Image courtesy Daily News

Forty years ago this week, at the auspicious time of 12:34 p.m. at the Navarangahala on 22^nd May 1972, a new constitution was signed into law, creating the Republic of Sri Lanka. This was the first time in the history of the island that the republican form of state was established, discounting the period under which parts of the littoral were controlled by the Dutch East India Company during the time the Netherlands were a confederated republic. Given that the political history of the island spans over two millennia from its mytho-historical origins, four decades might not seem like a long time. But looking back to 1970-72, the country and the world in which the first republican constitution was created seems very different from the present, although the continuing resonance of many of the dominant themes of that era are still felt in today’s Sri Lanka.

In the Third World, it was the epoch of anti-colonialism and nationalism, of non-alignment and nationalisation. Many still regarded Marxism-Leninism seriously as a viable prescription for the political and economic organisation of newly independent states, and revolution as the means and method of social change. Autochthony and autarky were the mood music of the time. Both of Sri Lanka’s two republican constitutions were created in the 1970s: the decade, as some satirists have called it, that sanity forgot. It is one of the more benign ironies of our modern constitutional history that while the socialist progenitors of the 1972 constitution were content to describe their handiwork as simply the Republic of Sri Lanka, it is J.R. Jayewardene who added two ideological adjectives to the official name of the country in 1978, although the extent to which his Bonapartist constitution is either democratic or socialist is at least debatable.

The first four decades of the life of the republic has been nothing if not eventful, experiencing insurrectionary and secessionist challenges to its mainstream political system from without, and elective authoritarianism and institutional decay from within. Since 2009, the month of May also marks another significant event: the conclusion for the foreseeable future of the military phase of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. In the last three years, there has been extensive debate about what is and what ought to be Sri Lanka’s post-war constitutional, political and societal dispensation. While the republican form is largely taken for granted in these debates – although perhaps it should not be, given the monarchical presidentialism that dominates the institutional architecture and political culture of the Sri Lankan state – it is the contestation over ideas closely associated with republicanism that recalls many of the concerns which animated the process of constitutional change forty years ago: sovereignty, democracy, citizenship, pluralism, nationalism, secularism, and what ought to be the constitutional form of the polity that preserves its unity in diversity.

A review of the particular ways in which those constitutional questions were dealt with at the historic moment of the formation of the republic would therefore seem to have some value as we engage in the post-war constitutional debate. I do not however intend to provide a comprehensive treatment of the 1972 constitution, or a descriptive account of the proceedings in the Constituent Assembly in 1970-72 for, being relatively recent, much of this history is generally well known. I intend instead to focus in this essay on one of the main issues that remains important in the present: the process by which constitutional change was effected in 1970-72, and the implications the choice of that particular process has had in the constitutional and political development of the republic since. It is of course an issue that has topical relevance, as we engage with the modalities and processes, including the proposed Parliamentary Select Committee, by which a new constitutional settlement is to be discussed and agreed in post-war Sri Lanka.

The idea that Ceylon should become a republic, and sever the constitutional links that had survived the grant of independence as a dominion in 1948, had been gestating for some time before the 1970 general election. It was a consistent demand of the Old Left from before 1948, and after the populist-nationalist watershed of 1956, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike had appointed a Joint Select Committee of Parliament to consider ways of revising the constitution which included the establishment of a republic. Although centre-left nationalists of SLFP-led coalitions did hold power between 1956 and 1965 (except for a brief interregnum in 1960), these administrations were so crisis-ridden that constitutional reform could not become a priority. But the constitutional model to which we were gravitating from 1956 onwards – that of the republic within the Commonwealth established by an elected Constituent Assembly – had already been founded by India in 1950. The alliance of the Old Left with the SLFP 1964 onwards, in government (1964-65) and in opposition (1965-70), both prioritised constitutional reform and made the likelihood of a democratic mandate for creating a republic a realistic possibility.

It is clear that by the late 1960s the republican ideal had caught the imagination of the public. This is apparent, firstly, from the fact that the UNP-led National Government tried to seize the initiative from the centre-left opposition on this issue by appointing a Joint Select Committee to revise the constitution, and secondly by the fact that even the Federal Party was clearly in favour of a republic, provided that it provided for federal autonomy for the north and east. However, beyond differing ideological visions of the future republic, what divided the UNP and the centre-left opposition in the second half of the 1960s was the preferred method or process by which fundamental change could be effected to the Soulbury constitution. Could the latter be repealed and replaced with a republican constitution according to its own amendment procedure, as the UNP argued, or could a republic be established only by recourse to a revolutionary or extra-legal procedure, as the centre-left coalition argued, because elements of the Soulbury constitution were understood to be absolutely unamendable?

This political divide refracted a genuine theoretical dilemma that confronted constitutional lawyers at the time. The legal quandary arose in the context of certain observations about the scope and content of Section 29 of the Soulbury constitution made by British judges in the Privy Council in several cases of the 1960s, in which it was suggested that the anti-discrimination provision was absolutely unamendable, even by a two-thirds majority. The Privy Council in London was then the final court of appeal for Ceylon, and as such, the final adjudicator of constitutional questions under the Soulbury constitution. Section 29 was the pivotal minority protection mechanism of the Soulbury constitution, which constitutionally restricted the Parliament of Ceylon from enacting legislation having the effect of discriminating against any ethnic or religious community. Section 29 also laid down the procedure for constitutional amendment, for which it established essentially three requirements: a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives; a simple majority in the Senate; and a certificate from the Speaker that the requisite two-thirds had been obtained in the passage of the amendment bill.

In the August 1968 House of Representatives debate on the motion to reappoint the Joint Select Committee on the Revision of the Constitution, the two positions on this matter were clearly enunciated by Dr Colvin R. de Silva for the opposition (in typically florid fashion), and by the Minister of State J.R. Jayewardene for the government (in characteristically sphinx-like interventions). Mr Jayewardene’s position was that notwithstanding the Privy Council’s views, the wording of Section 29 (4) was clear to the effect that any part or all of the constitution was amendable by the Ceylon Parliament, provided the procedural requirement of the two-thirds majority was obtained. Dr de Silva adverted to the same Privy Council cases in making his argument that the Parliament of Ceylon did not have the power to amend certain parts of the constitution, specifically the anti-discrimination provision in Section 29 (2). He stated that while he did not approve of the implications of the Privy Council judgments in terms of Ceylon’s sovereignty and independence, he had no choice but to agree that the Privy Council’s observations to the effect that Section 29 (2) was unamendable reflected the correct legal position.

There were two extensions to this argument: firstly, that the Parliament of Ceylon, and therefore Ceylon itself, was not sovereign under the Soulbury constitution; and secondly, that if an independent and sovereign republic were to be established, it would have to be done by a process other than the procedure laid out in the Soulbury constitution (in other words, a process that would be technically illegal). It would be only through a process that was completely divorced from the fetters of the Soulbury constitution and of its amendment procedure that the people of Ceylon would be able to exercise their sovereignty in enacting a truly independent republic. Although Dr de Silva’s view had the support of eminent legal academics like Dr C.F. Amerasinghe at the time, there are at least three reasons, in addition to the plain meaning of Section 29 (4) relied upon by Jayewardene, why his view could be argued to be erroneous, or at the very least, an overstatement of the problem.

Firstly, all of the Privy Council’s comments which were cited in support of this argument were obiter dicta, i.e., the part of the judicial decision that is non-biding because it does not directly relate to the main issues on which the decision turned. There was no reason therefore to treat these observations as cast in stone. Dr de Silva’s excessive emphasis on them thus raises questions as to whether he was doing so because it helped to further his broader argument in favour of the need for an extra-legal process to create the future republic.

Secondly, given Sir Ivor Jennings’s involvement in the drafting of the Soulbury constitution and specifically Section 29, it is very clear that this provision was intended to only impose a procedural restriction in the form of the two-thirds requirement on Parliament’s legislative power, and not an absolute or substantive restriction. If the procedural requirement imposed by the higher law, the constitution, was met, Parliament could effect any change it wished on the constitution, including Section 29. There was thus no provision that was absolutely protected from change, contrary to the obiter remarks of the Privy Council.

There is no doubt from Jennings’ writings on the Soulbury constitution that this is what was intended in the formulation of Section 29, but it does require some background explanation. One of Jennings’ major contributions to Commonwealth constitutional law and theory during the mid-twentieth century is what is known as the doctrine of ‘manner and form’ entrenchment. This holds, contrary to the orthodox doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty associated with A.V. Dicey in the context of the unwritten British constitution, that the substantive competence of a Parliament is not affected by procedural limitations placed by a written constitution on the manner and form in which it should exercise its legislative power. Thus for example, the requirement in Section 29 (4) that a two-thirds majority was required for constitutional amendments, and that the Speaker should certify that such a majority has been obtained, are procedural requirements, setting out the manner and form in which the legislative power of Parliament should be exercised in amending the constitution. According to Jennings’ theory, this did not affect the substantive competence of the Ceylon Parliament to amend the Soulbury constitution, provided the procedural requirements were met.

So two types of legislation, i.e., laws that could have the effect of communal or religious discrimination, and laws to amend the constitution, were procedurally but not absolutely entrenched under the Soulbury constitution. The Privy Council’s suggestion – enthusiastically seized upon by Dr de Silva because it strengthened his argument in favour of the need for a constitutional revolution – that there were parts of the constitution that were absolutely unamendable in perpetuity therefore was clearly made in ignorance of Jennings’ theory, and the influence of that theory on the formulation of Section 29.

Thirdly, the extension of the Diceyan view of unfettered parliamentary sovereignty to countries with a written constitution intended to operate as a law higher than and binding on the legislature, could imply that such legislatures were legally not sovereign, and critically, that countries with such constitutional restrictions on the legal competence of their legislatures were not really sovereign. This unfortunate and theoretically incorrect equation of parliamentary sovereignty with legal independence was the approach that was once again instrumentally seized upon by Dr de Silva in his role as the principal spokesman for the republican centre-left of the 1960s. If this were true, then it leads to the absurd conclusion that no country subscribing to the principle of constitutional (rather than parliamentary) supremacy could be said to independent, including the former British colonies of the United States and India, as well as the dominions of Australia and Canada. To this day in Sri Lankan constitutional debates, we see this conception of sovereignty and independence asserting itself against the principle of constitutional supremacy. The fetishisation of centralisation that constituted part of the justification for the design of the National State Assembly in the 1972 constitution (continued in the 1978 constitution in other ways), and in its incarnation as the unitary state, for the fateful rejection of the Federal Party’s constitutional demands in the Constituent Assembly, flowed from this injurious theoretical confusion.

