?

Photo courtesy JDS

As promised, the Sri Lankan government made the final report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) public last month. It has also recently released its “National Action Plan for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights: 2011-2016.”

The Action Plan was developed in accordance with a commitment the government had made in 2008, the last time Sri Lanka participated in the UN’s Universal Periodic Review.

Both documents are part of the Sri Lankan government’s strategy to placate international observers and convince people that there is no need for any kind of international assistance because the country’s domestic institutions are working just fine. Like the LLRC report, the National Action Plan contains some decent ideas and recommendations, but it is replete with missing and false information. For example, the section on the Prevention of Torture is laughable and worrisome.

The Sri Lankan government claims that it “maintains a zero-tolerance policy on torture.” This sweeping assertion directly contradicts loads of evidence, including the recent findings of the UN’s Committee Against Torture (CAT). The fact that the Ministry of Defense has been denoted as the “Key Responsible Agency” for ensuring the prevention of torture is perhaps more disconcerting.

The front-page story in last week’s Sunday Leader, which explains “that that some 500 people have been reported missing in the North and East alone over the past few years” should give people good reason to worry. The rule of law continues to deteriorate under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s watch. The government will present its National Action Plan at the UN Human Rights Council’s (HRC) 19th session in March.

What Will Happen in Geneva?

In theory, Rajapaksa’s administration has plenty to worry about. Lobbying and debate surrounding the next session of the HRC has already begun.

Many foreign governments recently made strong statements that the LLRC’s final report does not touch on the question of accountability. The Sri Lankan government refuses to look into credible claims that violations of international humanitarian law occurred at the end of the war; government officials are unwilling to go into any detail about what actually happened during the last phase of the conflict.

Strident calls for an international mechanism will be made this spring in Geneva. If no resolution gets through either of the next two sessions of the HRC (another session will be held this summer), then Rajapaksa’s government can probably rest easy as long as they stay in power.

Diplomacy is not always a zero-sum game, but Rajapaksa’s government knows that the final report of the LLRC and the National Action Plan are its two most potent lobbying weapons, as long as government officials continue to bend the truth or promulgate outright lies.

This is ironic because both documents distort reality and should actually be used against the government. They reinforce the notion that Rajapaksa’s administration does not care about human rights.

The processes surrounding the drafting and the finalization of the LLRC and the National Action Plan were deeply flawed and not at all independent. The LLRC’s lack of independence is well-known. (President Rajapaksa appointed the eight-member Commission himself). The true story about the National Action Plan appears to be less widely understood, especially outside of Sri Lanka.

The government’s drafting of the National Action Plan was quite devious. A number of civil society leaders, academics and genuinely independent thinkers were included in the eight-committee body during the initial process and the composition of the first draft of the National Action Plan. Yet committee members were not involved in the process after that.Now, the Sri Lankan government is falsely claiming that the National Action Plan was the result of a thoughtful, inclusive process. This is absurd. As Rohan Edrisinha (a member of one of the drafting committees) has already indicated, that was not what happened. Drafting committee members never did approve the final document, only the first draft.

In another clever ploy, this “watered down” version is being heralded as a step in the right direction. Few people are speaking out about this issue because they are afraid to do so. Rajapaksa’s government has benefited from a fragmented political opposition for years. Divisions within Sri Lankan civil society only make the government’s consolidation of power that much easier. In addition to some lively debate at the Human Rights Council, Sri Lanka’s human rights record will also be examined under the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) this year. The government’s propaganda machine is already in full swing. Sri Lankan diplomats will welcome many foreign dignitaries in January and February.

President Rajapaksa and senior government officials will use these visits as a platform to prepare a more complete misinformation campaign for Geneva in late February and early March. The Sri Lankan government will be touting both the LLRC and the National Action Plan as wonderful examples of how just and satisfactory things are in Sri Lanka.

The idea is farcical.

In January of 2010, the IMF declared Sri Lanka a Middle Income country. The war has been over for more than two years. International observers and NGOs are moving on to the next crisis: Libya, Egypt, Tunisia or elsewhere. A new disaster or humanitarian catastrophe is always right around the corner. Nonetheless, what happened in Sri Lanka in 2009 cannot be brushed aside. One does not sweep ethnic tension under the rug and wait idly by, hoping that it disappears.

Looking Ahead

Again, in spite of the LLRC’s complete exoneration of the military, the report does contain some good recommendations about devolution, land rights, compensation for victims/survivors and demilitarisation. There are some decent thoughts and recommendations in the National Action Plan as well.

However, the chances that the Sri Lankan government will swiftly move to implement any of the solid recommendations are infinitesimal. Rajapaksa’s government has shown its unwillingness to follow through on almost all the agreements it made during the last session of the Universal Periodic Review in 2008. It disregarded the LLRC’s interim recommendations too. The word “recommendation” in Sri Lankan political parlance is meaningless. Why should anyone be optimistic this time around? Forget recommendations, the government continues to ignore its own constitution.

To take one example, President Rajapaksa’s intractable position on the devolution of power to the country’s Northern and Eastern provinces, something that is clearly articulated in the 13th Amendment of the country’s constitution, is not helping. Nor is the government’s current dialogue with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which is starting to look more like a scene from Waiting for Godot and less like any semblance of political negotiation with each passing day.

Why would any rational person take President Rajapaksa’s recent statement about the “full implementation of the 13 Amendment plus” seriously?[1]

Despite some claims to the contrary, Mahinda Rajapaksa is not (yet) Robert Mugabe and Sri Lanka is not Zimbabwe. But this government has undoubtedly become more authoritarian since the end of the war. Just because the country has a history of “democracy” does not mean that continued democratic governance is a foregone conclusion. The erosion of checks and balances since 2009 has been significant. The passage of the 18th Amendment in 2010 reinforced this, as that legislation pulled even more power to the executive.

Some sort of resolution should get through the HRC this year. It might be weak and disappoint many, but it would be better than nothing. If the HRC fails to pass any resolution on Sri Lanka, it would be a humiliating display of fecklessness.

According to the HRC’s website, “The Council was created by the UN General Assembly on 15 March 2006 with the main purpose of addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them.”[2]

Over the past five years, the HRC has proven that is very capable of making recommendations. It is the first part of the HRC’s mission that the body struggles with. Does the HRC actually address “situations of human rights violations” in a meaningful way?

Inaction on Sri Lanka would be a black mark on an institution that already has a dithering problem. It would be an embarrassment. If the HRC cannot crack down on Sri Lanka, when would it ever act? Should replacing the Commission on Human Rights with the HRC still be viewed as an improvement?

Tyranny and inaction may prevail this year in Geneva. If that were to happen, people will be asking many questions. This would be a good first question: What is the purpose of the Human Rights Council? A good second question would be: Are the proceedings of the Human Rights Council a colossal waste of time and money?

Giving Rajapaksa’s government a free pass on human rights empowers aspiring autocrats everywhere. It sends a clear signal to semi-authoritarian governments: Go ahead, do whatever you want; you will face no consequences for your actions.

###

A version of this article was first published in The Journal of Foreign Relations.

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• Waiting for the end of the LLRC



• THE LLRC AND COMPLAINTS OF DISAPPEARANCES OF PERSONS



• LLRC REPORT: REASON, REFORM, ROADMAP



• On the government#8217;s political solution and ‘Southern Suaveness’

Image courtesy Asian Mirror

Basic Questions to Answer

In the late 1970s, a Deputy Commissioner of Examinations was prosecuted for interfering with the results of a son of a Minister and a son of a school principal. He was jailed.  It was possible to  prosecute him because the then Commissioner got wind of this illegal activity and moved for prosecution of this officer. Is this possible now? Can an officer who extends favours to a politician in power be ever prosecuted presently?  This is the question before you and me today.

Let me also raise few other questions.  When credible foreign universities offer places to Sri Lankan students for undergraduate studies, they presume that the Advanced Level results reflect the genuine talent of the student concerned.  What would happen if the main foreign universities have doubts about the credibility of the A/

L examination results issued by the Department of Examinations?  If a list of students is given by a powerful politician to the Department to ensure university entrance, can the Commissioner say “No”?    If a powerful politician indicates to the Department that he/she wants best results from his/her area or his/her past school, can the Commissioner say “No”?

In this article, I share my thoughts on some aspects of the present status of governance and how it has affected the integrity of the Department of Education.

