 |
| Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Hyderabad, India during later's three-day official visit last month. |
By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
There was a stir in political circles when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who met with Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake during his recent official visit to India and had a joint press meeting in New Delhi after talks with him, failed to say anything about the 13th Amendment (13A) to the Sri Lankan Constitution.
Sri Lankan Tamil political parties and their leaders did not show as much concern about it as the media and political observers did. Modi, who had always emphasised the need for the Sri Lankan Government to fully implement the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in his press conferences with previous Sri Lankan Presidents, avoided it this time, which seemed particularly different.
However, former Member of Parliament (MP) and Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) Spokesperson M.A. Sumanthiran stated that since Modi had said that the Sri Lankan Constitution should be fully implemented, not mentioning the 13A was not an issue as the amendment was also in the Constitution.
When the Indian Prime Minister meets the leaders of any other country, he does not ask them to implement their country’s constitution. It is not necessary for a leader of a country to tell leaders of other countries that their own constitutions should be fully implemented.
However, the reason why Sri Lankan Presidents are asked by Indian leaders to fully implement the Constitution is only its 13th Amendment, which was introduced after the July 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord to institute Provincial Councils. Therefore, there is no doubt that there is a specific reason why Modi avoided mentioning that particular amendment in the presence of President Dissanayake.
The Indian Prime Minister does not seem to want to embarrass President Dissanayake domestically by mentioning it, given the strong opposition to the amendment among the polity and the people of southern Sri Lanka.
The Indian Government is unlikely to want to spoil the current situation, when a Sri Lankan Government led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which has a fiercely anti-India past, is keen to foster friendly relations with India. JVP leaders may be proud of the fact that Modi’s move is a victory for their approach to dealing with India.
India’s dwindling interest in 13A
No attempt to find a political solution to the national ethnic problem has been successful domestically. The Provincial Council system continues to exist to this day only because it was brought about as a result of Indian intervention.
However, despite India’s persistent insistence, successive Sri Lankan governments have ensured that the 13A is not implemented properly. Therefore, if India no longer has even a half-hearted interest in the 13A, those who realise the danger that even the one-and-only provision addressing the devolution of power in the Sri Lankan Constitution, despite its various shortcomings, may disappear are expressing regret over Modi’s actions.
The Government says that the Provincial Council system will continue until a new constitution is brought in. But no one knows what will happen after that.
Will the new constitution that the Government says it will bring in three years’ time really care about including a devolution arrangement for the provinces? Will the province itself continue to be the unit of devolution ? Will the powers currently in the 13A be fully absorbed into the new constitution? Do the Tamil parties have the political strength to ensure such absorption? Will India insist on it? These are important questions that need to be answered.
If the 13A, which has been in place to this day because it was brought in as a result of Indian intervention, is completely abolished, do the Tamil parties in the north and east have the political strength to persuade or pressure the Government to bring in a new arrangement for the devolution of power in the current political situation?
Given the discontent India has felt over the approach of the Tamil parties to the 13A so far, it is unlikely that the country would be able to exert any pressure on Colombo on the Tamil issue in the present context.
The Tamil parties have also not been receptive to India’s appeal to take a united stand on the Tamil issue. There are clear signs that India is no longer in a position to view the Tamil issue as something that can be used to safeguard its economic and strategic interests in Sri Lanka.
Lack of a clear Govt. position
This being the case, the National People’s Power (NPP) Government has generally spoken of a political approach that embraces all communities but has not expressed a clear position on devolution. In this regard, the opinion expressed in a recent article by Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda, a leading political scientist, is particularly noteworthy.
“The NPP shuns both the ‘devolution discourse’ introduced by India, and the ‘liberal peace discourse’ of conflict resolution, reconciliation, and peace building, promoted by agencies of the United Nations (UN), and global and local rights groups. The NPP does not seem to want its agenda for inter-ethnic peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka to be seen as ‘failed’ past attempts,” he wrote.
During the controversy that erupted following former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s announcement that he would fully implement the 13A, Dissanayake at one point said that the NPP had no problem in accepting the amendment if the Tamil people believed it would solve their problems. Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya also said that the long-standing 13th Amendment to the Constitution should be fully implemented. But as the protests intensified, they refrained from talking about it.
Wickremesinghe and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Leader Sajith Premadasa mentioned the implementation of the 13A in their Presidential Election manifestos. But President Dissanayake did not say anything about it in his statement, instead promising that he would continue to advance and complete the new constitution-drafting process initiated by the Maithripala Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Government in 2015 in order to find a solution to the problems.