On a personal note, it was also deeply ironic that an individual who had, among other things, registered his aversion to imperialism by refusing the otherwise richly deserved professional accolade of Queen’s Counsel throughout his career, should be the champion of a constitutional doctrine that was so quintessentially British as the sovereignty of Parliament. And indeed, the attraction of the Diceyan conception of parliamentary sovereignty as conterminous with sovereign independence is pervasive within the Sri Lankan legal community, and especially strong among Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist defenders of the unitary state. This is explicable to the extent that the unitary state is parasitic upon parliamentary sovereignty, but as my colleague Rohan Edrisinha has shown in his critique of the Sinhala Commission’s constitutional analyses and prescriptions, it is a peculiar paradox that such paragons of indigenous authenticity should be so dependent on the old imperial oppressor for their constitutional arguments.

I find it quite impossible to believe that Dr de Silva was acting in ignorance when he took up these positions in the constitutional debates of the 1960s. He was too good a lawyer, too broad an intellect, had too much time between 1964 and 1970, and in the close company of too many scholarly colleagues – in particular, Dr N.M. Perera, whose postdoctoral work had been on comparative parliamentary democracy – to have been unaware of the issues I have raised above. To me, therefore, it suggests that he was being at least partly disingenuous on the question of the constitutional procedure to be adopted for the future establishment of the republic, playing up the Privy Council cases in order to not merely strengthen the argument that the Soulbury constitution was a foreign imposition that the Ceylonese were saddled with forever, but also to remind the public that the highest judicial authority of Ceylon was a foreign court, associated with the person of a foreign monarch, that continued to limit our sovereignty.

In Dr de Silva we had a constitution-maker who combined the skills and disposition of the criminal defence advocate with a Trotskyite commitment to revolutionary constitutional change. Projected onto the opposition coalition in the run up to the 1970 general election, it is this combination of professional and ideological dispositions that led to the formation of a dominant interpretative position on the process of constitutional change, that would once put into practice in 1970-72, invite major theoretical questions about the legality and legitimacy of the republican constitutional order in the years to come.

Thus it was that once the United Front had won 77% of parliamentary seats (but, it is pertinent to recall, only 49% of votes) in the 1970 general election that the Constituent Assembly process was established and operated. The UF government therefore had the necessary parliamentary majority with which to amend the constitution legally in terms of the Soulbury constitution, but expressly chose not to do so. The procedure for constitutional amendment was deliberately ignored to signify ‘a complete break with the past.’ It was claimed that the source of authority for the new constitution was the people of Sri Lanka, deriving from the democratic mandate of the 1970 general election.

The symbolism aside, this argument makes no sense whatsoever from a constitutional perspective. How could a new republican constitution that repealed and replaced the granted constitution be held to be anything less than what it is merely because the existing legal procedure was followed in its enactment? On the contrary, the deliberate adoption of an illegal procedure for the foundation of the republic, when there was no pressing necessity for it, created an insalubrious precedent that may be used in the future for less defensible ends than what occurred in 1970-72. It was a meretricious indulgence of wholly figurative anti-imperialist ideological sentiments that would, by rupturing legal continuity, have grave consequences for the future Sri Lankan republic, without at the same time following the normative requirements of inclusivity and consensus that would have added through political legitimacy what was lost by procedural illegality.

While the Indian Constituent Assembly served as the inspiration for Ceylonese republican revolutionaries in the Soulbury era, none of the former’s scrupulous attention to widest possible representation and rigorously negotiated consensus seem to have registered with the latter. Moreover, while the Indian experience was regarded as a great revolutionary model of constitution-making, an examination of the detailed mechanics of how that body was established from the failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan onwards reveals that it was less literally ‘revolutionary’ than widely understood by Ceylonese admirers. As has been demonstrated in many other ways since, the Nehruvian political elite was more adept and relaxed in the dynamics of negotiation and the compromises of liberal democratic politics than what was the suggested by the slogans of its nationalist rhetoric, which our nationalists (from either side of the ethnic divide) have always taken rather too literally for the good of Sri Lanka’s pluralist democracy.

Concretely and immediately, the deliberate illegality of the Constituent Assembly process served to strengthen perceptions of the illegitimacy of its creature, the 1972 constitution, on both democratic and pluralist grounds. The UF’s two-thirds parliamentary majority was the product of the first-past-the-post electoral system then in operation, which enabled the votes of less than half of the electorate to be reflected in such disproportionate parliamentary representation. The question that naturally arose was: can a party that had obtained the support of only 49% of the country in terms of total votes, purport to speak for the entire country, in all its diversity, in the making of a constitution for a new republic? This aspect of its mandate was especially problematic for a government that would in the constitution-making process go on to use its overwhelming parliamentary majority to settle every question; that is, to adopt wholly majoritarian justifications for having its own way rather than inclusive, consultative, deliberative and consensual decision-making procedures in the negotiation of the content of the future constitution. This question would have arisen with lesser force had the UF followed the amendment procedure of the Soulbury constitution, because its parliamentary majority would then have been defensible on the grounds of constitutionality.

The illegal procedure also compounded the complete failure of the Constituent Assembly to sustain the support of the vast majority of Sri Lankan Tamils to the new republic by the contempt with which it treated the demand for autonomy. Instead the Constituent Assembly drafted a constitution that seemed to only reflect the constitutional worldview of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority, in terms of the ‘foremost place’ for Buddhism, the privileged constitutional status for Sinhala, and of course the unitary state that was instantiated in both structural and symbolic terms. It thus added to the illegitimacy of the entire post-republican constitutional order from the perspective of a plural polity, an argument that has been made by Tamil nationalist and especially Tamil separatist voices with more validity than should be the case. The combination of illegality and majoritarianism of the Constituent Assembly created the theoretical space for Tamil nationalists to assert a separate sovereignty on the basis of their lack of consent to the republican constitutional order. An argument made first and most completely by M. Tiruchelvam Q.C., in the Amirthalingam Trial-at-Bar in 1976, and in more demotic terms in the Vaddukoddai Resolution of the same year, this continues to reverberate, making invocations of popular sovereignty and democratic mandates a double-edged sword for Sri Lankan governments even today. While one can politically disagree with the separatist implications of such arguments, it is much more difficult as a matter of legal theory to reject their validity.

Indeed, it was not merely in relation to the loyalty of the Tamils to the new republic that the unadulterated majoritarianism of the 1970-72 constitution-making process proved problematic. It gave grounds for the UNP to change the constitution at the next available opportunity on the basis of the claim that the 1972 constitution only reflected the views of those who had voted for the UF in the 1970 general election. While it is likely that the horrors of the 1978 constitution might have occurred regardless, it is inescapable that the precedent for unbridled majoritarianism and governmental unilateralism in constitution-making was established when Sri Lanka became a republic in 1970-72: a point that present-day hagiographers of the 1972 constitution like Tissa Vitharana would do well to keep in mind. Quite clearly, therefore, the form of the 1970-72 process emerges as a singularly inappropriate way by which to construct a durable democratic republic with strong social foundations in our plural polity; an argument to which the past four decades of instability and extra-institutional violence bears sad testimony.

My purpose in raising these issues is neither historical revisionism nor the expression of some reactionary nostalgia for the dominion constitution, although I do believe that from the perspective of liberal democratic values, the Soulbury constitution succeeded better than either of the two republican constitutions that have been the result of much vaunted ‘home grown’ processes. I think that by the late 1960s the democratic aspiration for the establishment of a Sri Lankan republic was exceedingly clear and probably inexorable. There was thus no reason why an extra-constitutional process was necessary, except for the sheer symbolism of the act, and even less reason for the crude majoritarianism that characterised it. Based on the questionable rationales I have described above, the process that was chosen for the creation of the republic was driven, not only by majoritarian calculations, but also by excessive partisanship. The Old Left, once the exemplar of multi-ethnic accommodation on the basis of the Marxist approach to nations and nationalities, failed to alleviate the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism of its SLFP ally, and were at one with the SLFP’s authoritarianism in its commitment to centralisation.

These problematic choices with regard to process forty years ago have given rise to enduring questions about the nature, legality and legitimacy of the Sri Lankan republic that were entirely avoidable. As the Indian Constituent Assembly and constitution had shown, legitimacy is the measure of both revolutionary constitution-making as well as republican constitutionalism. By that standard, the Sri Lankan Constituent Assembly and 1972 constitution were an abject failure, and the Sri Lankan republic continues to suffer the consequences.

Are we capable of learning the lessons of the past in respect of pluralism and tolerance, negotiation and compromise, constitutionality and restraint, as we re-engage in a process of constitutional change in post-war Sri Lanka? We shall soon be able to see in the Parliamentary Select Committee.

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Note: The Sri Lankan Republic at 40: Reflections on Constitutional History, Theory and Practice, an edited collection of critical and inter-disciplinary essays by leading Sri Lankan and international scholars, marking the 40^th anniversary of the enactment of the 1972 constitution and the establishment of the Sri Lankan republic, will be published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), later this year.

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Long Reads brings to Groundviews long-form journalism found in publications such as Foreign Policy, The New Yorker and the New York Times. This section, inspired by Longreads, offers more in-depth deliberation on key issues covered on Groundviews

• BUDGET OR NO BUDGET? IT IS A CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION
• Constitutional Reforms in Sri Lanka: What was asked for, What was promised and What is going to be offered?
• Reforming the Constitutional Council
• Deliberative Democracy and the Sri Lankan Parliamentary Committee System
• The Island Abstains

Image courtesy CNN

It has been a couple of days since the former military commander of Sri Lankan Army and common opposition’s presidential candidate General Sarath Fonseka was released from the prisons and I can’t think of a better timing than this for me to express some of my thoughts related to these developments, which I am sure many here would share with me, at yet another crucial time for our nation.