Proud history of Excellence to a Questionable Entity  

In 1952, one year after its establishment, the Department of Examinations had conducted 8 local examinations and 27 foreign examinations. When the Senior School Certificate (SSC – as the GCO Ordinary  Level was then known) was started in 1952, there were 53,000 candidates. The number of subjects offered was 60. The Higher School Certificate (HSC) was started in 1945 and continued until 1963 when the examination became the GCE Advanced Level (#8216;A#8217; level).. At that time only 31,011 candidates sat the examination, as compared presently with something in the region of 300,000.  In 1968, the Examinations Ordinance was enacted authorizing the Department to conduct all public examinations.  This indicates the nature and responsibilities cast on the Department whose integrity and recognition is absolutely vital for the nation and its citizens.

When the Department of Examinations commenced in 1951, its first head was Mr.  L.L.K.  Gunatunga  (1951-59). Recently the 18^th Commissioner took over. Seven of the former Heads of the Department are still among the living.   Until the 17^th Commissioner Anura Edirisinghe assumed office in 2005 as the Commissioner- General of Examinations, this Department had maintained the highest integrity. If at all there were any issues,  they revolved around a few corrupt individuals who were dealt with severely.  With the appointment of Mr. Edirisinghe, the dark period started around 2005 raising many internal issues.  We have witnessed the collapse of integrity of several other public institutions with one single wrong appointment at the top.

Fortunately, the Media (in particular, the alternative media) closely monitored and reported unprecedented scale of  irregularities in the Department since then. Unfortunately the authorities and the public did not take sufficient notice of it or meaningful actions to remedy the situation.

Jayasiri Withana  (Ravaya)  exposed through series of article  an evidential trail of irregularities demonstrating how this department lost its credibility under the leadership of  Mr. Edirisinghe. Let me share with you one instance how credibility of examinations came under serious challenge but no one was held accountable.  The then principal of Rahula College, Kithrisi Liyanagamage challenged the Chemistry results of 2004 A/L results. Previously,  the school had about 40 “ A Grade”  passes but that year it had only  9 “A Grade passes” for the entire Matara district.  Those who analysed the results sensed some irregularity or at least a serious lapse. This led to a teachers#8217; meeting at which Edirisinghe was requested to review the results of 10 of the best students. Edirisinghe reiterated the accuracy of the results and said that if there was any change (even 1%), he would not stay in office.  There was a review of result in the entire district resulting in major changes. The 5A#8217;s of Rahula College became 63  but Edirisinghe  stayed on.  This, however, led to a committee being appointed by the President comprising former Supreme Court Justice Priyantha Perera,  Mr. Gunapala Wickramaratne, a distinguished former commissioner and another  but the report of the committee was never released to the public.  What we heard was that the responsibility had been passed on to the “Optical Mark Reader (OMR) machine”.

Present A/L Fiasco amp; Refusal to Identify Errors

The present A/L saga was perhaps the worst of all. It had distorted the entire results. It should be remembered that there were two syllabuses for A/L last year – let me call #8216;Old Syllabus#8217; and #8216;New Syllabus#8217;. For each subject, there were two different syllabuses, different examination papers, different marking schemes and different structures in every sense.  The Education Sector trade unions were the first to raise the issue of major irregularities in the results. Then the results were not released. When the President directed the Department to issue the results, the Department issued it within One Day.

Let us start with the main THREE ERRORS in the AL results.  When the trade unions and candidates raised issues, the Minister of Higher Education and the   Minister of Education made hilarious explanations.  First it was said that the mistake is only about the district ranking and not about Z-score. But, up to now, no explanation was offered why District Ranking had gone wrong. Then Prof. Raphel O. Thattil, who played a major role in introducing the Z-Score challenged the mode of calculating the Z-score.  Those who are familiar with the mathematical calculation of Z-score are aware that the Z-score is a calculation based on standard normal distribution of certain figures (in this instance, marks) of an identified single population/pool. It may be technically difficult for a person without some mathematical knowledge to understand but it is not difficult to understand that the Z-score for a subject is based only on that subject of one examination of  one syllabus. The Department appears to have taken the Old Syllabus subject and the New Syllabus subject (e.g. old syllabus Chemistry and New Syllabus Chemistry) into the same pool in calculating the Z-Score of that subject.  If a score of average/mean is to be made, such can be mathematically done after calculating the Z-scores separately and then averaging it with an acceptable formula. Instead, what appears to have been done by the Department is to take some unknown method to calculate “combined mean” erroneously.  To me the entire Z-score crisis is this.  When Prof. Thattil and many other mathematicians pointed out this basic error, there was an aggressive humiliation on them in the government media, which is the propaganda machine of the government.

The second error is that results of a subject were not released. Many candidates who offered the Russian language did not get the results. Students at Rahula National School of  Alawwa, known to be among the best in the Arts stream in the country, particularly for languages suffered seriously when their Russian Language marks were not given. Among the students was an outstanding student with 2 “A Grade” passes (German language and Logic). If she had obtained an A Grade with high Z-score, probably the best student in Arts might have come from Alawwa,   and not form the Hambantota District. First the Department said the answer scripts were misplaced and later said they were found. How were they misplaced? Who has found them and how? Besides this, those students had now received (after two weeks) their results without District Ranking and Island Ranking!

The third error is individual-based. For the first time in the history of public examinations in the country, thousands of candidates received distorted results.  Students received results for subjects they have never sat for.  Hundreds of students did not receive full results for their subjects. Private candidates did not receive results for many weeks. The government or the Department of Examinations has failed to tender any explanation to many of those errors occurred in respect of individual results, such as not entering District or All Island Rank, omitting Z-Score, and mixing up of subjects.  The uncertainty and confusion was such that public began to wonder whether the results were completely manipulated or whether the results were handled by an amateur group without any experience in examination work.  Undoubtedly this cannot be a simple computer error.

The correct results are imperative. For the sake of governance, it is also imperative to let the public know how the results were distorted in the most important competitive examination in the country. The biggest error is therefore that failure on the part of the authorities to offer any valid and logical explanation. Probably it will not happened unless the public demand it.

Presidential Committee

From the JR Jayewardene era, we have seen the President appointing a committee whenever a complex issue arose, but whether those committees ever addressed the main issues remains unanswered. Responding to the present A/L examination problem,   President Rajapaksa appointed a Committee headed by a Ministry Secretary, two Vice Chancellors and two others but  did not include a single retired Commissioner of Examinations. A/L results  was an issue where the government was under real challenge; this could have led to a public outcry against the government itself. In other words, the government has a political stake in the issue #8211; very much more than the best interest of the 300,000 candidates.  In such circumstances, any committee appointed should have credibility and acceptance along with public confidence. The Committee’s mandate and approach should be objective. There should not be any doubt about its work and should not allow people to think that it will whitewash the failures of the Government/Department of Examination.

I do not wish to say anything general about the members of this committee, because at least some of them have shown independence in the past. However, take the case of Vice Chancellors appointed to the committee.  Vice Chancellor of Colombo University (Prof. Shanika Hirimburegama) came on public platforms during last election to politically support President Rajapaksa. She has defended the government in almost all the challenging political issues. Another stakeholder in the examination mechanism, though not a member of this committee, is the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, (Prof. Gamini Samaranayaka) who was also on the same political platforms, defending this government at any cost.  In my view, some members of the committee have an enormous vested interest in the government and such members will always consider the interest of the government, rather than independent judgment. Such persons will want to defend and protect the image of the government.  Undoubtedly the public and trade unions will raise doubts on the findings of this committee, even if the committee addresses some of the main issues.

Who is to be Blamed and Who is Accountable?

It is interesting to note that no one is held accountable for the mess. This is the usual pattern of governance today in many institutions, which are plagued with corruption, maladministration and irregularities.  Hard earned reputation, once collapsed, is not easy to regain.

Anura Ekanayaka retired with a pension and obviously there is no likelihood him being held accountable.  When these issues were raised relating to the last A/L examination, a Minister said the Department of Examinations is independent and therefore, the government cannot interfere with its work! This statement was just proved wrong with the present Commissioner General Pushpakumara assuming office. This is a department which never welcomed politicians even for functions.  This occasion was graced by the Education Minister, who was entangled with the controversy of the Department itself.  The new commissioner virtually bent down before the Minister Gunawardana, disclosing the true nature of the character and demeanor of the  new  head of the Department.

We have witnessed what happened to the Judiciary with the appointment of former Attorney General SN Silva as Chief Justice (CJ). When he was appointed as CJ, there were two motions on his professional misconduct before the very same Supreme Court. Nevertheless, President Kumaratunga appointed him purely on political considerations. This example demonstrated that a single bad appointment (as head of an institution)  is sufficient to ruin the institution beyond repair. The same fate has now befallen on the Department of Examinations. This department has crumbled reminding us of one eternal truth; an institution cannot run on its own without integrity of those who run it.

