Going Beyond the Politics of Devolution: Back to the Future
As the dust settles on victory parades and politician speeches, a sense of déjà vu is difficult to shake. The new May Heroes’ Day speeches bear uncanny resemblance to what used to be the November Heroes’ Day speeches – another part of the country and a man with a differently styled moustache but we all recognize that this is not about wars passed but wars in our future, not a lament for dead victims but a war cry that will make future victims; even as victory is declared it is said that there are new enemies that need to be crushed.
The sense of repetition has other resonances too. A new commission on the ethnic conflict is inaugurated with lofty mandates and empty purpose. They will sit for many months, convene protracted investigations, ponder many complex questions and deliver a lengthy report that is so deferential to power it could be installed as the new wallpaper in Cinnamon Gardens. Yet even that timid file and its hesitant recommendations will be buried alongside the many that came before it.
Finally, talk of backroom negotiations between Delhi and Colombo set the stage for a familiar conversation. We are once again at a moment where there is discussion of the devolution framework that would be entailed by implementation of the 13th Amendment. Over the last decades, again and again, there has been a turn to alternative constitutional architectures for territorial sovereignty as a solution to the ethnic conflict – a range of diverse proposals for power sharing by disaggregating statehood that run on the continuum from devolution in a unitary state to proposals for regional structures in a federal state.
This broader sense of déjà vu, the sense that we have lived this moment before, partly accounts for the subdued but pregnant terror of the moment. Victory speeches, commissions and constitutions have all been with us through several cycles of war and peace – each time it is re-lived, as if perfected by eternal repetition, the mood is darker, political space more claustrophobic, the climb out of the constraints of the moment more challenging. I am reminded of the Greek myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to an eternally recurring task of pushing a rock up a hill and then, just as he gets to the top, the rock slips downhill and Sisyphus has to descend towards the bowels of the earth and push the rock up the hill once more with the inspiration, energy and commitment needed to get the rock back up the hill. Yet, even as he reaches the top, the rock slips back down. Sisyphus has to follow it back down and repeat his labor all over again; this is his eternally recurrent punishment.
Perhaps Sisyphus represents to us an inevitable dimension of political engagement: the labor of justice is relentless. Yes, we have been here before, but it may be because the challenges of social conflict in Sri Lanka persist. Working towards a more just Sri Lanka is that kind of Sisyph-ian labor, where, even when we descend back into the darkest hell, we need to be able to summon up the inspiration, energy and commitment to imagine the pinnacle of the hill and once again move forward – even if moving forward also means moving uphill.
However, perhaps, the story also represents a warning. Like Sisyphus we have been too tied to a single boulder and a single hill – the idea of a singular ‘solution’ to the ethnic conflict. Territorial power sharing has been the central, and in most cases, the sole focus of efforts addressing the ethnic conflict. A cursory survey of past peace proposals evidence a continued focus on different constitutional frameworks for devolution as paths towards a ‘solution’ to the ethnic conflict – federalism, provincial councils, interim self-governing regional authorities, district councils, and various other approaches to regional autonomy and power sharing.
With the back drop of past debates, I want to argue that justice struggles, including struggles for inter-ethnic justice, should not only be aimed at renegotiating the territorial power sharing contract, but also the everyday questions of citizenship. I use the term ‘questions of citizenship’ here to refer not to passports and identity cards (although that too) but the range of issues that shape resources and meanings in our collective lives. These are issues that extend from questions of distribution to the space for dissent and accountability. Undoubtedly, entrenched ethnic injustice is a brutal dimension of the Sri Lankan landscape. Moreover, far reaching regional autonomy is an urgent and indispensable part of the way forward in addressing that injustice. However, it is not the only urgent and indispensable arena for political engagement, be it to address inter-ethnic injustice or any other dimension of injustice. For instance, in a context where journalists and political opponents have been under duress for exposing government abuses (be it the horrors of Menik farm or corruption charges against the President), background citizenship issues regarding dissent and accountability are critical to advancing inter-ethnic justice. This entails not just a focus on devolution but on trying to expand political space in Sri Lanka more generally.
The near exclusive focus on territorial sovereignty as the solution to the ethnic conflict has been carried forward by fellow travelers of diverse political stripes. There was the unhappy synergy with the LTTE’s self-serving definition of the horizon of politics as the control of territorial sovereignty such that questions of citizenship would be deferred to a post-Eelam world. Thus contentious issues of accountability, dissent and democratization (dimensions of what I refer to in this article as ‘questions of citizenship’) were sacrificed to an ever receding horizon. We got terror in the name of territory.