First of all, many have correctly pointed out to me about the technicality of the use of the rank General when referring to Mr. Fonseka and it is my personal belief that it is one way for me to demonstrate my suspicion as to whether the so-called court martial was really working in a fair, transparent manner contrary how it would have been through a civilian court, while at the same time joining thousands of fellow Sri Lankans who aren’t ready to forget the existence of the first-ever four star General the Sri Lankan armed forces had, however much his photos are altered from frames or name is being erased from plaques. Thus, I shall continue to refer to him as General Sarath Fonseka out of respect, admiration and also in solidarity with many others who have been meted with injustices simply because of political, religious, racial or ethnic prejudices against them.

As I have mentioned openly in a few occasions before, I have always used my vote, be it local government, provincial, parliamentary or presidential elections, based on the policies of candidates rather than party affiliations. I still remember the reasons behind my decision to vote for Mr. Rajapakse in 2005 to be the President as much the reasons for my vote for General Fonseka during the 2010 Presidential elections, which I have already published an article on in Groundviews. But as we know, some of his close political confidantes back then are no longer to be seen along with him and the same way some of the blocs who voted for him also consider that moment as one-off. However, as much as some commentators try to bring arguments saying the presidential election votes for General Fonseka were merely protest votes against Mr. Rajapakse and he doesn’t have a political standing, it would be so naïve to de-value his influence given that he had been one of those people to have had a consistent policy from the moment he stepped on to politics and on top of it the visible public affection and/or the respect he has earned during the last 30 months both, in and out of prisons, as a politician. Therefore even though he himself can’t stand for elections (for at least the next 5 years, according to some legal experts) still the influence he will have on Sri Lankan politics is unquestionable. This is specially at a time when the main opposition party is having its own set of internal problems and almost all the other political parties having had their own share of splits within. In that context, some of the very first words of General Fonseka being trying to unite the opposition rather than craving for positions, while mobilizing people for their socio-economical rights, is a mature approach.

As a citizen and someone who has seen a bloody conflict almost all throughout my lifetime of closer to 3 decades, given that we have already wasted the last 3 years as a nation after the end of the military conflict without any serious initiatives to address the root causes of the conflict; in my opinion, the direction General Fonseka will take in the next weeks and months on key issues, will for sure decide for itself if we can be hopeful of a turning-tide towards challenging the system to make civil liberties, transparency, equality and rule of law as priorities or whether we all will passively see our motherland moving away from being a real Democracy towards a state which may be identified as more of a Autocracy due to power-hungry politicians trying to cling to power at any cost. This shouldn’t be misinterpreted as if this is a call for change of regime per-se, but if the authorities are willing to change and do what’s best for the country, that’s much better.

A welcome statement he did make within 24 hours of being released was on the conduct of the current administration in handling international calls for accountability on allegations leveled by various parties about the military conflict and General Fonseka quite correctly reminded his policy from day one being that Sri Lanka should not dodge the questions and imply guilt, rather cooperate to establish the truth, whatever it may be. I am sure he is not foolish to understand even such a call would not go well within some of the vote blocs out of the cities, still he had the courage to make that statement needs to be applauded, even though some opportunistic politicians have been trying to brand him as a ‘traitor’ again for this statement. As someone who has had friends and family members affected and lost lives due to the almost 3 decades of military conflict in our country, I see this as a positive, mature and responsible statement towards reconciliation. This is not just because of the fact that General Fonseka has taken a bold step of talking about something which is considered not even up for mention by Sinhala nationalists and thus defying some of the nationalistic elements who were believed to be also supporting him, but still giving a perfect example of how Mr. Rajapakse’s administration also could have, if his administration had the will, to have spoken about harsh realities related to reconciliation in an assertive manner given the popularity he had soon after end of the military conflict 3 years ago.

This kind of a statement, at least, gives an opportunity to make justice for people who had to make the ultimate sacrifice during the war be it a Tamil like Nilukshan Sahadevan, my colleague from Sri Lankan Youth Parliament and a young budding journalist gunned down in the middle of the night in Jaffna at his home or a Sinhala youth like Captain Sandun Chanaka of Sinha Regiment, my class-mate for years at Richmond College in Galle, who was killed in Pudukudiyiruppu South in the last stages of the war or a Muslim like one of my relatives, who was also a provincial media person from North Central province killed along with his sibling and her husband in a suicide bomb blast a few years ago. And I wonder what a difference we could have made to our tiny island if sanity prevailed to the rulers 3 years ago as soon as the military conflict was over rather than the arrogance shown since then, on a victor’s mentality. So, I respect General Fonseka for making that statement which I am sure is not an easy task for himself being the commander of the army and chief strategist during the final few years of the war.

As a person having a huge popularity among the Sinhala community as well as the minorities and then the blocs who are already fed-up with economic hardships in the face of a near impunity for huge levels of corruption in the country and daily challenges to civil, political rights as citizens; I believe it is equally important for General Fonseka to make a bold statement about Sri Lankan society being multi-religious, multi-ethnic nature given the cautious distance some of the Tamils and Muslims have been maintaining from General Fonseka partly due to the apparently mis-quoted statement attributed to him, supposedly saying that the minority communities are ‘tourists’ in this country. A strong statement on that nature will not only make him more admired as a straight-talking leader but also will be of immense value to condemn the minority of violent extremists within the country who are trying to create challenges for religious harmony in our nation with situations like what happened in Dambulla recently and afterwards carried out by chauvinistic elements. After all I am sure General Fonseka himself will know how some of these politically or financially motivated monks make real Buddhists embarrassed by bigoted actions including the example of how his own framed pictures in the Nagadeepa Viharaya which were hanging for a long time suddenly went ‘missing’ soon after he was imprisoned, for reasons known only to the people or monks who did that, while it’s not really a mystery for anybody to guess in terms of the motivation behind them.

Having done this, on the challenge of uniting the opposition to make Sri Lankan politics towards a vibrant democracy rather than going towards like some of the single-party autocracies in other parts of the world; no one believes it is going to be an easy task. Yet, he will have to manage the charisma, admiration and respect he commands across the country and importantly from every part of the society to maneuver through the rough political terrains in bringing together , the young and old, ambitious and reserved, Northern and Southern, rich and poor, friends and old-friends, young people and the intellects, Marxists and the capitalists, and the list goes on; the same way he was able to strategise and restructure a whole military outfit with its own share of divisions and internal politics amidst challenging conditions to successfully complete a military conflict. In this sense, I personally like his idea of giving importance to civic education among the masses as a key factor and clearly stating how he would like to work on a broad level with all parties rather than trying to further divide an already fractured opposition.

And if we have a strong opposition it will help the country to be steered in the right direction by keeping the government in power (whoever it may be) in check and holding them responsible for every single action for the betterment of our own country. Crucially, he will also have to have an inclusive and responsible approach to be implemented in the aftermath of the mobilization of the opposition political parties and people towards their civic rights. If not, it would be like winning a war which many thought will never end but not being able to move towards establishing a long lasting peaceful, inclusive society just the same way it is now because of the policy of not having a real policy as shown over the last 3 years by the present administration. We have already had enough of our lifetimes wasted due to petty political ideological mistakes which have cost the nation immensely and we surely can’t afford to be passive observers when it is yet to be corrected.

I also have a feeling that we Sri Lankans have been quite selfish here by expecting a 61 year old gentleman who has done a lot for his country over four decades with dedication to do more rather than enjoying his life in retirement with his family. But General Fonseka himself says that he is ready to dedicate his life to correct the political system of this country for the sake of making sure we don’t lose any more for the years and generations to come.

And I don’t believe that he is going to be the miracle-man to push the government to do the right thing or get the opposition be strong to make it a vibrant democracy; rather we Sri Lankans lacked a voice to rally behind to challenge when we thought things weren’t right and we have finally got a straight-talking individual who is ready to take the leadership, despite the risks and challenges inherent to the role, to give a voice to the unheard, in a louder manner than before.

In that sense, I believe we as citizens are in desperate need of getting back our lost identity of being part of a Democratic, Inclusive, Transparent, Just Sri Lanka as much as a four star General stripped of his ranks and perks after 40 years of selfless service to the nation is desperately trying to justify to himself that he wants to make sure he will still do his part to hold politicians accountable for their actions for the sake of future generations.

And as long as that desire is fulfilled regardless of whether it is by forcing the current political leaders taking bold, decisive actions for the future of the country or by people democratically asking a different set of leaders to do the same; I am sure we all can be prouder to be Sri Lankans and do justice to all who made sacrifices in the last decades for causes which they believed were correct and selfless, in their own ways.

Welcome back to freedom, General Fonseka!

• General Fonseka and the interview
• Sarath Fonseka and the Role of the Opposition: Will Sanity Prevail?
• Rajapaksa vs Fonseka: Tweedledum vs Tweedledee?
• A response to Kusal Perera on political honesty and questioning Sarath Fonseka
• The opposition needs common sense, not a common candidate

Photo courtesy JDS

Against the backdrop of grave planetary changes, Sarath Fonseka’s release, G.L. Peiris’s visit to Washington DC and the third anniversary of the defeat of the LTTE, an evaluation of the requirements of reconciliation are in order.  There is a need to distinguish between the symbolic and the substantive – both in turn playing their part in the journey beyond conflict.

The consequences of Sarath Fonseka’s release are yet to be registered, as are the causes for it to be ascertained.  Speculation abounds about it as the grand symbolic act of reconciliation, which will distract attention from the lack of or tardiness in the implementation of the more substantive measures that need to be undertaken.  There are those who maintain that it is a great meritorious act, which will vitiate malefic planetary effects, others cite Fonseka’s health and there are the more prosaic and “unpatriotic” explanations of international pressure.  Finally there is the explanation that it is a savvy political act aimed at sowing greater discord amongst the opposition. A Machiavellian twist to this is the regime’s expectation that Fonseka as the cat amongst the pigeons in the opposition will in the end consume himself- his incarceration not having turned him into a Mandela.