Who should  be a   head of the Examinations Department? This was once answered by the respected former Commissioner, Gunapala Wickramaratne in his article titled “Perceptive Encomium to Examination (souvenir published by the Department to celebrated its 50^th year  #8211; 2001).

“….. There is an unwritten law not to advertise the post of Commissioner General but to select from within or outside, an officer with administrative ability, very high quality character and higher quality of independence and integrity ……..  The Commissioner General is the Head of a department quite distinct from any other Heads of the Public Service. The credibility and public confidence in evaluation and certification depend on the degree of realization of and the dedication and commitment to the onerous responsibility….”

The degeneration of the public service and institutions did not happen overnight.  The 1972 and 1978 Constitutions and those who administered them were mainly responsible for this decay; nevertheless we had some individuals who were not prepared to bow down to pressure and were not motivated by vested interest. Honorable individuals constantly realize that the government’s policy and individual conscience are two different things. Though the government policy can be manipulated, the conscience of decent human beings cannot be manipulated.  Unfortunately, most of the high positions have been filled today not on merit   and objective criteria but purely on political connections.  The objectives of institutions can easily be manipulated to suit the appointing authority – the political chief.  The appointees have a vested interest in the political mater’s survival and do not care about their legitimate duties. They believe that Mahinda Chintanaya (policy) has to take precedence over their conscience and values.

The crisis of the Department of Examinations is thus a yet another reflection of the present status of governance and nothing else. Sooner the public realize it, the better it is.  The A/L  level  mess demonstrates how  the decay of governance can affect  a future of a nation. The conduct of the Head of the Department reminds us of the famous quotation of Thomas Jefferson, scholar and statesman,  who once said,

“Never suppose that in any possible situation or under any circumstances that it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing however slightly so it may appear to you#8230; Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise #8230; and that exercise will make them habitual#8230;”

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There are a lot of websites in the US that have gone black to protest against the proposed Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia has gone to the extent of taking down its site for the day, and lists its reasons here. Action across such a large number of key internet companies based in the US is unprecedented, and demonstrates clear opposition to the two pieces of legislation. The White House has itself distanced itself from both in their current form. And yet, they remain for consideration by lawmakers. As Wikipedia notes,

#8230;neither SOPA nor PIPA is dead. On January 17th, SOPA#8217;s sponsor said the bill will be discussed in early February. There are signs PIPA may be debated on the Senate floor next week. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. In many jurisdictions around the world, we#8217;re seeing the development of legislation that prioritizes overly-broad copyright enforcement laws, laws promoted by power players, over the preservation of individual civil liberties.

Neither SOPA nor PIPA affect Sri Lankans today. But if passed, they can contribute to web censorship on a massive, global scale, led by the US entertainment industry. The clear dangers of the legislation to censor existing content on websites and key social media platforms is brought out in the following video. As it notes, the indirect effects of these acts, if passed into law, can quite literally mean the end of the Internet as we recognise it today. Worse, such legislation in the US can spark off similar legislation in other, more repressive regimes. This domino effect could spell the end of not just online dissent, but all dissent given how much of it today is published on, produced for, mediated through, disseminated, archived and engaged via the web and the Internet.

Few may recall that Sri Lanka also tried to bring about its own variant of SOPA and PIPA in 2008. Called the Private Television Broadcasting Station Regulations of 2007, the Government attempted to pass it into law in October 2008. It#8217;s so alike SOPA and PIPA in spirit and form that it#8217;s uncanny. At the time, I wrote a detailed brief of how detrimental this bill was for freedom of expression online, that fed into the affidavit of a case lodged in the Supreme Court #8211; one of many #8211; that challenged the proposed Bill. As noted in it,

• The stipulation for all ‘broadcasters’ to enter into an ‘agreement’ that is unspecified in the Gazette, with the Internet Service Provider who provides access to the web and Internet is a draconian measure pointedly designed to curtail and block independent and free production, access and transmission of, inter alia, video content over the Internet and the web.


• This is particularly concerning since, to expand on what was flagged in Point 4 of this document, video over the Internet also encourages and facilitates easy audience participation in the form of text and video feedback and comments. Holding ‘broadcasters’ in Sri Lanka, including ISPs, responsible for not just user generated content, but also user generated comments to content published from other sources, is a regulatory nightmare and technically impossible to comply with.


• The lack of any clearly defined framework for the nature and scope of the ‘agreement’ enumerated in Regulations 9 (b) and 10 (b) has disturbing and negative implications for the rights of all wired and wireless broadband customers in particular – including all ADSL, 3G mobile telephony and 3G HSPA mobile broadband modem users – as well as all citizens, since those who may not be a customer of an ISP could still use the internet to disseminate video productions (e.g. video content that is uploaded through a cybercafé).

SOPA and PIPA, if allowed to pass in the US, will under the guise of progressive legislation contribute to precisely this sort of regulatory control in the US. It will occur, as flagged in the video above, to a point of absurdity. For example, a copyright violation claim over the soundtrack of a song on the domestic video of a cute cat playing with a ball of wool, uploaded to the web, can result in the entire website being blocked (think about YouTube).

As the Globe and Mail notes, serious concerns with the bills include, inter alia, the fact that,

#8230;. provisions of PIPA and SOPA allow the government – and, in some cases, the individual copyright holders – to compel online payment services, ad networks and search engines to stop doing business with or listing targeted websites. And unlike other laws that focused on websites involved primarily in piracy, the bills expand the focus to include sites on which any infringing content is found, no matter how minuscule. As such, American users of cloud storage or video hosting sites could find the entire site, along with their own content, suddenly much more difficult to access, because a single user uploaded a piece of copyrighted content.

It comes down to this. The bills are at present of greatest concern to those in the US. Yet their potential to influence bad legislation globally, and undermine key websites and social media platforms that are an integral part of democratic change, revolt, dissent and debate is very high. This is a cogent example where what the US preaches, it seems it is unwilling to practice #8211; the freedom of expression it promotes, along with the circumvention technologies it directly supports are at complete odds with the thrust of SOPA and PIPA.

I#8217;ve gone ahead and signed a petition on WordPress.org against the SOPA and PIPA.

I strongly urge you to do the same.

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Editors note: The author informs us that this Long Reads article is the result of many months of research, and aimed at promoting reconciliation. It is a dispassionate take on a vexed issue, and the author has in recent weeks shared it on a personal basis with selected political figures in the Government and Opposition. It is published on Groundviews with just a few edits. The author predicts that sooner than later negotiators in Government will come to terms with power sharing in land administration.

The article is especially timely given the statement to media yesterday by Hon. S.M Krishna, the Indian Minister of External Affairs, that President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised the full implementation of the 13th Amendment plus, and that the Sri Lankan Government would deliver on its promise. The hope of the author is that his article lays the foundation for a progressive dialogue on this vital issue.

Austin Fernando is the author of My Belly is White, and a former Secretary of Defence in Sri Lanka.

###

Having observed recent changes of approach regarding other differed stances of the government, (e.g. Terms of Reference of the Parliamentary Select Committee) I initially decided to share thoughts on land power sharing, welcoming a decent dialogue on land power sharing.

I am not a politician or a lawyer, but a believer and supporter of power sharing. As a development administrator I was the Secretary of the Ministry of Provincial Councils and Local Government for three continuous years from 1993-1996, under two different political administrations. I believe these qualify me to look at sharing land powers with all provinces- not only to the North and East.

The already known stance of some in the incumbent government on land power sharing differs from mine. But, governmental or political stances need not be permanent. How can one predict whether the governmental / political stances on devolution or land power sharing would not change? As a Buddhist I believe in “Sabbe Sankara Anichcha” (Everything is impermanent) and apply it even to this conceptual difference, especially in the light of the latest recommendation made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission Report stating that devolution should promote greater harmony and unity among the people of this country.[1] Sharing land administration powers is a part of the devolution process enshrined in the Constitution and hence a dialogue on land power sharing can be considered useful, though stances on devolution oscillates in the same personalities, depending on the environment.

For example, today, if one asks Minister Maithripala Sirisena who once declared[2] as the General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party that “the Government would devolve all powers including police powers to the East in accordance with the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution” what his stance on sharing land and police powers with provinces is, he will respond differently, because of impermanence of political thinking.