The near exclusive focus on configurations of territorial sovereignty was the focus not only of the LTTE but also of many groups committed to a political solution – in fact, the very concept of a political solution was equated with constitutional frameworks for territorial devolution. This was sometimes driven by a series of problematic homologies between ethnic identity and interest, interest and political representation. The resulting interventions served to further marginalize those issues (such as class) that were not captured by the devolution agenda. Concomitantly, it also further marginalized groups (such as hill-country Tamils) who were victims of a vicious majoritarianism, but whose situation was unlikely to be radically transformed by devolution to the North and East.  Thus while many worked diligently towards a political solution, the assumptions that shaped their vision were limited and regressive. Moreover it spurred an approach that may well have been self-defeating because it defeated more transformative agendas and thwarted solidarities with groups and issues that were not addressed by the contours of territorial sovereignty alone.
The problem was not only ethnic or regional parochialism, however; it was also a statist understanding of politics. With constitutionalism occupying a privileged political space, many embraced sovereignty, and the notion that getting the macro power-sharing formula right would be the key to everything else below. The lofty heights of constitutionalism and a renegotiated definition of statehood would deliver inter-ethnic justice. Statism is not merely an academic mistake; this impoverished vision of justice bears some responsibility for the disempowering of citizens, the erosion of the space for dissent and the diminishing of alternative political futures.
To examine the issues at stake, we may want to consider territorial sovereignty and citizenship as twin preoccupations that have dominated the politics of constitutional engagement in Sri Lankan. The former brought  with it a focus on federalism and alternative constitutional approaches to power-sharing; the latter has involved a focus on associational rights, distributive justice, civil liberties, limits on the abuse of power and a host of other matters that are critical to an empowered citizenry. It should be underscored that these are not alternative but complementary preoccupations. This is hardly a new point for many readers. However through the past several decades, the majority of past political interventions seeking to address the ethnic problem have focused disproportionately on proposals for devolution as the sine qua non of advancing inter-ethnic justice. Even when we have had a wide ranging set of constitutional proposals on the table (the PA proposals of ’95 and 2000 for instance), much of the discussion at that time assessed those proposals’ relevance to ‘solving’ the ethnic conflict by focusing overwhelmingly on the provisions for regional autonomy (rather than how different constitutional provisions empowered or disempowered social movements or impacted questions of distribution and redistribution). To the extent that it neglected or crowded out questions of citizenship, the focus on devolution may have not been part of the solution but part of the problem.
If our history to date hadn’t already made this evident, the Rajapakse regime has made it clear that approaching the domain of devolution and the domain of citizenship as such separate spheres entails the defeat of progressive forces on both fronts. Anyone interested in a just approach to the ethnic conflict and its legacies has to also be focused on the everyday issues regarding citizenship.  All Sri Lankans have borne the cost of seeing issues related to federalism or regional autonomy as minority issues or ‘Tamil’ issues, and issues such as labor rights, free speech claims or land rights as ‘Sri Lankan’ issues. The legal and political terrain of the PTA and high security zones offer the most pointed evidence about the continuities between the “micro” politics of the everyday, and the “macro” politics regarding territorial sovereignty.  However, these continuities surface constantly in quotidian political and legal struggles. For instance, just a few days ago an indigent, mostly Muslim community in Slave Island were rendered homeless when the Defense department ordered the bulldozing of their homes, shanties that Gotabhaya Rajapakse had declared an ‘eye sore’ – these are issues about inter-ethnic justice in the most significant sense. Even if there was a federal solution for the North and East, these families will remain vulnerable to the abuse of power – not only because they are Muslims (although this greatly exacerbates their vulnerability), but also because they live in a country where the political space of all citizens to resist such abuse has become much diminished.
A focus of the kind we have discussed here entails recalibrating our political imagination towards change that Roberto Unger has called “incremental but radical.” We cannot postpone the challenges of citizenship till we achieve federalism, the 13th Amendment or any alternative horizon of devolution. If we don’t critically rethink past approaches, like Sisyphus, we will be condemned to the eternal task of struggling to take a boulder up the hill that will roll down towards the depths of hell; it will take us with it, again and again.
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There is going to be No devolution to the north and east any legislation that damages the Sinhalese Buddhist identity of Sri Lanka will not be passed please try to understand this clearly
A very interesting piece. The same points were made by Prof Nira Wickramasingha in Open Democracy over a year ago. To my mind any progress along these lines would need a change in the UNP leadership, making it a viable social democratic or national-democratic vehicle.