Sarath Fonseka may in the short term at least galvanize, with varying degrees of success, that section of the polity for whom he is a hero and martyr and those generally despairing of the Rajapaksa’s and the available opposition leadership.  As to whether his release will have an appreciable bearing on the substantive requirements of reconciliation is by no means certain.  That substantive progress on this front is a national priority, nevertheless, is surely beyond dispute.

Taking the LLRC report and the UNHRC resolution as the reference points, it is important that the key areas for action are identified and benchmarks for progress defined to measure demonstrable progress.  This requires a national conversation amongst those who have read the Report and who are both willing and able to contribute towards framing the process of reconciliation.  It also very importantly, requires the availability of the report in its entirety in the two official languages of the land.  There should be a copy of it in every public library in the country. No one should be denied access to it and to informed participation in the countrywide debate it has aroused.   That this has yet to be done, some five months after the report was made public, is a disgrace. Surely, so sovereignty conscious a government as the one we have, can get its act together to translate the LLRC report?  The latter is an indicator of the regime’s understanding of and commitment to the process of reconciliation and democratic governance.

In a similar vein, if there is an action plan or if there is to be one, it must be shared with the peoples of this country as the US secretary of State, apparently one of the privileged few who are privy to even a draft, has communicated to the foreign minister.

The issue of a political settlement of the ethnic conflict is a priority substantive issue.  It has been deadlocked for quite some time and while there are media reports about imminent movement on this front, the simple fact is that deadlock is attributable to the persistence of perspectives and positions integral to the conflict, rather than its resolution.  The arguments about Thirteenth Amendment Plus or Minus and when or whether the select committee should commence its deliberations need no rehearsing here.  What is impeding movement is the ideology of the regime and its perceived political exigencies, which are responsible for the belief that the defeat of the LTTE is the end of the story and that even now, India and the international community can be strung along with repeated and short-lived rhetorical commitments on devolution and not much else.

The President wants plausible deniability and no hostages to fortune on devolution. In political terms he is happy to trust his hardline allies to scuttle the enterprise – hence the passing of the buck to the select committee. In the meantime he will make out that Tamil political representation is stubbornly, if covertly, holding out for secession whilst at the same time, by drawing out proceedings, leave Tamil political representation high and dry, hemorrhaging credibility with its constituency.

In terms of process, the government-TNA consensus that comes out of direct talks being placed before the select committee is important because of the President’s political capital with the majority Sinhala community.  This is the time to lead; Mahinda Rajapaksa must have views on a political settlement, the need for one and the substance of it. The country needs to know; he needs to carry it along with him.  As for his hardline allies, given the importance of the issue, can he not tell them to put up and shut up or get out?

Other substantive issues that need attention are return of IDPs to their homes and out of shelter in transit camps and with host families, the provision of information on detainees to their families – an issue that was a subject in the GOSL-TNA talks and more recently of a circular, all of which to no avail- land dispute settlement and de-militarization.  The denials of the government on the latter score fly in the face of the ground realities.  Even the Leader of the Opposition in India and her fellow MPs are on record on the intrusion of the military into civilian and civic life in the north after their visit to the province. More recently the leader of the Students Union of Jaffna University was assaulted.

To demilitarization must be added the calls for investigations by the LLRC with regard to the ACF murders, the Trinco Five, the Channel 4 allegations and the incidents of civilian deaths for which the security forces are responsible, albeit, accidentally according to the LLRC.  Whilst the Geneva resolution calls upon the regime to state what it will do to ensure accountability – a key issue on which it notes the LLRC falls short- the commencement of investigations on what the LLRC has identified will go some way to checking the egregious culture of impunity.  Investigations have to be independent and it is worth monitoring as to whether information made available in Wikileaks cables will be acted upon in respect of the Trinco Five.

There is also the matter of independent commissions and that of right to information legislation.  Neither is likely under a regime so wedded to control, but nevertheless both are so fundamental to democratic governance that they must be kept on the agenda of substantive reforms.

Substantive, demonstrable progress is the need of the hour.  There are mileposts in the storm, so to speak – the Universal Periodic Review in October, the 22^nd session of the UN Human Rights Council in March 2013 and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to follow in November 2013.

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Image courtesy the Economist

GV editors note: In the transcript below and the video of it available on the BBC online, the BBC correspondent in Sri Lanka Charles Haviland asks “Are the terms of your release unconditional – will you be allowed to go  back to politics?”

Sarath Fonseka responds by noting that “As yet I have not seen this legal document.  Unless they have remitted the prison sentence which I have completed already, unless they do that I can’t do politics.  I can do politics but I can’t vote or contest.  So as it is, we don’t know exactly what is there in the document but we’ll come to know.”

In this regard, we reproduce below the letter sent by the Ministry of Justice to the Commissioner General of Prisons. Download as PDF here.

Start of transcript

The BBC met Sarath Fonseka on Tuesday morning at the rented house where the family now stays on the outskirts of Colombo.  Two restless barking dogs – a Dalmation and a Dachshund – calmed down by the time we started filming and the place was peaceful, the only extraneous noise being the occasional lowing of cattle in an adjoining field.  The former army chief looked tired but was due to set off to pay homage at Buddhist temples in the provinces the same afternoon. 

[Charles Haviland: Why do you think you’ve been released now?]  Sarath Fonseka: There’s a lot of pressure on the people who were behind putting me behind bars – internally, the local aspirations of the people, the sentiments of the people, the pressure was building up.  Then internationally we know that there was unlimited pressure.  The international community did a great job by maintaining continuous pressure on them.  Because they were interested to see proper democracy in this country.  With that in mind, they I think exercised a fair amount of pressure on the people who were behind my incarceration.

[You have your differences with President Rajapaksa but are you grateful to him for signing the papers for your release?]  I will ask you the same question.  If I put you behind bars, later on I put you out, what would you feel about it?

[Are the terms of your release unconditional – will you be allowed to go  back to politics?]  As yet I have not seen this legal document.  Unless they have remitted the prison sentence which I have completed already, unless they do that I can’t do politics.  I can do politics but I can’t vote or contest.  So as it is, we don’t know exactly what is there in the document but we’ll come to know.

[There’s still another charge outstanding against you, of harbouring army deserters.  Could you still go back to court and be sentenced again or is that out of the question?]  Yes [?naturally] they want to hold on to it, thinking they can put pressure on me by maintaining that.  But that’s another case as far as I’m concerned.  Obviously we don’t agree with the charges.  If they think they can put me behind bars again using that, most probably they are repeating the same mistake.

[Would you like ideally to go back to politics again and challenge the president in an election once more?]  Umm – yes, it’s not that I want to become the president of the country or something.  My intention and my agenda is not to contest for the presidential and become the president of the country only.  I have a political agenda: to change the corrupt political culture in this country.  As far as I can do that, I don’t mind not becoming president or not being an MP.  But we’ll definitely try to gather all the forces together for that purpose.  So when we go ahead with that, they will already be confronting us, obviously.

[How do you see yourself in terms of being an opposition leader in this country?  Do you think perhaps you are the best place to be such a leader?]  It’s not a case of whether I am the best or anyone else is the best.  It’s a case of who is really interested, genuinely interested, about the country’s interest.  Let the people decide that.  The people who think that this government is not doing their job and if they think there is a change required now then they will have to decide basically who is the best person or who are the best people to do that.  Otherwise I don’t want to get into a leadership clash or fighting for appointments or something.

[I’d like to talk about human rights issues starting with the international angle.  In March the US sponsored a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which was critical of Sri Lanka on human rights.  It was adopted, India supported it, and it basically said Sri Lanka should do more to implement reconciliation recommendations which came from within Sri Lanka and should do more about accountability in respect of alleged war crimes.  Were you happy to see that resolution passed?]   Yes – because – on certain issues in that resolution we straight away we agree – the violations of human rights, the reconciliation, yes, it’s a must, but the war crimes – there are various different opinions.  So we have to argue with that, argue it out and clarify any doubts so that those who are pointing out any issues – I always believe that they must point out specific  issues, then we are ready to answer them, we can clarify anything.  I don’t want to hide and wait.  The way some people are trying to hide their face when it comes to war crimes and other issues – it gives the impression to the rest of the world that these people are guilty of something.  I have always said that I am ready to answer for any allegations about the war crimes in relation to the military operations,  so that is my position.

But human rights violations, yes, and the intimidation, the people are under pressure, terrified, terrorised, all due to the abuse of power by the government – I fully agree that if there is a dictatorship, ongoing dictatorship, or someone looking forward for a dictatorship, tyrannical politics – if people’s interest is not looked after, people are intimidated, if the opposition is suppressed – then obviously if things go beyond the control of the law-enforcing agencies in the country, if the judiciary is being pressurised, influenced – then obviously the accepted thing in the whole world – the rest of the world must also take some interest in those issues to help a country out.

[So you say the judiciary is intimidated, that there is intimidation in wider society, threats, etc?  Is this what you are saying?]  Yeah that’s true.  Judiciary – although it is not direct intimidation there’s a certain amount of influence on judiciary because after the 18^th Amendment was brought in –    [making the president very very powerful?]  – Powerful, and the judges and everybody else in the judiciary, Attorney-General’s Department, everybody [is] vulnerable for a one-man show.  So obviously they can’t be independent, they can’t take decisions.  They themselves are human beings who have to look after their families, who have to look after their jobs.  So indirectly they are pressurising the judiciary and judiciary cannot be independent under a situation like this.

[You’re saying that’s because the president has the power to directly appoint so many of these people?]  Yes.  Everybody knows in this country and he’s not doing it sincerely.