The President being reported in Daily News online December 21^st 2011 as saying “He also noted that an outstanding demand of the TNA for police powers to the North and East is not a practicable proposition” shows some change of attitude on land power sharing, which he included in the same package of non-events earlier. If this is not misreporting, in other words it could mean that he considers land power sharing as practical. The title of this paper therefore indirectly addresses an issue related to a presidential statement and hence a decent debate and tolerance of dissent may not be a waste of effort.

Governmental stances on ‘land power sharing’

I must say the behavior and responses of the incumbent government on power sharing on land is similar to almost all former Sri Lankan governments, though there were differed but extremely rare positive stances for power sharing  taken by the like of Minister Gamini Dissanayake, immediately after the Provincial Councils Act No: 42 of 1987 was passed. For that matter he deserves honor because he was the only Minister who could be credited for such convinced brave steps for land power sharing. Therefore, only blaming the incumbent government for the disinterest, current disagreements and hiatus, as done by Tamil politicians and internationals some time, is unreasonable.

Earlier President Mahinda Rajapaksa categorically declared that he was not for sharing Land and Police Powers with Provinces. Not much explanation was given by him or others for such stance. However, it is not difficult to understand why. I think that it is indirectly explained by Appendix II of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution (hereinafter Appendix II). I may point out in summary the negative concerns that might have influenced negative perceptions creation for land power sharing.

1. Even though State land continues to be constitutionally vested in the Republic, if the provisions in Appendix II of the 13^th Amendment are adhered in land administration, it may lead to “controls” by the provincial administrations- especially if the provincial administration is politically uncooperative with the government in power and thus should not be permitted.


2. Under 1:3 of Appendix II, alienation or disposition of State land shall be by the President, on the advice of the relevant Provincial Council (PC). One may argue that the government may seek advice, but refuse to accept when offered. Such dissent may be due to non-cooperation by PCs. However, if it happens, it will then dilute the concept of devolution of power by withdrawing from a “give and take policy.”


3. Even though the inter-provincial irrigation and land development projects (e.g. Mahaveli) will be the responsibility of the Government, the actual application of the principles and criteria under 2:3 of Appendix II for “selection of allottees and other incidental matters connected thereto” will be within the powers of the PCs. (Appendix II Clause 2:4). This may excite the ‘center’ as loss of power by devolving, as reflected by the responses of the pro government politicians now.


4. Having got the better of selection of the allottees by the Provinces, which is the space offered for political yields, what will be the gain for the center only by administration of inter-provincial irrigation and land development projects?

Since I am not a lawyer the above concerns may be considered as layman’s interpretations. But the Supreme Court has declared as follows, which may be creating serious concerns for the politicians at the center. In one judgment, it is stated:

“The position that was taken by the learned State Counsel came up in Agrarian Services (Amendment) Bill. Agrarian Services as has been enumerated by the Court, is a subject which is given in the Provincial Councils List as well as in the concurrent list in the Ninth Schedule to the Constitution. When a subject is listed in the concurrent list, it would be necessary to consider the subject matter in depth to ascertain how much authority the Provincial Councils would have over such a subject. However, this difficulty does not arise with regard to the question under review as there is no reference to the subject matter of land in the concurrent list.

“In fact in the Reserved List, reference is made to State lands and provides that, 

      “State land and Foreshore, except to the extent specified in Item 18 of List I”

Such extents, as referred to earlier are clearly set out in Appendix II of the 9^th Schedule, which specifically states that, “land shall be a Provincial Council Subject.” In considering the aforementioned contents it is abundantly clear that the matter in question is a Provincial Council subject that has been devolved to the Provincial Councils in terms of the Thirteenth Amendment.”[3]

If one goes by this ruling he/ she may reasonably and legally contest the statements made against land power sharing, and the unconstitutionality of such rejection. Another may interpret this judgment as proposing placing Land as a Concurrent List subject, so that it may create the need “to consider the subject matter in depth to ascertain how much authority the Provincial Councils would have over such a subject,” meaning allowing the government at the centre to finger on land issues.

The fear at the center at all times must be the stances that would be taken by an elected PC in the North and East, which will not abide and stand with southern political thinking, stances and implement directives from the center on land power sharing. It cannot be a pipe dream, knowing the political thinking of many Tamil politicians who are not from the two mainstream political parties. One should not forget that the ‘Tamil aspirations’ of Tigers included this demand, expressed as “Homeland Concept” and expanded to a wide area demarcated in their Eelam maps. I suspect that some Tamil politicians must be waiting for the day to constitutionally respond through an elected political entity of theirs (e.g. a PC). This is the suspicion in the minds of southern politicians at the center too, converting them to be negative for the demand. As a last resort, they may one day extend the suspicion to a status of demand for the erasure of PCs from the Constitution. The issue is how far that day is.

The Tamil politicians who are with the government show a different face. It is evident from recent statements in the media made by pro-devolutionist Minister Douglas Devananda. He has suspected “political unrest among people in the south over any attempt to devolve land and police powers.”[4]  He did not mind shedding devolution of Land and Police powers for the time being and demanded implementing the 13^th Amendment. A sigh of relief would have appeared on Minister Devananda’s face having seen the above quote in the Daily News. There is also the hard view that agrees with the President’s, held by some of his supportive political groups in the incumbent government, which might have instilled more of such fear in Minister Devananda, for him to succumb in this manner. When he is the Chief Minister of the North, as he aspires to be, and pressured by the elected body, will he be able to reject a very popular constitutionally accepted political demand to administer land in his Province? Will the Buddhist teaching of impermanence prevail on his current statement to implement the 13^th Amendment, sans land and police powers?

For the southern pro-government incumbent provincial politicians land power sharing does not seem to be a concern. From court cases related to land power sharing (e.g. Please see foot note 12 for one recent case in Appeal Courts) it is apparent the Provincial Land Commissioners already use authority over land. So much so, the first respondent in the case mentioned in foot note 12 was the “Land Commissioner (Southern Province)”. If the government at the center too is politically theirs, it is not difficult to deal with land administration arrangements to suit their convenience and satisfaction. Since it is so currently (2011), provincial politicians would not mind the status quo to operate under ‘camouflage.’ In a way, not permitting such enjoyment of constitutional rights overtly or covertly to the northern and eastern PC authorities may be interpreted by them as discriminatory.

But the Tamil politicians reaping the benefits irk the politicians at the center for political and popularity reasons, which has been aggravated after the war victory in May 2009. The central political feeling may be “Why should the government give in to a Tiger demand after wiping them out?” which appears correct. The Tamil political feeling may be “Why should not we enjoy the political right we have earned through the Constitution?” A pro-devolutionist cannot disagree with it.

Purpose of this exercise

The attempt here is to explore a via media to share power on lands, with least annoyance created to opponents of power sharing with all Provinces, while staying within the operative constitutional provisions. In other words, the purpose is to answer the titled query aiming to focus on solutions to one itching issue before the Government and the electorate, sometimes extending across the oceans.

It is neither a challenge to the thinking of the supporters of extensive and comprehensive centralization, nor a backup to the political parties vociferously demanding total sharing of land powers in the North and East Provinces. This is only an exploration of justifiable compromises, to enable withdrawing from hawkish demands for power sharing, while agreeing with the need for power sharing, as well as, to disable mooting selfish non-sharing of land administration. This effort aims through dialogue carving a sensible practical operational medium which may be acceptable to both ‘devolutionists’ and ‘centralists’.

What is attempted here is legal, as there had been confirmations received on this issue by decisions taken by the Supreme Courts[5]. As quoted earlier such decision has firmed up that land is a devolved subject. Hence, what is wrong in attempting a via media to respect such decision from the highest court?

Approach of this presentation

In finding the compromising paths for land power sharing, I consider it important to revisit the past, which is forgotten by political hierarchies, policy makers, professionals, lawyers and media who oppose devolution as a process.

I do not think it is required to visit the present State land management issues in the South because (as stated above) the PCs and the government currently belong to the same political group. It has been alleged that in the North and East governmental pressure on land administration had been made on the PC through the Governors. I believe that though there is no openly and expressly stated land power sharing with PCs, at present through operational arrangements land administration is done by the PCs, (other than in the North and East), as wished by the Chief Ministers, who are generally the Ministers in the PCs in charge of the Land subject. Hence, the non-insistence of this power by current Provinces and even publicly refusing devolved land powers by some southern provincial politicians is only camouflage.

This presentation will briefly discuss the background for power sharing, fears expressed on land power sharing, counter such fears, explain actions already carried out by successive governments towards this end and summarily propose a power sharing process considered by me as feasible within the current constitutional provisions, which can be reviewed and amended as required. However, being a layman development administrator, my focus will be on tacit application of the laws. In the process some legal implications will be discussed hoping that the required political and legal inputs would be explored, reviewed, revised and applied by appropriate legal experts and politicians.