Commenting on the criticism that the NPP had avoided the 13A in its manifesto, Sumanthiran said that there was no need to mention the amendment, arguing that powers far beyond the 13A had been discussed during the previous constitution-drafting process.
However, it is not enough for the Government to say that the Provincial Council system will remain until a new constitution is in place in three years. The only way to gain some credibility on this issue is to implement the powers of the 13A to the extent possible and to hold Provincial Council Elections as soon as possible.
Ponnambalam’s position
Tamil parties might have been confident that India would never allow Colombo to do away with the Provincial Councils or the 13A. But it is unclear whether they have understood the message conveyed implicitly by Prime Minister Modi by avoiding mentioning the 13A in his press conference with President Dissanayake. After a long time, the India-Sri Lanka joint statement did not mention anything about the Tamil issue either.
When this columnist posted the above comments on X a few days ago, Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) Leader and MP Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam reacted on the same social media website.
“Not very honest of you, is it brother? Please do tell how this ‘implementation’ is to happen when the courts have said repeatedly that no devolution under a unitary state is possible. My point is that what you have now is a fully implemented 13A. And that is also the position of the courts. That is why the 13A can never be even a starting point to a political solution. It is quite frankly a dead end for as long as it’s within a unitary state structure.
“I for one will be quite happy for India to stop talking about the 13A. After all, a vast majority of the Tamils don’t accept the 13A as a solution.
“What is more important is that India signed the Indo-Lanka Accord on behalf of the Tamils. I would think that for as long as the Tamils retain faith in the accord, India is duty-bound to intervene on behalf of the Tamils.
“But if India feels the accord itself is irrelevant in today’s context, then that’s another matter altogether. The sooner we find out the better,” Ponnambalam said in his post.
This post shows that he does not want India to talk about the 13A anymore. At the same time, he wants India to support the Tamils’ demand for a political solution based on federalism.
Ponnambalam, who met the Indian High Commissioner in Colombo immediately after the Parliamentary Elections at his invitation, spoke to him about this. He also requested that India ensure that the aspirations of the Tamil people are not restricted by the unitary system in the new constitution that the Government may bring.
Who among the Tamils is going to oppose the desire and demand expressed by Ponnambalam? If the unitary state is scrapped and a political solution based on a federal system of governance to the ethnic issue is found, what else could bring greater happiness to Sri Lankan Tamils?
However, he should seriously consider whether it is possible in the current situation and whether it can be achieved by simply making a request to India and the international community. It is not known whether Ponnambalam was present when Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, during a meeting with leaders of Tamil parties, asked them how a federal solution could be expected from Sri Lankan governments that have not even implemented the 13A fully.
It would be useful to consider how far Ponnambalam, who has been an MP for a long time with much experience and the ability and knowledge to make a significant contribution in the new Parliament where there are very few capable Tamil members, has been able to move forward in his goals through his ideologically stubborn political stance so far.
Tamil parties yet to get the message
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran had ‘strong’ reasons for rejecting not only the 13A but also all the peace efforts made in the subsequent period. That is, he believed that he could achieve his goal through armed struggle. He had an armed movement that challenged State forces for several years. How the civil war ultimately ended is another matter.
What political strength do the Tamil parties have to reject the 13A outright at this point of time when they have not even been able to unite and present a unified stand on behalf of the Tamil people? Being weak does not mean that we should accept anything. But is it not imperative to act sensibly and wisely in accordance with the demands of the situation?
Even the Tamil people are distancing themselves from the Tamil parties. Tamil leaders seem to think that the Tamil people voted against them at the recent Parliamentary Elections because they did not work together. That is not the only reason. In the post-war period, the Tamil parties simply chanted nationalist slogans instead of adopting practical and sensible approaches to finding solutions to the problems of the Tamil people.
Today, the Tamil parties are struggling to regain their voice among the Tamil people. It seems that leaders of these parties have not yet fully understood the message that the Tamil people have conveyed to them by supporting a southern party that has not made any promises about a solution to the ethnic problem.
Many of the Tamil politicians are concerned with political methods that satisfy certain elements among the Tamil diaspora without thinking about their isolation from the people. If this situation continues, there is a danger that the Tamil people will eventually be left as a mass of people who cannot gain anything even after untold sacrifices in their decades-long struggle for political rights. (The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo) Courtesy- The Sunday Morning
Post a Comment