[Before you left the army some people accused you of taking part in that same kind of culture of intimidation and threats.]  Er – That is also the fault of the government.  When there were incidents here and there, the government did not come out and face the criticism and settle those issues, then the people formed their own opinion.  If someone is killed in Colombo or a journalist is attacked or killed, then if the government does not find the culprits, the people, the opposition will point the finger at the government and those who are – the military and the police, the people who have power.  As the people who are responsible.  In fact this president, very unfortunate, I know at certain media briefings , after some incident took place in relation to a media personnel, he has been saying “don’t disturb the military, if you disturb the military we will not be able to look after you” – and words like that.  So obviously the people were suspicious about everybody else, not only the army I mean, the servicemen – the intelligence –

[So you deny having taken part in those kind of violations in the past?]  I had more important things to do.  I was full time to ensure [indistinct word] fighting a huge war.  Rather than going behind one or two people in Colombo which didn’t matter to me at all.  If that is the case now, the way they are criticising me, the mud-slinging, I must start attacking each and every man in the government, if I had that frame of psychology.

[On the subject of the war – we’ve referred to it already – a panel appointed by Ban Ki-Moon said there might have been up to 40,000 civilian casualties – civilian casualties on a mass scale.  The government absolutely rejects that.  Where do you stand on this?]  I totally reject, refuse the numbers given that thousands of civilians died.  Because I knew exactly how the battle was fought.  How the military was moving forward.  The reaction of the civilians.  What were the civilians doing.  Of course a certain amount of casualties would have been there because everybody knows the civilians were also manning the LTTE bunker lines.  Civilians – there were pictures and the video footage to show that even elderly women aged 60 or 70 going through weapon training.  So there is no question – of a few civilians getting killed obviously but you can’t blame the military for that – because civilians were given weapons and put in the front line, it would not be possible  for the military to identify such people.  But the large figures of 30,000, 40,000, dying, it was not practicable.  The way we conducted the war, the type of weapons systems we used, the manuals we made, we were always concerned about the security of the civilians.

[So what’s your view of the idea that there should be an international independent investigation of those claims?]  That is up to the international community – if they have any doubts, if they have any questions they can do it.  I think they have all the right and freedom to do it.  Then it’s our business to confront them, meet them and discuss with them and thrash out any doubts.

[And Sri Lanka should be open to that?] Definitely, yes.

[And you would be open to that even if you were to come under the spotlight of investigation?] I’ve said from the very beginning, to safeguard the name of the military, those who sacrificed their lives, those who conducted that operation, I’ll come out at any time, I’m not scared to come before anybody.

[Who was really in charge of the war effort in the last months or years – you or the defence secretary or the president?]  If I could run it for two years and eight months, there was no reason for take over during the last month.  Nobody else would have had the knowledge about what’s happening on the ground more than me at that time.  Of course everybody wants to say, “we conducted the war”.  I don’t know what they have been talking, what they have been doing.  If they were discussing things without my knowledge without my presence, I don’t know.  They are themselves saying they planned certain things, they worked out certain strategies, they have to answer for that then.  They must say what they exactly did.

[But you were in overall charge?]  Yeah, definitely.

[Sarath Fonseka, thank you very much for speaking to us.]  Thank you very much.  You take my message to the international community also.  We want them to be with us, to build the country, and clear the name of the image of this country.  And we need their assistance.  And we are ready to cooperate and work with the rest of the world any time.  Thank you.

Watch excerpts of the interview on the BBC website. A podcast of the interview, sent to us by the BBC, can be accessed below.

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Photo via JDS. AFP PHOTO/Lakruwan WANNIARACHCHI.

The V-Day celebrations were on, as this piece was written. A military victory being commemorated at the Galle face esplanade, celebrated as the 3^rd anniversary of defeating the LTTE “terrorism”. President Rajapaksa bragged about what positives the military victory brought to this country. No more barricades on the Galle Road, he says. Fishermen can now go out fishing, civil administration has been established in all parts of the country and the LLRC was appointed to help achieve reconciliation, said the President. “Already”, he says, “recommendations that could be accepted (by whom ?) are being implemented, not because others want us to do so”. The government has a commitment for reconciliation, he stresses.

Then he says, the LLRC can not be allowed to be used to create racial tensions again. For he believes, there is now good and cordial relations growing between North and South, he says. People find new relations across North – South, while marriages are being made most preciously between the Sinhala and the Tamil, said the President, looking beyond the invited audience. “May the Triple Gem bless you all.” he concluded, for the military command to take the podium and announce high presidential honours to all soldiers who died, nay sacrificed their young lives for the nation, during the last days of the war, fighting to free the “motherland” from LTTE “terrorists”.

All that and the president’s address to the unified nation, was preceded by a narrator’s prologue highlighting all the Sinhala kings of yore like Dutu Gemunu, who fought the Cholas (and the Pandiyans) in uniting the “Sinhala” country from South Indian invaders. So the question posed by this narrator; “if President Rajapaksa was not there like those ancient Kings, ridding the LTTE separatist terrorists, what of Lanka today ?”

Yes ! What of Lanka today ? Where is civil administration, where is law and order, peace and “reconciliation” the President sounded out loud ? Where are all those civilian people who died in their thousands during the war, when the government commemorates its 3^rd anniversary ? Why had some Tamil people in the Vanni, left to huddle themselves into a dim and untidy hall in Vavuniya yesterday (18 May), to remember their sons, their husbands, their brothers and sisters who had gone missing, who lost their lives, during the war ? Why had a similar remembrance held inside the Jaffna university, also yesterday ? Why had the security forces kept watch over them and their organisers, making them look like anti government protesters ?

Most importantly, why was this V-Day anniversary turned into a “Sinhala” military parade and event, instead of a people’s participatory event with all those Tamil and perhaps Muslim people, also as part of national commemoration(s), building confidence and trust for sincere and actual social reconciliation ?

The Rajapaksa regime can not afford to loosen the grip it has on society through military presence and the hyped Sinhala war psyche for such reconciliation. The economy is also collapsing on the Sinhala South. The plight of the crippling economy leaves nothing for the people. It becomes quite evident when US Republican Congressman Ed Royce raised the issue of money laundering in post war Sri Lanka as a serious issue, with the visiting minister of External Affairs, Prof Pieris just yesterday (May 18).

The Rajapaksas are clearly on a duplicity trip, trying to buy time from all quarters. While the MEA Prof G.L. Pieris presents in the US, what the US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland  called “a very serious and comprehensive approach” in implementing the LLRC Recommendations as called for by the UNHRC Resolution adopted in Geneva and what Clinton now wants made public, the President on anniversary day tells Sri Lankans with the diplomatic corp kept seated and listening, he would only implement what is good for him and his regime. There would be no reducing of security presence in the North – East either, as long as there is a “threat to the nation”, says he. While celebrating the 3^rd year war victory, President thus accepts the military has not eliminated the “LTTE threat” as the nation and the whole world was told, with “kiribath and fire crackers”. With such political bewilderment, the Rajapaksas need a way out of the political imbroglio they are hemmed in, on a recklessly plundered economy and with no post war benefits for even the ordinary Sinhala people.

Difficulties of the Rajapaksa regime has given an opportunity to Wickramasinghe who wasn’t sure which way he should go with a rebellious Sinhala group demanding the right to decide party politics. He has now got his act together with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), leaving his Sinhala rebels aside. With a successful May Day rally in Jaffna and an apparent understanding in working together with the TNA, Wickramasinghe seems to be gaining ground in a socio economic chaos, the Rajapaksas are unable to manage decently and efficiently.

In the South, the trade unions are also rallying wage earners who were backing the Sinhala regime and Rajapaksa, to challenge and oppose the same Rajapaksa regime on economic issues. There is apparently a protest vote building up on issues, the war victory has no relevance to. The only possible way out as President Rajapaksa understands is, to push the whole country into an election mood for some months. That would diffuse trade union mobilising on wage issues and help the regime to galvanise the South against Wickramasinghe’s UNP, now working with the TNA. Well, at least that seems the option, he is working on, for he has no other political platform he could climb on.

Yet the Constitution would not allow a presidential election till end 2015 as the swearing in for the second presidential term was in 2011 November. Rajapaksa any way would not put himself as a guinea pig, testing the popularity of his regime. He would rather go for a calculated general elections, probably sometime in 2013 and six months from now. In fact he seems bent on trying out the voter mood at PC level right now, but that secured in his favour, he would have to try it out at national level. That needs a buffer he could use to stop the flow of protest votes from going UNP in the Sinhala South.

On a very conservative calculation, while there is serious discontent brewing in society on numerous issues from cost of living to breakdown of law and order, his UPFA could still retain at least 52 to 55 per cent from the 60.3 percent polled in April, 2010. The UNP, with the TNA now in total control of  Northern Tamil vote, has 29.3 plus 2.9 percent to start with. The TNA with its 2.9 percent secured 14 seats while the UNP got 60 seats. What if UNP goes up to 35 percent and the TNA to 3.5 percent ? That would leave the UPFA with around 120 seats, loosing almost 24 from its present 144 seats. A UPFA government all right, but yes, a much weakened government too. The Rajapaksas can not afford to live with a weak government in parliament, when most SLFP leaders already live as “angry souls” in a hijacked government, they bring votes for. Rajapaksa had in fact accepted in private, his immediate need in bringing the 18^th Amendment after the 2010 April general elections was because he does not trust most SLFP “grumblers”.

This is where Fonseka comes in politically handy again, on political conditions defined by Rajapaksa. He would not be the war hero he was made into by the JVP during the 2010 elections, saluting in full military regalia, on most city walls. He would not be leaving the prison as a hero of the anti Rajapaksas, with his usually catchy media quips. He would instead leave the private hospital on a presidential pardon, when released on a family appeal supposedly made by one of the daughters, written the way the President wants. In any form, its a presidential pardon in totality that Tiran Alles had been negotiating for, with Anoma Fonseka in the know.

Its such a Fonseka who would be coming out, thanks to President Rajapaksa. Thereafter with all the UNP dissidents brought around Fonseka, for a ride on a Sinhala campaign, Rajapaksa will be trying out a new DNA led by Fonseka, Sajith Premadasa and Karu Jayasuriya to deprive Wickramasinghe from gaining the disgruntled and disgusted Southern votes going away from him.