Indo- Lanka Accord 

In 1987 the government devolved power to the PCs after the Indo – Lanka Accord. Some argue that devolution was a process gulped by Sri Lanka under Indian compulsions and that it is a project “Made in India” for all intents and purposes. I am aware of the opinion expressed –rightly or wrongly- that India has deliberately used the Appendix II in the 13^th Amendment to favor the demands of Tamils. Some political authorities and anti-Indian spokespersons oppose land power-sharing quoting these anti-Indian sentiments. But, they little realize that the former have signed the declaration or swore the Fourth Schedule in the  Constitution to uphold and defend the Constitution of Sri Lanka, which also carries sharing of land powers  with the PCs.

Expressed fears of devolving land powers and Appendix II

The current constitutional provisions on land power sharing are comprehensively expressed under Appendix II and Item 18 of List I under the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution.

The main theme of arguments enunciated against land power sharing is based on the following.

1. Such power sharing will lead to a duplication of a Federal State arrangement where total land administration will fall in to the hands of ‘federated Provinces’, thus superseding the Cabinet at the centre. With politicians least respecting the Principle of Subsidiarity[6] and holding to centralization, based on political hegemony at all institutional levels (e.g. National, Provincial, Local Authority or even at community – i.e. Cooperative or Rural Development Society), this issue has become acute.


2. The President’s constitutional authority [Article 33 (d) of the Constitution] on State land will be challenged by the Provinces.


3.  The State land needs of the Security Forces could be ‘blocked’ by minority controlled North and East PCs creating security threats and consequently threatening peace, thus favoring Tiger regrouping.[7]


4. The extent of land in the North and East is so large; such vast resource will be monopolized by the North and East PCs- thus paving way to a meager national ethnic minority to discriminately control one third or more of land of the country.[8]


5. Land administration by Provinces will reject or scuttle alleviating land hunger of the majority community, which had been practiced from first Sri Lankan Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake’s era.


6. The larger areas of land mostly eligible for virgin development are in the North and East and the land related power sharing will discriminate and jeopardize the majority social welfare in other provinces due to possible legal inaccessibility to lands in the North and East, if land administration power is devolved to PCs and snobbishly used by them.


7. Though not publicly stated, a hidden feeling exists that the Sinhalese supremacy as an ethnic group will be weakened by land power sharing due to constraints placed on the majority community.


8. In a situation where the government is formed by one political group and the PC administration from another opposing political group, whichever the PC is, there will be difficulty in cooperating on land administration. In other words, government authority could be rejected by the PC, thus converting the central state authority to be secondary to provincial, if proper controls are not in place.


9. The hold of the government on environment considerations will be jeopardized by sharing land powers because resources such as watersheds, rivers etc are dual or multi-provincial assets.

The fear in (1) above is negated by the fact that Sri Lanka is a Unitary State, and not Federal or Quasi Federal. Hence there are many legal restrictions on that alone to counter such status, unless a Federal Constitution is accepted by the country, which seems to me millions of light years away from reality, unless a political miracle happens. Of course, if miraculously a Federal Constitution is accepted, the country has to abide by its stipulations because it is the country’s preference.

Concern (2) is negated by Article 33 (d) of the Constitution and it already made known by the interpretations by the Attorney General, which will be discussed later.

Concern (3) above can be managed under Appendix II 1- 1:1 where only a consultation is required with the PCs, when State land is required for a Reserved Subject. For me ‘consultation’ does not mean ‘concurrence’ or ‘permission’. It means procedures for assessing public opinion about a plan or major development proposal. Devolution can succeed only with such dialogue and compromises made.

Arguments (4) to (8) are not necessarily centered on land issues but on political and ethnic or communal considerations, as the North and East are predominantly populated by minorities who will elect majority of their provincial “rulers” from minority communities. It will make the national majority of Sinhalese a regional minority which will not be a consideration for other provinces. This discriminatory approach is in itself anti-constitutional because a person who has declared upholding and defending the Constitution (i.e. Fourth Schedule to the Constitution) will be violating the Constitution provisions by negating Clause 3:3 of Appendix II  by debasing land policy on “political and communal” aspects.

Any PC or parliamentary or other constitutionally established authority within the Government / Opposition hierarchies, thus inclusive of the Tamil politicians,  too will be violating the Constitution in similar manner by acting with such discriminatory bias, whichever the communal  / political group that is favored by them.

The concern (9) is looked after by Clauses 3.2 and 3.3 of Appendix II and Article 27 (14) of Directive Principles in the Constitution.

Being a non-lawyer layman I do not intend dealing with intricate legal issues, but my stance (subject to correction by legal luminaries) is that the concerns in (9) and other legal issues are surmountable under existing constitutional provisions.

Countering fears on devolving land administration powers

Let me briefly counter these fears that suggest that existing constitutional provisions assist federating, provincially monopolizing, leaving space to block national land hunger solutions, discriminating the majority and degrading environment.  Nevertheless, unexpected repercussions may arise but it is a case of management to overcome them.

(1)    The preamble of scheduled List II under 13^th Amendment to the Constitution gives the National Policy making power on all subjects (thus ‘land’ included) to the government by being “Reserved” and not to the PCs. Reaffirmation of this power is in Appendix II- 3:1 through the National Land Commission” (NLC) of the government, and not by the PCs. Under Clause 3.4 of Appendix II, the PCs have to exercise powers devolved on them “having due regard to the national policy on land formulated by the NLC, which will be an arm of the State. Therefore, the threat of monopolizing and ad hoc manipulations by the PCs will not be possible. Note: The National Policy on any subject / function under the 13^th Amendment which lies in the hands of the government cannot be cajoled or crippled to suit narrow minority political gains of political parties that demand power sharing. They cannot be rhetoric and debunk the constitutionality. Those from the government ranks who oppose devolution of land powers should clearly understand the power lying in the hands of the government. Instead they have throughout exhibited jittery weak-kneed responses to devolve. However, the accepted work steps to declare a National Policy is not clear. Is there any law, constitutional arrangement, institutional arrangement or a commonly accepted process for this exercise, except for land national policy making? If available, has any government made use of any such system for national policy making?

(2)    According to Appendix II preamble “State land shall continue to vest in the Republic” and not with the PCs and subjected to Article 33 (d) of the Constitution and written law. This is further subjected to special provisions stated in Clause 1 of Appendix II. Of course, the challenge will be how to manage the special provisions to bring the conflicting groups together when there are given court rulings.

(3)    Disposition of State land will be in accordance with Article 33 (d) of the Constitution which states that the Public Seal of the Republic for grants and disposition of lands and immovable property will be a power and function of the President. It is noted the attempts through PC Statutes to thwart this power and authority has been successfully countered by the government.[9]

(4)    Land as a subject and function will be controlled by the government as per (1), (2) and (3) above, excepting in some constitutionally identified areas, as mentioned under (5) below.

(5)    Appendix II Clauses 1- 1:1 to 1:3 empowers the government to:

(a)    Utilize land for a Reserved or Concurrent subject by the government in accordance of laws governing. The government shall ‘consult’ the provinces but not be dictated by the PCs, or for that matter need not always agree with the PCs’ opinion. If the interpretation of ‘consultation’ is to seek permission it will complicate the issue and hence care should be taken in drafting working arrangements of the national policy on lands. However, ‘consultation’ will be one way to condition stiffened stances.

(b)    Make available land for provincial subjects for the administration, control and utilization in accordance with the laws and statutes governing land, for which the national policy of the NLC will be the main guideline (Clause 3:4 of Appendix II). It will be seen later that there had been some accepted ways in the past and review and imposition of the appropriate may be considered by authorities.

(c)    Permit the President to alienate and dispose any State land on the advice of the PCs, which makes the government powerful to manage lands under power sharing. Here too it must be remembered that PC advice need not be mandatorily accepted[10], but reasonable and due consideration will enhance required relationships between the centre and periphery.

Note-1: The Attorney General has interpreted this matter further by opining that Clause 1:3 of Appendix II is only confined to alienation[11] and disposition of state land which had been released to a PC for PC subjects in terms of Clause 1:2 of Appendix II for which the advice of the relevant PC will be required. This means that the right of the State to dispose State land in accordance with Article 33 (d) of the Constitution and other written law (which will include the Crown Lands Ordinance) is unfettered.[12]

Note-2: Whether the ‘advice’ is binding on alienation or disposition of State land may be a concerned matter. On perusal as a layman, it is observed that there are instances where ‘advice’ comes in to limelight in PC administration. For example Article 154B (8) (d) relates to the Governor acting “in accordance with the advice of the Chief Minister” who possesses the majority in the PC[13]. Under 154F (1) the need to act in “accordance with such advice” is stated. But under 1:3 of Appendix II such forcible use is not demanded. The President is subjected to act “in accordance with the laws governing the matter” and not on the advice of the PC. It meant working in accordance with the Land Laws already in place and even the future legal instruments that could be passed.