Susantha,
What would you do if MR offers devolution and implements it? Would you take up arms? Please outline your strategy while explaining the concept of a Sri Lankan identity as opposed to a Sinhala Buddhist identity in quest of nation building!
some people need to realize that Sri Lanka has been multi-cultural/religious from early times and it’s pretty anemic to try and paint SL as solely a ” Sinhala-Buddhist” country or, god forbid, an island that has been united as a single political entity with the Sinhala Buddhist identity for two thousand years!
Susantha suggests, that there is going to be no devolution that damages the Sinhala Buddhist identity of Sri Lanka. Could he kindly explain how devolution could damage Sinhala Buddhist identity. Does he deny the fact that Sri Lanka has a plural society and that this land belongs to everyone of us ?
If a majority of its citizens think that this country belongs exclusively to the Sinhala Buddhists , Sri Lanka will never have peace and it could end up as an oppressive bloody country which has thrown the principles of Buddhism to the winds and calls itself a Buddhist country.
Devolution is not possible until the Executive Presidency clause is done away with. Remember that Karuna and Pillaiyan – in the East – were handpicked by Mahinda. Basil Rajapakse is in charge of arranging development work in the North. The never-ending military presence in the North and East (be it monuments, camps, bases, high security zones, etc.) can be traced directly back to the Defense Ministry – run by Gothabaya Rajapakse. Supposing a federal solution is in place, it is easy to see how the picture would rapidly change. Local communities would take charge of the developmental work. The military presence would be minimal. It is clear then that the Government is not interested in empowering local communities in the North and East to take charge of their own affairs. The Government has a vested financial and political interest in running the show from Colombo, using a heavy military presence and carefully chosen Tamil stooges (e.g. Devananda) to implement its agenda. The integration of the military with the civil service, reinforced by the all-encompassing powers of the Executive Presidency, ensure that the status quo will not change, except as the Center dictates.
You maybe surprised at the number of people who have the same attitude as Susantha even though they do not say it openly in a forum like Groundviews.
Furthermore the SLFP has always had a Sinhala Buddhist identity around it. The only time it had it to a lesser extent was when Chandrika BK was in power.
MCM Iqbal,
Racism is at the bottom of Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem.
MCM Iqbal
the minorities in sri lanka are entitled to only representation proportional to their numbers(which is allready available (by Parliament representation) they are entitled to nothing more.anyone who wants more can go to Tamil Nadu.
Niranjan
so whats the bid deal dude we are in a position of power and we don’t have to bow down to illegal immigrants/kalathoni squatters and dutch/British imported tobacoo/tea leaf pluckers anymore as we now have a real king a mighty lion to lead us and protect us
Niranjan
The UNP has also had a strong sinhala Buddhist identity before Ranil Wickremasinghe It is late UNP leaders such as DS Senanayake and JR Jayawardene that worked hard to wipe out tamil national aspirations from Sri Lanka. Especially the late JR Jayawardene who was determined to see the tamil separatists silenced even many sinhala nationalist people don’t understand the value of this great leader and the value of the work he did.Eelam would have already been created if the UNP leaders like JR,DS,Dudley,Gamini did not create massive sinhala settlements in the north east today it is impossible for the tamils to claim the east as a tamil area as a result of the work of former UNP governments.Mahinda Rajapakse would never have been able to upgrade the Sri Lankan military to the present standard if JR Jayawardene did not use his personal contacts in Israel and Britain to provide a foundation to the Sri Lankan forces and to build foreign relations.Ranil Wickremasinghe is with the the tamils as he does not have any other vote base not because he has a any care for them and he signed the CFA because the country’s economy was in a bad position and the sri lankan military faced huge defeats in the north and he was forced to sighn the CFA.The CFA resulted in an economic boom which helped us equip our military and afford a defense budget of US$1.5 billion.I give due respect to Mahinda Rajapakse for wiping out tamil terrorism but that doesn’t mean that past leaders have not contributed to the national cause.
“Supposing a federal solution is in place, it is easy to see how the picture would rapidly change. Local communities would take charge of the developmental work.”
Ha ha what a joke. If federalism were to be put in place, regional politicians like Douglas and Karuna would take charge of the development $$. Heshan doesn’t know anything about how federalism works in the real world.
Friend Wijayapala:
Douglas and Karuna were handpicked by Mahinda – for a very simple reason. Let me explain by analogy. Suppose you have a dog. You can train the dog to excrete at certain times of the day, as well as certain places. You can also train the dog to obey certain commands such as “jump!” and “come here!.” Douglas and Karuna behave in a similar manner, when it comes to politics. I need not remind you who the master is that issues the commands. Let me end this by saying that Eastern Tamils dislike Karuna with a passion, and Douglas did not dare visit Jaffna while the LTTE was still around.