Fonseka-Sajith-Karu led DNA painted a new bloc, would be projected as a legitimate leadership that has a right to oppose the UNP and call for a dissenting vote against the UNP in the South. Though with the absence of the JVP, it would still be expected to at least poll 3.5 percent of its 5.4 percent polled in 2010 and top it with the dissatisfied Sinhala vote to poll about 06 to 07 percent with a UNP lineage in its leadership. IF that works the way Rajapaksas plan, reloading Fonseka for this post-paid Sinhala package, is worth his gamble. The DNA could then play buffer in parliament too, with about 06 to 08 MPs and may be a ministerial portfolio or two given in charity for those who helped this new “reload” for the future.

Yet the unpredictable factor is, the “time factor”. How soon will it be, or how long will it take the tide to start swelling into a Tsunami against the Rajapaksa regime ? Will it then leave the equation the same ?  In short, will it then accept this Fonseka factor as worthy of a vote in late 2013 ? Will reloading Fonseka save the Rajapaksas then ? Worth a wait to see, is it ?

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Among proponents of devolution as a means of power-sharing in Sri Lanka, one of the key bones of contention about the Thirteenth Amendment has been the Concurrent List. This is the list of competences, or ‘subjects’ as they are called in the constitution, over which powers are shared between the central government and the Provincial Councils. This list is part of the broader distribution of powers and functions that are arranged in three lists in the Thirteenth Amendment, the other two being the Reserved List and the Provincial Council List. This tripartite arrangement was no doubt influenced by the Indian constitution, which was the sole comparative referent during the drafting of the scheme of devolution in 1987. The significant difference of course was that devolution in Sri Lanka was intended to function within the hierarchy of norms and institutions dictated by the foundational constitutional concept of the Sri Lankan republic, the unitary state, whereas the Indian system operates according to a federal logic.

In the years since, the manner in which the Thirteenth Amendment was implemented, or more accurately, improperly and incompletely implemented, led devolutionists to identify a range of design defects in this framework. These included the powers and functions of the provincial governor, the fiscal and financial framework, the ‘National Policy’ clause, and the Concurrent List. These criticisms, which were and are legitimate in the context of the reluctant and parsimonious way in which successive Sri Lankan governments, and it might be added, the higher bureaucracy and judiciary, have approached devolution, added to the rejection of the Thirteenth Amendment by Tamil nationalist parties on other more fundamental political grounds. Eminent constitutional lawyers like the late Dr Neelan Tiruchelvam and Dr Jayampathy Wickramaratne, and other experts associated with the Majority Report of the APRC’s experts’ panel, have all reflected the position that the Concurrent List is a major impediment to devolution. Minister Tissa Vitharana’s consensus document based on the APRC deliberations also recommended the abolition of the Concurrent List. Likewise, in a thorough and well-informed analysis of the constitutional politics involved in the TNA’s potential participation in the Parliamentary Select Committee proposed by the President, D.B.S. Jeyaraj has recently argued for the removal of the Concurrent List as a core requirement of that process.

I have long felt, however, that these wholly valid criticisms of (a) the particular design of the Concurrent List in the Thirteenth Amendment, and (b) the numerous examples of the way in which the Concurrent List has been abused by the central government so as to denude provincial autonomy, do not add up to a persuasive case for the wholesale removal of the concept of concurrency itself from our constitution and system of devolution. Thus while I agree with the criticisms of the Thirteenth Amendment’s Concurrent List, I believe that responding to the resulting need for reform by abolishing the principle of concurrency itself is akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. This position derives from a conceptual understanding of concurrency as an important element of constitutional interdependence within a devolved polity, as well as constitutional democracy more generally. I will elaborate on this in a moment, but first we need to understand the specific character of concurrent powers as established in the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Concurrent List (List III) enumerates 36 subjects, with some items further elaborated in sub-items. It includes planning (Item 1), education, educational services and higher education (Items 2, 3 and 4, except to the extent specified in Items 3 and 4 of List I), housing and construction (Item 5), acquisition and requisitioning of property (Item 6), social services and rehabilitation (Item 7), agricultural and agrarian services (Item 8), health (Item 9), co-operatives (Item 15), irrigation (Item 17), fisheries within territorial waters (Item 19), tourism (Item 22), food and drug standards (Items 30 and 31), and prevention of infectious diseases (Item 35).

From the perspective of constitutional design, it is quite easy to see why these policy areas have been demarcated as concurrent competences: infectious diseases, for example, do not recognise provincial boundaries and it is necessary therefore that governmental responses to them are co-ordinated between both central and provincial levels. And from the perspective of effective devolution and provincial autonomy, it is better that the constitutional framework designates these areas as concurrent jurisdictions, forcing central and provincial levels to work together (at least notionally), rather than vesting the subject entirely in one level or the other. The latter approach almost always favours centralisation rather than provincial autonomy.

The concept of concurrency in the Thirteenth Amendment is one of ‘central field pre-emption’. That is, central legislation over concurrent subjects prevails over provincial statutes when Parliament unilaterally deems it so. It is this unilateral power of override given to Parliament that attracts the criticism that concurrent powers are nothing more than an extension of the powers of the central government to the disadvantage of the provinces. While this is true, as the reasoning of the Supreme Court in the In re the Thirteenth Amendment case (1987) indicates, it is difficult to see how devolution can be made to fit within the overarching constraints of the unitary state and specific constitutional provisions (some of them entrenched) that give effect to it, without providing Parliament with such a power.

This of course opens up the biggest constitutional issue there is in post-war Sri Lanka: the question of the future of the unitary state. The Thirteenth Amendment probably reflects the maximum extent of provincial devolution that is theoretically possible within the particular conception of the unitary state that is enshrined in the present constitution, and even this is arguable when Justice Wanasundera’s powerful dissent in In re the Thirteenth Amendment is taken into account. Thus any serious traversal down the path of ‘Thirteenth Amendment Plus,’ to the extent it denotes an enhancement of the powers of Provincial Councils, would seem to require substantive changes to the unitary state, even if purely formally or symbolically it retains its place upon the constitutional text. If on the other hand Thirteenth Amendment Plus merely means the addition of a second chamber to the central legislature while retaining the existing or reduced range of provincial powers (i.e., minus police and state land powers), then a different set of political and legal questions arise. These are all interesting constitutional conundrums, but they must await discussion on another day. I am here only concerned with the more specific question about whether the solution to the problems of the Thirteenth Amendment’s Concurrent List lies in the abolition of concurrency, or in its reform.

Under the Thirteenth Amendment, both Parliament and Provincial Councils are empowered to legislate in respect of concurrent subjects. Provincial Council statutes on concurrent subjects may prevail over pre-existing central legislation, but Parliament can by resolution override the application of such statutes. Any future central legislation on a concurrent subject has pre-eminence over a provincial statute. This is obviously an extremely vulnerable framework that renders the notion of ‘concurrent’ competence virtually meaningless by allowing Parliament to legislate over Provinces at will. Even the weak safeguard in Article 154G (5) (a) that Parliament should consult Provincial Councils before legislating on the Concurrent List has almost entirely been observed in the breach. It is for these reasons that devolutionists feel that the Concurrent List should be abolished.

However, to reiterate the point made at the beginning: while criticisms of the particular design of concurrent powers as reflected in the Thirteenth Amendment are valid, it does not follow that the concept of concurrency itself is something that is necessarily contrary to devolution. Neither does it necessarily follow that the solution to this problem is a system of exclusive competences, which presages competition rather than co-operation between the central and provincial levels. It is likely that institutionalising such a competitive logic in the devolution framework would ultimately work in favour of the (by definition) more powerful central government, thereby frustrating the very provincial autonomy that devolutionists seek to protect.

The question of pre-eminence in the concurrent field need not be resolved by constitutionally privileging legislation of one or other tier of government, as in the case of the Thirteenth Amendment, where central legislation has automatic pre-eminence over provincial statutes. A genuine framework of real concurrence or shared competence would be one which enables decisions on which tier should prevail to be made on a case by case basis, by reference to democratically legitimate and constitutionally established principles such as subsidiarity, effectiveness, efficiency and so on. The example of education policy serves to illustrate how a sophisticated use of concurrency in a devolved system can help promote not only provincial autonomy together with state-wide co-operation, but also more generally enhance the quality of democratic government.

If we take secondary education as a policy concern in a democratic society, we see that policy-making must reconcile several layers of competing interests. Local government authorities, the level of government closest to the public, have an interest in the location of schools due to implications they have for local services. The provincial level may have another set of interests in secondary education such as the promotion of a regional language and culture. The central government has the responsibility for the protection of a further set of interests, including the assurance of state-wide educational standards and the regulation of examinations and qualifications. Seen this way, it becomes clear that policy formulation, legislation and executive implementation in regard to secondary education could be undertaken with optimum delivery on democratic expectations if institutions are designed not only to ensure representation for these multiple interests, but also to ensure that they work together. Locating secondary education in a well-designed field of concurrent jurisdiction therefore commends itself over exclusively privileging one tier of government, as the means by which participatory and representative democracy can be maximised.

From the viewpoint of democratic government, such a system seems to be preferable to both the over-centralisation that we see in Sri Lanka today (in which it is assumed, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that only the central government is capable of efficient delivery) or a system of exclusive competences. Obviously, not all policy areas need to be located and regulated within a field of concurrency. Large areas of policy would still belong within exclusive provincial or central competence. But this brief example I hope serves to demonstrate the general utility of the concept of concurrency, over and beyond the specific defects of the Concurrent List in the Thirteenth Amendment.

Even if concurrent powers are not designed by reference to a federal logic that presumes a co-equality of central and provincial institutions, it is possible to build in better safeguards for provincial autonomy. Such safeguards maybe both substantive and procedural, as well as institutional. Thus there needs to a better and clearer articulation of concurrent responsibilities in the constitutional text, which would minimise the opportunities for encroachment. There needs to be a more balanced method of determining pre-eminence within the concurrent field, by reference to clearly articulated principles such as subsidiarity and co-operation, rather than blunt assertions of central supremacy or provincial exceptionalism. Institutional safeguards could include formalised roles for the provincial level in central legislative and policy-making processes such as through a second chamber, and in the executive through inter-ministerial councils.