(d)    The constitutional provisions for inter-provincial irrigation and land development projects (e.g. Mahaveli Scheme) straightforwardly lie in the hands of the government, as per Clause 2 of Appendix II. However, compromises to be made towards the role of PCs as per Appendix II should be explored, as stiffened status will not support power sharing. The NLC and the National Policy could assist in building the required rapport. [14]

(e)    Under Clause 2:3 of Appendix II the principles and criteria regarding the size of the holdings will be determined by the government in consultation with the PCs, but not unilaterally by PCs or under the dictation of the latter.

(f)     The criteria for allottee selection will be on the degree of landlessness, family size, income levels, agricultural background etc (Clause 2:4), which had been similar during Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake days and later, until politicization of selection increased under all successive political regimes. One may argue that the application of these criteria is within PCs powers. But, PCs shall exercise such powers having due regard to the National Policy formulated by the NLC. (Appendix II- Clause 3:4). The NLC can within the constitutional provisions incorporate to the National Land Policy other appropriate criteria on selection of allottees or processes, tagged to constitutionally approved ones.

(g)    Further, ethnic ratios and expansion of the allottees to the Province from districts is assured by Clause 2:5 of Appendix II, which will look after all communities on a proportional basis.

(h)    Clause 2:6 of Appendix II assures the equity principle of land management.

(i)     The politically vulnerable maintenance of demographic ratios is assured by Clause 2:7 of Appendix II.

The focused demands of land powers and the expressions used at such instances made by Tamil politicians, media and Diaspora spokespersons have made this issue acute and suspicious, with an ethnic bias. It is unfortunate. Their interests project expressions endorsing the “Homeland Concept” of the Tigers. This concept and counter concepts have been in circulation for long. The merged North and East concept of the Tigers and Tamil politicians was one such, which was countered during President JR Jayewardene’s tenure by opening up Dollar and Kent Farms and attempts made to redraw the provincial boundaries by colonization the banks of Yan Oya. Probably the Tamil spokespersons are convinced now (end 2011) that it is currently happening.

The brewing demand for Tamil homeland was orchestrated recently by TNA Leader R Sampanthan MP and MA Sumanthiran MP where they focused on the land owned by Tamil people’.[15] Some called these lands “Tamil lands”[16] tagging ethnicity to lands. Countering this is observed right now with carving of Weli Oya Divisional Secretary’s Division by the government replicating status anticipated by the Yan Oya Project of the UNP regime quoted above. These Tamil politicians demanding land administration powers, having created suspected ulterior motives of political and communal bias also commit the same judgmental error, equivalent to those committed by some pro-government political authorities in the South who resent sharing land powers with the Provinces.

Land administration power sharing past interventions

May I start with the political beliefs behind land power sharing?

The politicians rely on conventional thinking of power sharing. So much so deliberately or inadvertently they place devolution and decentralization as an ethnic issue. This status is due to a false premise, also patronized by many Tamil and some Sinhalese politicians. Many Tamil politicians think that North and East belong to the Tamil speaking people, and none other. Many Sinhalese politicians and sometimes bureaucrats think that North and East should be left alone as the potential area for alienation of their choice and should not be lost to minority administrations. Further, they argue on historical, ethnological and archeological evidence to demand total control of land, and some going to the extent of Sinhalese- Buddhist domination of areas. How unfortunate to observe a devastated nation cracked to splinters, population and leaders think in divisive and non-integrative terms after a nearly thirty year conflict, when unity and integration should be the theme for nation building? This is the psychological paranoia created by trust deficiency, which takes various shapes, one being future security considerations, another being State aided colonization. And, there may be many others.

Let us glimpse on the past practices that had been guided by this mythological beliefs. I say so because how governments acted had been decided by politicians’ whim and fancy, and, unfortunately and not necessarily by sanity, judiciousness or constitutional reasoning.

The points quoted here are proof of how successive governments performed in power sharing exercises on land. The importance of reference to such actions is that the governments cannot be ad hoc, nor need to waste time to reinvent the wheels. And further, this proof provides the understanding that a government could be challenged on legality, processes, past, continuity, predictability that should be maintained by a government. Such challenge will not motivate reconciliation, which seems to me as a serious pressure exerted on the incumbent government, especially by the Indian South Block, though sometimes subtly handled by them with a velvet glove. Or, are we not privy to what really happens to conjecture so?

I flag some of the actions that related to the land power sharing exercise undertaken by successive governments, which cannot be erased by rhetoric, as I see from statements made by politicians, some professionals, opinion makers and journalists etc. Summarily some salient aspects are stated below.

(1)    The 13^th Amendment has proposed several institutional arrangements and legal provisions that could make land power sharing a possibility. All land related activities are expected to be done in accordance with Appendix II. This status could be used to have controls through the NLC, which can safeguard governmental interests, as it derives power from the basic law- i.e. the Constitution.

(2)    It is reminded that the then Minister of Land and Land Development (Minister Gamini Dissanayake) met the Chief Ministers, Provincial Ministers, Chief Secretaries and senior officials on August 4^th 1988 and made clear the State policy on devolution of land powers under the 13^th Amendment. His Secretary by circulars informed the extent and coverage of land powers that have to be devolved by ministries and departments and went to the extent of informing that the officers in the Provinces who were carrying out the functions of Lands and Irrigation under List I would thereafter function under the administrative fiat of the Provincial Secretary of Lands and Irrigation.[17]

(3)    The above circular was issued after wide dialogue between the government and provincial administrators and extended to even submitting a draft Statute for land power sharing, from which the Ministry expected fulfilling provincial statute making.[18]

(4)    The Ministry intended to share resources with the provinces for land management as stated in this circular.[19]

(5)    A conflict in law on delegation of power based on Clause 1:3 of Appendix II, which queried on the alienation or disposition of State land within a Province to any citizen or to any organization by the President was pointed out by the Ministry of Lands and Land Development[20] to the Presidential Secretariat.[21]

(6)    To this conflict the Attorney General responded[22] that “it would be competent for the President to delegate any power in terms of Section 105 of the Crown Lands Ordinance”.[23] But the Attorney General additionally advised that “before making the proposed delegation, it would be necessary to amend the Third Schedule in Regulation 24 made under Sections 95 and 96 read with Section 105 of the said Ordinance”. I do not think this amendment was done.

(7)    Since there was a time lag for Statute making the PCs (Consequential Provisions) Act No: 12 of 1989 was passed by the Parliament and certified by the Speaker on May 30^th 1989. Its preamble says that it is an “AN ACT TO MAKE INTERIM PROVISION FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF WRITTEN LAW ON MATTERS SET OUT IN LIST I OF THE NINTH SCHEDULE TO THE CONSTITUTION” which showed the interest and intent of the government for continuity of implementing the constitutional provisions of the 13^th Amendment (not only State land matters).

(8)    Though there is fear among the opponents of power sharing on land that PCs will have total power on alienation and disposition of any State land in a Province, based on the Attorney General’s opinion the Secretary of Lands advised that “the advice of the relevant PC will be required only for the alienation and disposition of State land which have been made available to PCs for PCs subjects (List I).”[24] Hence, the above mentioned fear may be redundant as the PCs’ authority is restrained / limited by release of lands by the government to the PCs [summarily explained below under (9)] and due to the requirement for the PCs to adhere to the National Policy that is formulated by the NLC. (See Appendix II- Clause 3:4.)

(9)    Release of State lands thus becomes very crucial for which there were arrangements made by the then (1989) Ministry of Lands.[25]  Accordingly, when an application is made to the Minister of Lands and Land Development, it will be processed by the Ministry and approved by the Minister; and, when the request is for more than 500 acres it will be submitted to the Cabinet for approval. When the approval from the two sources is received, a certificate of release will be issued by the Minister of Lands. The Land Commissioner will release land to the PC through the GAs. The fear that the provinces will grab State land as they wished is rejected or at least satisfactorily diluted when this process of release of State land is considered. The authorities involved in the operation are all centrally government managed and hence will be center friendly.  As it is, land administration can be reinforced by the NLC by delegating more powers to the GAs, as decided by the Cabinet recently (October 2011)[26], if accepted by the NLC. These past processes can be learning experiences.