PS: A reference to Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus would have been nice….and in order.
And for all other except Susantha and the likes of him:
Please don’t waste your good energy on trying to enlighten extreme brown-necks of the caliber of Susantha. No matter how good your case, it will never work with these supremists who have been the root cause of the nation’s ethnic problem.
iam for the federal setup in s.l. . iam for a f.s. not because of the rubbish homeland theory of many tamils.in a f.s. the people living in a particular state are in a position to develope their state together with the central g. according to their wishes.many sinhalese beleive f.s. is seperation or in a small country like s.l. their is no need for such a setup.in a f.s. the defence as well as the foreign policy is determined by the central government,even judicary,monetary policies to a vast extent is determined by the central government.india i would say is not seperated because she has a federal system.now in a federal setup no federal state should have the power to stop other ethnians or people from other states to come and live in their state with equal rights.this i stress specially because of the mindset of the tamils from the n. p..many tamils from the north province specially the elite,living even in sinhale dominated provinces envisage a state in s.l. only for them.they would even like to keep out other so called low born tamils.their policy iam sorry to say is to have the whole cake for them in the north province,and if possible also in the e.p. and share the cake in the other provinces.this mindset has to change,tamils (ELITE) specially the tna should be flexible.please keep in mind the muslims except for the language has nothing in commen with the tamils,specially from the n.p..i can remember long long ago a tamil from the eastern province telling a tamil from the n.p. “we tamils in the e.p. live in harmony with the other ethnians in the e.p. , you tamils from the n.p please do not create problems for us in the e.p. “.living in europe and associating with many tamils and muslims iam sorry to say the northen man has got dificultiesin assymilating with others,other than their own people.to the sinhale buddhist i say s.l. belongs to all of us,irrespective of race etc. etc.may be h.e mahinda r. would solve this e.p.as well as the economic problems and other problems we have.it has become easier for him now because the national socialist party ,the jvp is allmost dead,the jhu may shout but power they dont have. ranjit de mel berlin/colombo.
WHAT IS BACK TO FUTURE, HOW YOU GO BACK TO FUTURE- PLEASE EXPLAIN. AND
WHAT IS THIS MEAN:” Over the last decades, again and again, there has been a turn to alternative constitutional architectures for territorial sovereignty as a solution to the ethnic conflict – a range of diverse proposals for power sharing by disaggregating statehood that run on the continuum from devolution in a unitary state to proposals for regional structures in a federal state.”
PLEASE REMEMBER THIS SITE IS 100% SRI LANKAN VIEWING SIGHT , IF YOU WRITE IN THIS FORM – I WONDER SOMETHING IS WRONG IN JOURNALISM- PLEASE MAKE THE SUBJECT SIMPLE , CLEAR READABLE TO LAYMEN LIKE ME.
IS THIS ARTICLE A MACHINE TRANSLATION FORM TAMIL TO ENGLISH?
Given your spelling and grammar, small wonder that you find it difficult to engage with the content on this ‘sight’ (sic).
The pundits who dictated for the implementation of 13th amendment had a great loss with the defeating of terrorism militarily.Perhaps there are few more who are still hanting the society with so called 13th amendment which takes the nation nowhere but to another catastrophy.(Those who calimed that they were the sole representativ of tamil community TNA too had ahad blow at the last election and which gives aclear example that ordinary tamils are not wrried about adevolution of power but certain politicians.The only lasting solution for the government is to craft a programmes which address the issues of tamils with out a delay without discriminating them
Susantha,
Positions of power can change over a period of time. It may not take six years.
You cannot run a country with majority backing only (you can do so for awhile). Ranil W has the backing of minorities and a segment of the Sinhalese. What he has to do is increase his support base amongst the Sinhalese. If he cannot do that there are others in the UNP who can do that.
The UNP has initiated reforms so let us wait and see.
illegal immigrants/kalathoni squatters and dutch/British imported tobacoo/tea leaf pluckers – the above are citizens of this country and have rights under the Constitution. The same rights as us. It does not matter from where they came from. They are not second class citizens by any means.
The President of this country is for all Sri Lankans and not just for the Sinhalese.
The President is a President elected under the Constitution. Sri Lanka is not a monarchy now. So how can an elected President be a King?