All multi-level systems, whether devolved unitary states or federal states, reflect a particular institutional configuration between self-rule at the periphery and shared-rule at the centre that answers to specific democratic requirements of each society. In post-war Sri Lanka, the central compulsion and requisite of constitutional reform is to discover this elusive balance, both with regard to the meta-constitutional norms of democracy and power-sharing as well as the particular forms and structures through which we give effect to them. While greater provincial autonomy is clearly needed, and over-centralisation drastically reduced, we should not lose sight of the shared-rule dimension in envisioning a future constitutional order that unites the peoples of Sri Lanka while guaranteeing their autonomy. Many may feel that this is an esoteric debate, and some may feel that the emphasis is misplaced, to the extent that the key focus of moderates, progressives and liberals in the context of the post-Eighteenth Amendment constitution and the problem of hyper-centralisation, should be stronger provincial autonomy. In this view, the democracy rationale only adds impetus to the older power-sharing imperative in the advocacy of greater devolution. I agree, but as I have argued, the debate about the forms and extent of stronger provincial autonomy cannot, and should not be conducted without regard to the way shared institutions are designed to function.

In this regard, in addition to other devices such as a second chamber, I strongly believe that the retention of a field of concurrent jurisdiction – understood as both a key organising principle of a devolved polity and as a norm of constitutional democracy – is particularly desirable. The concept of concurrency supports a co-operative rather than a competitive culture of multi-level governance. Its removal to make way for an exclusive division of subjects between the centre and the provinces may not necessarily ensure the desired protection of provincial autonomy. On the contrary, given the zero-sum nature of our political culture, an exclusive division of powers may well serve to institutionalise a deleterious culture of antagonism between different tiers of government, a tendency to which the crucial relationship between the Tamil-speaking provinces and the central government is especially vulnerable. The resulting constitutional deadlock and failure would be disastrous for our post-war society.

In redressing the problems encountered with the Thirteenth Amendment’s Concurrent List, therefore, we should be careful to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or if preferred, the champagne out with the cork.

• Radical Reforms in Sri Lanka: Realities we are afraid of?
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• DAYAN JAYATILLEKA’S CRITIQUE OF TAMIL NATIONALISM: A COMMENT

I watched the Frontline Club panel on Sri Lanka, belatedly and reluctantly. I am skeptical about such public enquiries and debates into complex matters, which threaten to reduce the dialogue and truth into performance.

In my view, the problem with these ‘events’, for that is what they are, is that the truth is reduced to a many-sided thing; the more one counts the sides the more fragmented the truth itself becomes. But of course you never get ‘all sides’ of the story. So, for example, someone keeping a count of the sides could say the Muslim question or the gender dimension figured not at all.

In fact, Stephen Sackur set the tone for an evening of performance with his opening line: “First thing to say is that it is fantastic to see such a great audience.” The panelists inevitably came with their own scripts—prepared remarks, notes, papers (Mr. Wijesinha had loads of them), computers etc. Then there were the self-appointed (or chosen?) cheerleaders—prompting, laughing, clapping and some even heckling on cue. If at all anyone listened it seemed like it was only to rebut. Thus did the evening proceed to rehearse well-trodden narratives and imaginaries of dominance, violence and marginality in Sri Lanka. And I have no doubt that the panelists and their supporters will have also enaged in post-event reviews; “how did it go?”

I am not suggesting that the issues raised and discussed were not important, on the contrary. It just seemed like a classic case of the very gravity of the issues dwarfing the forum itself. I am certainly not saying that everyone who participated lacked seriousness or genuine intent, which may nevertheless be true of some, but I fear that in forums such as this, in which, at the very least, no one wants his or her position to come out looking ‘lesser’, ‘weaker’, or a ‘loser’ the truth is often the casualty. It is a battle, not always subtle, between well-held positions. It is not a conversation.

The fact is, like in adversarial adjudication, theatricality is a norm in such forums. Or at least, a la Derrida, it is inevitable that the performative elements of dialogue and truth are the ones that tend to get most play. The most theatrical moments of the evening were inevitably around the most sinister—such as the number of people dead or missing in the final months of the war. Numbers and counter-numbers were tossed around until the moderator, inevitably, said it was time to move on, “we have done the numbers.”

If, however, there was one moment when the mask dropped, it was in Mr. Wijesinha’s response to Dr. Manoharan, the father of one of the five students executed on a beach in Trincomalee 6 years ago, widely believed to be the handiwork of Sri Lankan security/law enforcement agents. The first part of this exchange is, sadly, worth recalling. Dr. Manoharan asked why no progress had been made in the case, including despite Dr. Wijesinha’s personal assurances. Mr. Wijesinha, began sagely enough, acknowledging that there was a strong case. He then said that he was present when the President had asked the Attorney General to issue indictments, who had said (to Mr. Wijesinha) that he did not do so because he felt there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction. Mr. Wijesinha went to say, “I said [to the Attorney General], for God’s sake take a leaf out of the British. What they do is prosecute ten people, acquit nine, one person gets two months in jail and then they will say justice.” Stephen Sackur—a seasoned Hard Talk moderator—could scarcely restrain himself and remarked, “I can’t believe that you told that to the Doctor [Dr. Manoharan] thinking it would reassure him.”

Mr. Wijesinha no doubt realised, from Sackur’s spontaneous response and the murmur of disbelief in the room, that it was actually looking more like a case of hit-wicket and tried again, this time making sure to mouth the ‘right’ words, restoring theatre. However, that was perhaps the one time he was being utterly unpremeditated.

Actually, Mr. Wijesinha’s performance of the evening in general merits particular comment because it embodies the theatre that is the Rajapakse regime itself—wearing a devil-may-care cockiness and triumphal face one instant followed by an innocent, we-are-oh-so-victimised cry the next; seeming polite and reasonable one instant but menacing and name-calling the next; full of confidence and bluster one moment but petulant and childish the next. Yes, this too is a familiar sort of theatre, one induced by a deep sub-conscious fear, of knowing that you simply cannot fool everyone forever.

###

Editors note: As we were watching the live web stream of the Frontline event, a few moments after Rajiva Wijesinha’s incredible response to Dr. Manoharan, we tweeted:

tweeted:

• The Gaza Monologues: An interview with Ruhanie Perera and Jake Oorloff
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“There is no State of Emergency today.” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

“Therefore, the attempt of the Sri Lankan government to replace emergency laws with another set of laws under a different name, yet meant to do the same task is not surprising. State of emergency is not only a particular set of laws. Removing emergency regulations while continuing with militarisation and a massive project of policing in socio-cultural arenas do not indicate a journey towards normalcy.” – Amali Wedagedara, Groundviews, 5 September 2011

“It is no secret that through 30 years there were armed groups and militias operating, especially in the North and East. All such groups have now been disarmed.” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

“March 3, 2012 marked a very dark ebb in our society as it saw the horrific rape and murder of little Jesudasan Lakshini (13), allegedly at the hands of former EPDP cadre, Kanthasami Jegatheswaran (alias Kiruba) (31), from the Delft Island, Jaffna. Currently being held in remand at the Jaffna Remand Prison, the accused was produced before the Kayts Magistrate this week (30). However, the hearing was further postponed to April 9, 2012, as the Delft Police had failed to conclude their compilation of eye witness statements, said attorney-at-law K.S. Ratnavel, who is appearing on behalf of the victim’s family. The pending statement is the last of four eye witness statements attesting to having witnessed Lakshini being intercepted and taken by the accused on her way to the market, he added. This raises the glaring question as to why the Police was unable to obtain a mere four eye witness statements in the course of almost a month following this incident, unless of course exterior political forces are in play.” – Marissa de Silva, Groundviews, 2 April 2012

“We have systematically removed from our vocabulary the references of refugee camps, land mines and villages under threat. ” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

“Back at the destroyed camp, we learned that earlier the same morning, the industries and commerce minister, Rishad Bathiudeen, had also paid a visit to the site. Upon his arrival, bombarded by residents’ desperate pleas to finally be allowed to return to their homes, he responded that he had only come to see what could be done to help them after the storm and ordered, “don’t try and turn this into a political issue”. Unfortunately, what Mr. Bathiudeen does not seem to know or acknowledge is that the reason for not allowing these people to return to their villages for almost three years is a political decision.” – Watchdog, Groundviews, 7 April 2012

“There were limits imposed on fishermen under which they could not go beyond a certain distance. These restrictions are also no more.” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

“Many problems regarding the fishing industry in the North in many ways related to the militarization that was strengthened during the last phase of the war but not completely relaxed even after the end of the war. For instance, some coastal areas, which are very significant to fishing, still remains as High Security Zones (HSZ); and therefore fishermen are banned from engaging in their livelihood activities in those areas; in many areas, fishermen were allowed to go to sea only within a permitted corridor, and even for that they had to get passes from military forces.” – Sumith Chaaminda, Groundviews, 31 March 2012

“The check points and road blocks that we had through every two or three kilometers, and even on this Galle Road, are not there anymore… We are aware that the armed forces do not participate in the administration of the North or East. These regions are administered by the public service and the police. ” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

“The reality that most, if not all the soldiers manning the Omanthai Checkpoint are not proficient in Tamil, is also quite telling in terms of the complete non-recognition of, and lack of respect for the Tamil community. More often than not, Tamil passengers unfamiliar with the routine have to rely on the Tamil translation of a more seasoned traveller. This indignity is further heightened when each of these passengers are made to have their personal belongings rifled through, until such time that the army personnel is adequately satisfied of the innocence of the specific passenger in question.” – Marisa de Silva, Groundviews, 16 April 2012

and

“The ubiquitous presence of armed security forces, weapons drawn, fingers on the trigger was fearsome. Every 100 metres on the Jaffna highway there was a security picket; every three kilometres, an army post; every 10 km, an army camp. The army was everywhere, running roadside shops, hotels and hospitality businesses. Even funerals or marriages or social functions in Tamil areas needed army permission in advance.” – The Hindu, 21 March 2012

“You will recall how terrorism compelled us all to live in the midst of much restrictions and obstructions, through 30 years. It is just three years since the war ended. Today, the country that faced such restrictions has returned to normal.” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