(10)  Since the PCs were managing land affairs in different ways, the Ministry of Lands and Land Development clarified the operational status on transfer of land work to the PCs under several important legal instruments , i.e. the Land Development Ordinance,  as amended by Act No: 16 of 1969 and Act No: 67 of 1989, Crown Lands Ordinance No: 8 of 1947, Land Grants (Special Provisions) Act No: 43 of 1979 and State Lands (Recovery Possession) Act No: 7 amended by Act No: 58 of 1981.[27] These have looked after the needs of the government up to now (with revisions as required) and improved by the government under the Bimsaviya Programme.[28]

(11)  There is grave fear in the minds of southern politicians that the Tamil politicians will encourage encroachment of State lands as there had been similar experiences with the Gandhian Movement and others in the quest for state power by the Tigers. Hence this fear may be even justified. Even this issue is covered under Act No: 29 of 1983, Regularization of Encroachments wherein it was expected that PCs receive the concurrence of such regularization through the Land Commissioner and Ministry of Lands, again central authorities.[29] The inputs of guidelines by the NLC could be used to tighten screws as required by endorsement, if such fear is intact even now, or until clear understanding is reached.

(12)  Keeping to the constitutional requirements, the Ministry of Lands directed that all lands other than the Inter Provincial Irrigation and Land Development Projects should be administered by the PCs and kept the decision making power on the latter lands in the centralized unit of GAs at the District level, again a central authority. If this is the way how it ought to be, the NLC mechanism could be utilized as an alternative authority to the Ministry of Lands even in the future.

(13)  According to the instructions given by the Ministry of Lands, PCs could initiate the alienation of State lands for which the lands had to be released by the Government and this will be done according to the process mentioned in (9) above, which gives the handle to the government and not to Provinces. It was categorically mentioned that alienation of lands under small tanks rehabilitated under Village Irrigation Rehabilitation Project which did not come under the Inter Provincial Irrigation and Land Development should be done by the PCs[30]. If 13^th Amendment is for power sharing, and at least this power is not given to Provinces, what is farcically shared or devolved?

(14)  The Ministry was cautious with regard to possession of documents which was to be done through the GAs or Provincial Land Commissioners due to the ongoing conflict situation in the country, which may be reviewed at present after war victory.

(15)  The Appendix II made a very important provision regarding the establishment of the NLC, under Clause 3. This proposition has created many knee-jerks among southern politicians. The NLC was not appointed by any government after 1987, though required by the Constitution.  It was perhaps due to several reasons, though Appendix II was very clear that its appointment was by the government, and PCs should exercise the devolved powers having due regard to the National Policy as formulated by the NLC[31]. Reasoning for non appointment of the NLC is thought of as follows:

(a)  The prevalent understanding that national policy making should not be in the hands of a Commission but in the ‘supreme’ Cabinet, as such policy making will negate the powers and authority of the ‘central’ politicians in the Cabinet.[32] However, national policy making is completely controlled by the government under the preamble to List II under the 13^th Amendment, Article 33 (d) of the Constitution and Appendix II- Clause 3.

(b)  The fear was that the NLC membership in numbers will be more biased to the eight PCs and hence the PCs may dictate to the government on land issues- the tail wagging the dog! When the NLC Bill was presented in the Parliament on July 21 1992, this fear was erased by making provision for 19 members under Section 3 of the draft Bill. The overriding power was kept in the hands of the government by proposing a larger number having allegiance to the center and thus the NLC’s National Land Policy would have been obviously centre oriented.[33]

(c)  The monopolistic power that was wielded by the Parliamentarians on land issues since Independence cannot be retained if land powers are shared because the lands released for alienation and disposition will be managed by the PCs according to the Constitution. This is one selfish jealousy that prevents the centre to hold on to land powers. But, if needed to counter misdoings, the National Policy approved by the NLC can provide for reasonable measures such as reviews.

(d)  In addition, if the government and PCs are in different political controlling hands it may thus provide opportunities for the PCs to come in to conflicts with the opposing political groups during alienation and disposition of land. If the ongoing dialogues are an indicator it is certain that such conflicts would occur, especially between the center and North and East Provinces. Even now this happens in southern PC areas when political power rests with the same political group. And, some times after an election selected allottees are chased away from the legally alienated lands due to political reasons! However, the NLC should strictly create the selection criteria with national binding that could prevent such happening. Additionally, the Technical Secretariat in Clause 3:2 in Appendix II should introduce methods to settle conflicts of interest between and among PCs / Government.

(e)  The unpreparedness of Land Ministers to think that the NLC is the body to make the National Policy for State Lands was openly expressed by the Ministry of Lands advising Provinces and District Administration to inquire on National Policy from them,[34] while concurrently and conveniently evading appointment of the NLC, thus validating reason for such direction by the Ministry of Lands.

(16)  The Bill presented in the Parliament to establish the NLC gave the powers and functions of the Commission that included the preparation of the national policy with regard to the use of State lands and to lay down norms in regard to the use of State lands having regard to the soil, climate, rainfall, soil erosion, forest cover, environmental factors and economic viability, which are the interests of the Technical Secretariat under Section 14 of the draft Bill. But this Bill never saw the light of the day and lapsed after nearly two years on June 24^th 1994 with the dissolution of the Parliament. This showed how the then UNP government that showed extreme keenness to devolve land powers in 1989 lagged behind in five years.  It coincided with another important political scenario- i.e. change of hands of the presidential administration, as well as allocation of the subject of Land in the Cabinet.

(17)    Administrative control of Provincial Land Commissioners by governmental fiat was done in several ways. Firstly, the government took steps to appoint all Provincial Land Commissioners from among Assistant or Deputy Land Commissioners of the Land Commissioners Department[35] Secondly, the Provincial Land Commissioners were concurrently appointed as Additional Land Commissioners.[36] Thirdly, the Land Commissioner commenced Provincial Land Commissioners Meetings where land management issues were discussed and directions were given. Fourthly, with the Transfer of Powers Act the Divisional Secretaries were made Heads of Departments of the centre and land work in the Divisions was left in their hands using centralized authority. These arrangements kept the provincial land administrators under the thumb of the centre and not really under the PCs. Is it the latter been tried now (end 2011) by strengthening the hands of the District Secretaries?

(18)    Two Provinces, namely North Central and Western, passed the Land Statutes.[37] However, the government did not want these statutes to be implemented. The government received the Attorney General’s Department blessings to intervene on recommendations made by the Land Commissioner to stop implementation[38]. Some provisions in these Statutes were conflicting with or suggesting encroachment of Reserved constitutional provisions, which incidentally found to be wanting by the government on reasonable grounds. I may quote one such provision to prove the point. In the Land Statute 5 of 1994 passed by the North Central Province, Section 3 while stating that the implementation of the Statute was subject to the powers vested to the President under the Constitution, included provision to issue grants under Section 4.1- a presidential power under Article 33 (d) of the Constitution. In another case the Statute empowered the PC under 3.6 to deal with mining, disposition of minerals etc, which is a power granted to the government under the Reserved List ‘Minerals and Mines (b)’. Hence, it was not surprising to observe the ‘central’ government [39] and Attorney General opposing such provisions, and making use of such opportunity to steamroll the PC by using Executive direction. This is the way how the Government which was so accommodative in 1989 to pass the Statutes (by even sharing a draft Statute) changed its course in 1995 due to political decisions and afterwards blocked the implementation of the Statutes which were passed by the PCs.

(19)    When I was the Secretary of PCs, end 1993 a similar issue was raised and on the instructions of Lands Minister Paul Perera, circular instructions were issued by the Secretary Lands reiterating the already explained constitutional provisions.[40] I guess this was due to my refusal to permit alienation of land on a request of a UNP parliamentarian and my acting in defense of the Southern PC under (Opposition) Chief Minister Amarasiri Dodangoda. Later even Governors were cautioned by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government to ensure that Land Statutes were delayed or not passed.[41] These experiences taught how governments could pressure not to share land powers.

Need for a National Land Policy as per 13^th Amendment

The National Policy on Land is specifically mentioned in Appendix II Clause 3:1 and the implementation by PCs is mentioned in Clause 3:4 of the same.

The Land Commissioner or the Secretary of Land or President’s Secretary[42] has been declaring what should be the purported Land Policy or guidelines for adherence by the center, PCs and even other government institutions. Though the NLC was the institution to do this job by constitutional empowerment and when there was no attempt even to frame a law to establish the NLC, how could it perform? How could extraneous authorities be restrained from acting in this manner in such lacuna? If one argues that this was deliberate usurpation of constitutional power and thus a violation of the Constitution, it shall hold water.