Niranjan do u know that Ranil W s relations are quite nationalist people.including his brother
Niranjan
how can the UNP expect to increase its support among the Sinhalese without adopting the Sinhalese view.At present only about 20% of Sinhalese support and that also is because there are traditional UNP families and by the next six years it will be impossible to grant devolution by law and by geographic conditions.even at the cost of our lives we will eradicate all avenues to achieve Tamil self determination
and like you say all people have equal rights but there is a difference between equal rights and rights to self determination
Niranjan
Also tell me a country in the world where Majority specially when its over 70% is not ruling that particular country and Sri Lanka s economy will improve and it will mainly strengthen the majority not the minority Sri lanka has invested in education and we will have an educated wealthy powerful society that will rule Sri lanka .Sri lanka rightfully belongs to the Sinhalese historically its a historical fact with evidence to support If i say that Sri lanka does not belong to Sinhalese is it not an insult to the Sinhalese? if Sri lanka is not the Sinhala country where is the Sinhala country?
Susantha, I think people are wasting their time arguing with you because you are merely a parody of the Sinhala nationalist extremist voice. I recall that over a year ago we had your alter ego here – Susan Goon, who played the same role.
But for all those on this site, who believe a modicum of the nonsense represented in this voice (whatever the motivation for its presence here) the Sinhala country is ONLY IN YOUR MIND. And the mind, as the Buddha said, is a very powerful thing. Control your mind, control your self.
The people of this still beautiful island (and I’ve been in many places in the world and will affirm it despite all what we’ve gone through in the last 25 years) are a very mixed and unfortunately (although it does not have to be that way, since there are others who might celebrate this richness) mixed-up, as in CONFUSED people, originating from waves of Indian and other immigrants with a strong sprinkling of Vedda heritage – and who knows where the latter came from? As long as there are oceans and canoes, people travel.
The fact that some people came to believe themselves (read LIE to themselves) as Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims or Burghers and therefore have or not have a special claim on the land is merely an accident of history and a legacy of IGNORANCE. We might tolerate this kind of ignorance from rural people living in remote hamlets in the interior of the country, but it is high time it is eliminated from the minds of people who can access the internet and are living in the 21st century.
Susantha, you are merely a parody of the extremist Sinhalist voice and people are wasting their time arguing with you. I recall your alter ego, Susan Goon, on this site, one year ago who played the same role and I’m not sure what your motivation is.
However, for all of those people on this site, who might actually believe a modicum of the nonsense, represented by this voice, I would like to say that the Sinhala country is ONLY IN YOUR MIND. And the mind, as the Buddha said, is a very powerful thing, Control your mind, control you self.
The people of this still beautiful island (I’ve been to many places in the world and will continue to affirm the beauty of its landscape) are a very mixed and unfortunately (because there are other places where this richness might have been a cause for celebration), mixed-up, as in CONFUSED, people – originating from waves of Indian and other immigrants, with a strong sprinkling of Vedda heritage. And who knows where the latter came from? If there are oceans and canoes, people will travel.
The fact that these mixed and mixed-up people believe (read LIE to themselves) that they are Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim or Burgher and therfore have or have not a special claim to this land is an accident of history and a legacy of IGNORANCE. We might tolerate this ignorance from rural people living in remote hamlets of the interior of this land. However, it is high time that this ignorance is eliminated from the minds of people who can access the internet and live in the 21st century.
Susantha,
Sri Lanka does not belong to the Sinhalese only. There is nothing called a Sinhala country. Not even the Constitution calls Sri Lanka a Sinhala country. There are Tamils, Muslims, Athiests, Agnostics, Christians, Veddhas who live here. So how can it be an exclusive Sinhala country? As Amartya Sen says in the same vein ” How can India be a Hindu country when there are Muslims, Christians etc who also live there.
The majority is Sinhalese but that does not make us a Sinhala country. It is a Sinhala majority country but not an exclusive Sinhala country.
Before the Indian settlers arrived in Sri Lanka this island was inhabited by the veddhas.
There are those in the UNP who can adopt the Sinhalese view as well while respecting the views of minorities. There are reforms envisaged in the UNP. If the reforms go through the UNP can increase its vote base.
When Sarath Fonseka contested the UNP increased its vote base. We may see a similar situation in future.
Ranil W is an internationalist. He would make a good Foreign Minister. He has the West on his side.
The popularity of this Government will decline during the next six years. The economic woes are increasing as the war victory fades. That is why the Government is sending its people all over the world in a bid to mend relations with the West and get economic aid such as the GSP plus.
The Government is still to change the Constitution. It needs the two thirds which it did not get at the election. The 13 amendment is still a part of the Constitution. So let us wait and see.