Ad hocism was observed through out. As mentioned earlier there were political and positive bureaucratic interventions just after the PCs Act was passed. Immediately after the change of presidency in 1989 this commitment lapsed and all institutional arrangements were directed towards centralizing, affecting good performance of devolution and land was one area thus affected heavily. I may list a few of these actions for reference sake to prove that there were negative attitudes against devolution exhibited by all successive governments.

1. Withdrawing Assistant GAs from PCs to the center, creating Divisional Secretariats responsible to the center and allowing them to handle land issues, appointment of Provincial Land Commissioners faithful to the center (during President R. Premadasa’s term)


2. Withdrawal of Grama Niladharis from the PCs (during President D. B. Wijetunga’s term)


3. Appointing Committees to decide on land policy issues comprising only of central government representatives and without a representative from the Ministry of Provincial Councils at the center (PM Ranil Wickremasinghe’s term)


4. Issuing of orders, guidelines and adherence notes to PCs and central agencies etc by the Presidential Secretariats (during Presidents D.B. Wijetunga’s, Chandrika Kumaratunga’s and Mahinda Rajapaksa’s terms)


5. Gazetting of Land Use Policy Planning Department by executive fiat by the Ministry of Lands[43] encroaching in to a portion of NLC powers endowed by the Constitution under item 3.2 of Annex II. (President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s term)

These show the extent of centralized encroachments and interference on the constitutionally provided devolution of powers. Similarly it affected the National Land Policy formulation mechanism authorized by the Constitution.

Proposition for consideration

The basics of State land are unknown to the general public. Similarly, they are in the dark on devolution and centralization. They will face the same amount or more of less of similar injustices, favoritisms, political interventions, corruption etc, as they had been for ages whether the land powers are shared with the PCs or not. As a former land administrator I have seen these happening under all political regimes.

The current lack of dialogue on land power sharing in all quarters other than among politicians proves the narrow understanding and disinterest the public have on this issue. It is mostly the politicians in the government and Tamil groups who are interested in the cause for land power sharing. They are the affected groups from sharing or non-sharing of powers on land. For political expediency parliamentarians and even those in the PCs who would gain more power by devolution reject and refuse land power sharing, as observed from the statements made by parliamentarian Deputy Minister Karuna Amman who had vociferously demanded power sharing earlier when he was a Tiger and PC Chief Minister of the East and PC Chief Ministers even in the South. Are they speaking their hearts out? I doubt the integrity of their intentions. How politicized the issue is proved by such behavior. Hence, the propositions are to sort out a crucial political issue on the table.

I may summarily state on a step by step basis the way out of this embroiled status, leaving space for improvements by the Executive and other political, legal and administrative hierarchies.

1. On parliamentary approval of the NLC law the government can establish the NLC according to the requirements of Clause 3:1 of Appendix II to formulate the National Land Policy and create the Technical Secretariat as per Clause 3.2 of Appendix II with persons possessing expertise to handle land issues.


2. Let the NLC initially review the current national land policies and their implementation status to identify the strengths and weaknesses. It should find the threats for devolution and opportunities for further improvements.


3. Find out from the above exercises the areas where the government should make revisions to State land use, land release, alienation and disposition processes. The National Land Policy should be an outcome of these deliberations and perhaps by serious studies undertaken by the NLC Technical Secretariat, and not on ad hoc decisions and stipulations.


4. A White Paper on National Land Policy should be prepared by the NLC which could be discussed with the PCs and at the Parliamentary Consultative Committee before it is presented to the Cabinet for approval. Large amount of information mentioned above on past interventions could be made use of as appropriate in the preparation of this White Paper. This process will fulfill the constitutional requirement of List II Preamble for policy making and erase the suspected negative inhibition that the Cabinet will be secondary to the Provinces.


5. The Attorney General will have to observe and unambiguously advise the NLC on the application of the National Land Policy from its formulation to implementation, monitoring and reviewing stages to ensure conflicts are minimized to the maximum in implementation and to support drafting a common Land Administration Statute that should balance and erase the suspicions in the minds of the government and PCs. A senior representative from Attorney General’s Department should be seconded to this Secretariat on full time basis or at least nominated to assist the NLC.


6. The NLC should carry on as an ongoing and continuing exercise by way of monitoring and evaluating the progress or digressions or deviations that occur in the implementation of the National Land Policy and propose revisions and amendments as required making it an efficient and effective work process. NLC will advise the government (i.e. Cabinet) on areas which will need future policy and implementation revisions, for the Cabinet to decide on legal and operational amendments, as required.

This issue is not as simple as one could present in a paper. It is a much more serious legal, political, socio-economic and ethical issue. However, if the government is interested in sharing power with the PCs on land administration, these may be initial steps that could be considered. These could be the foundation for change of attitudes and actions. One may note that compromises have to be reached if the ends in the 13^th Amendment are to be achieved. It cannot be achieved by demanding the pound of flesh as done mostly by devolutionists and Tamil politicians, especially in the Tamil National Alliance or by denials alone as done by some pro-centralists opinion makers and southern politicians. “Give and take” mentality has to be adored.

I believe that the government currently thinks in the same pose as seen from the stance of President Mahinda Rajapaksa who had requested Democratic People’s Front leader Mano Ganesan to convince the TNA to drop its hard line stance, be flexible and cooperate with the government to find a solution to the national issue.[44] Cannot one consider the earlier quoted Daily News statement by the President a show of flexibility and cooperation? Any way clapping with one palm is impossible!

Conclusion

If the government is determined not to share power in anything and carry on with centralization whatever the opposing political demands are, and give a backroom position to devolution and reconciliation, the propositions given here can be instantly ignored. Perhaps, erasure of the 13^th Amendment may solve the issue of devolution for good! The day it happens the validity of this paper will exist no more. The manner in which the government is acting even gives the indication that it could be on the way, if too much pressured. One should not push the President to the wall and expect him to succumb when he is in total control of the Parliament and the country. Until then the hope is that the case for land power sharing could and should be revisited under the nagging circumstances mentioned above.

It will be very embarrassing and difficult for the government to run away from giving a fair deal for sharing land powers. This demand has constitutional validity, backed by recorded judicial decisions from the most superior courts, some decided by the very same luminaries who will sit on judgment on the issue. It is pursued relentlessly by Tamil political authorities and the internationals, in an environment where a government appointed Commission recommends devolution and when the government is exploring avenues of proving its genuineness of the commitment for change to Sri Lankans –especially to Tamils- and internationals.

Since the demand is made by political negotiators like parliamentarians R. Sampanthan and M.A. Sumanthiran (at government initiated negotiations) who do not carry suicide bombs like Velupillai Prabhakaran, it will be difficult for the government to throw down the gauntlet calling them terrorists, as the government did with the Tigers. I believe that one day –sooner than later- the government and Tamil negotiators will come to terms on an agreed basis of power sharing in land administration.

It has to invariably happen irrespective of fears in the mind of Minister Douglas Devananda as quoted earlier and the negative stances taken by Ministers like Wimal Weerawansa and Champika Ranawaka on land power sharing. It has to happen even though professionals like Attorney Gomin Dayasiri or Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekara reason out for the rejection of this demand. The important million dollar question will be to what extent can the government and Tamil politicians agree on devolving land powers to the PCs and how. In that context the above proposal may be basic, but could be considered as an initial approach to answer this query.

Concurrently, it is the war victory that gives the strength to reconcile and take convinced extremely bold decisions. Such decisions can be marketed to the nation only by the victor. In the current context it is President Mahinda Rajapaksa who can take this challenging uphill task and none other. It appears that the time has come for him to volunteer for such stance even to go beyond the 13^th Amendment.[45]

I am aware that one may find loop holes in this proposition and arguments. If so, let them discuss and improve the proposition. It is required because it is a constitutional obligation and all these politicians have declared to uphold the Constitution by signing the Fourth Schedule to the Constitution.

I wrote the paper with the conviction that this is one way to rationally think of reconciling and bring justice after the Great War victory. This paper may be a miniscule contribution for reconciliation, but, it is drops of rain that form streams, water falls, reservoirs, rivers, estuaries, seas and oceans.

To conclude, I am reminded of what Mark Twain said once- i.e. ‎#8221;A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.#8221; This saying applies to those who cannot approve what is in their own Constitution. As long as they do so they will be uncomfortable and will be carking, because they are violating the basic law of the country. A broader consultation and dialogue for approval may make things comfortable for everyone.