“Especially for those living in the North, normalcy is far from reality. Only a part of these are the deciduous problems encountered, unfortunately but unavoidably, by people living in former conflict zones in the aftermath of war. It is now disconcertingly apparent that the militarisation of all spheres of life in the North is becoming increasingly institutionalised, and moreover, that this is the deliberate policy of the government. The regime is able to implement its policy with regard to the North, and more generally the continuation in force of disproportionate and repressive wartime national security measures, with virtually no meaningful democratic opposition.” – Asanga Welikala, Groundviews, 29 April 2011

“We are a country that is a member of the United Nations, working with friendship with all countries and sit with equality with all its members.” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

On 30 June [2010], senior Government Minister Wimal Weerawansa urged the public to surround the UN office in Colombo and hold its staff hostage until moves by the UN to appoint a panel on Sri Lanka is dropped, putting the UN in Sri Lanka on high alert. On the same day, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said that when the UN contacted the Sri Lankan government over this statement, the government assured they were Minister Weerawansa’s “individual opinion”. On 2 July, it was reported that the government may tender an apology to the UN over the Minister’s comments. Any communication to this effect by the government to the UN is, to date, not in the public domain. On 4 July, Minister Weerawansa said he stood by his comment, and clarified that he made it as the National Freedom Front (NFF) leader and not in his capacity as a Government member. He also reiterated his call for the public to surround the building and protest against the UN panel. On the morning of 6 July, the NFF surrounded the UN compound in Colombo… Related to this, the Lanka Truth website runs a story on an alleged phone call with the President’s brother, the churlish Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in which he directly orders the Police to withdraw from the vicinity of the UN compound. – Groundviews, 8 July 2010

“We are already carrying out what we can agree to and can implement among the recommendations of the LLRC.” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

The official media page of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) tells its own story. It’s blank. There’s literally nothing on the official website of the LLRC that provides information on public statements by the LLRC and coverage of its proceedings in the media. Furthermore, it’s impossible to find the interim recommendations or the final report of the LLRC on the official website… What remains of the LLRC’s proceedings and output – its interim report and recommendations, the accessibility and translations of its Final Report, most of the public submissions in Tamil, Sinhala and English, audio recordings and detailed records of media reports – are all, without exception, carefully curated and published online for public access by the very NGOs and platforms, including this site, that have been openly and repeatedly vilified by those in and partial to government. And all the government itself has managed to do was to establish a website for the LLRC – that too rather late into the LLRC’s activities and bereft of vital records. – Groundviews, 20 March 2012

“National political parties are today able to work and function freely in the North in absence of fear.” – President Rajapaksa’s Address to the Nation, 19 May 2012

vs.

The bizarre responses to what was a brutal attack, post-war, in broad daylight, against unarmed Parliamentarians engaging in nothing more subversive than the democratic process and it’s subsequent denial by the President himself – essentially shutting the door on any investigation or punitive measures – reflects a desire by government to, unilaterally and violently if necessary, define Tamil politics and moreover, throttle the growth of a more plural Tamil polity and society. These attacks are justified by senior government ministers, who believe that “the UPFA and other political parties represented more Tamils than the TNA”, which means that more can be expected in the future. The resulting humiliation of the TNA MPs is keenly felt and watched by a larger Tamil community, domestic as well as international. – Groundviews, The attack on TNA Parliamentarians in Jaffna: A timeline of outrageous denials (Updated), 5 July 2011

“Sri Lanka would soon pull out its remaining troops from areas still under military control in the Tamil-dominated northern province that was once an LTTE bastion, a prominent Tamil minister has said. ‘We have successfully taken the military presence off in most of the areas in the Northern Province. Only two in tenth of the areas are still under military control. We will soon make this area free of military presence. I need a month’s time from you to work on this,” Minister Douglas Devananda said while addressing people at Mathagal.” – Press Trust of India, 10 February 2012

vs.

“Sri Lanka’s president has rejected a call by Indian legislators to withdraw soldiers from the island’s former war zone in the north where minority Tamils are concentrated, his spokesman… President Mahinda Rajapakse told a delegation of visiting Indian lawmakers that troops could not be pulled out despite the end of the decades-long Tamil separatist war in 2009.” – AFP, 22 April 2012

and

“President Mahinda Rajapaksa speaking at the Victory Day celebrations today said that it was not advisable to remove or reduce military camps in the North as the Tamil diasporas had not given up its attempts to win Eelam.” – Ceylon Today, 19 May 2012

• What is the bigger lie? US resolution in Geneva or number of people in Vanni in 2009?
• Who really supports reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka?
• Archive of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) submissions and media reports
• Reloading General Sarath Fonseka for a post-paid Sinhala package
• In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu: The resolution in Geneva and its discontents

Photo courtesy Vikalpa

For the 3^rd successive year, the Sri Lankan government has made elaborate arrangements to celebrate the end of the war in Colombo. This year, May was declared as “war hero’s commemoration month”. For the last few days, roads were closed in Colombo causing great inconvenience, as preparations were being made for celebrating the end of the war.

However, in the North, among Tamils, where the last phase of the war was fought, the mood was far from celebratory, but outright mourning and grieving. In the morning of 18^th May, I joined a commemorative Mass in a church that was yet to be rebuilt after the war. More than the church building, two monuments stood out. One for Fr. Sarathjeevan (popularly known as Fr. Sara, who died on 18^th May 2009) and another for all people who had been killed in the war. Villagers including school children and Hindus flocked to this church. Amongst those present were families of those killed and disappeared. About 20 priests participated. After the Mass,  flowers and garlands were laid for those killed. A Tamil priest from Jaffna welcomed the small group of Sinhalese from Negombo, Colombo, Anuradhapura etc., who had joined the mourning and the simple commemoration, while most other Sinhalese were seen celebrating.

In the afternoon of 18^th May, I witnessed the passion of women whose family members had disappeared and been killed, as they gathered at a Hindu Kovil in Killinochchi town and participated in a service there, which included the smashing of coconuts. Some of the women were crying and some were clearly angry with those that had killed or made their family members disappear. I would not want to be at the receiving end of such anger.

In the evening, I joined other friends in a solemn event in Jaffna to commemorate the 3^rd year after the end of the war after by remembering those killed and disappeared. All of us lit candles and some shared their tragic stories of those killed and disappeared. Several mourned also for the lack of space to even cry and remember without fear, with one boy thanking the organizers of the event, as several others he had spoken to organize such an event had refused in fear.   Another woman, whose brother had died on 18^thMay 2009, spoke of the tension with which they participate in these events, as they are fearful to hold them in public.

One of the organizers of the Jaffna event spoke of the challenge he faces every year in May to organize a commemoration. His fears were clearly grounded and real.

On 17^th May evening, some unknown persons had inquired about him and his activities. The priest in whose church the commemorative event was held on the morning of 18^th May in Vanni was also questioned by the Army the previous day about what services and activities were planned. On 18^th May morning, the Secretary of the Jaffna University Students Union was attacked and was seriously injured. A friend told us that he was in the accident ward of the Jaffna hospital while we were there.

In another interior rural village close to Jaffna, Army personnel had twice visited a Catholic Priest and threatened him not to have any special masses between 18^th – 20^th May. In their 2^nd visit, they had told the Priest he can have mass, but that he shouldn’t pray for those killed in the last phase of the war, as all those killed had been LTTE cadres. There had been no answer when the Priest asked whether the 1-2 year old children killed and elders over 60 years who had been killed were also LTTE cadres.  Some months ago, threats by the Army had compelled the same priest to scrap the plan to build a tomb to remember all those killed in the war and didn’t have a tomb or a burial place. On 27^th November 2011, the Army had insisted that lamps  not be lit  and bells should not be rung in Churches and Kovils in the North and in some places, and had even threatened Catholic Priests not to celebrate the Sunday Mass! (Perhaps ignorant that Sunday Mass is celebrated in churches all over Sri Lanka and over the world for hundreds of years). Outside the Killinochchi Hindu Kovil that the families of disappeared and killed had gathered, there was a significant Police and Army presence and one of my friends recognized an intelligence officer who was photographing us and watched us as we got into our van after joining the Kovil event. By coincidence or not, in the next few minutes, our vehicle was stopped at a check point and subjected to registration and questioning which was not at all usual in my previous travels in the North this year.

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry (LLRC) had recommended that a special event on National Day (4^th February) be set apart to express solidarity and empathy with all victims of the tragic conflict, but this was ignored by the Government.

And the military appeared to be doing its best to discourage and stop any religious or non religious events related to remembering the dead and disappeared, to grieve and mourn. The intimidation and threatening of organizers of such initiatives are alarming.

I’m happy the war had ended. But I’m not at all happy about the way it was fought, especially the last phase. And celebrating while many others are mourning and grieving – and actively trying to prevent mourning and grieving – doesn’t seem to be the way towards a genuine reconciliation.

But I did have something to celebrate also – the courage, creativity and perseverance of those who dared to build small monuments, organize and participate in memorials events to grieve and mourn for those killed, disappeared and who have suffered. It is this courage  and creativity i believe that will lead us to reconciliation.

• Celebrating war victory and banning commemoration of dead civilians: this is “home grown & indigenous” reconciliation and freedom in Sri Lanka?
• Christmas 2008 in Sri Lanka
• Destroying monuments for those killed & disappeared: The Catholic Church and the Sri Lankan Government
• Fr. Jim Brown and Mr. Vimalathas: Five years after disappearance, where are they and what has happened to the investigation?
• Sharing a common god: The Sivasubramaniam Kovil in Slave Island

I’m a scientist by training and as such, generally avoid public debate, which tends to be dominated by charisma rather than fact. Nevertheless, given the strongly homophobic atmosphere in Sri Lanka two weeks away from what Bill Clinton declared is gay-pride month (my embassy informs me that “Homosexual acts are illegal in Sri Lanka”), I thought it pertinent to share some inconvenient truths from the little-known, less-regarded realm of academic research. Make of them what you will.

1. We’re a lot gayer than we think

The two papers I’d like to share are both loosely to do with sexuality in Sri Lanka. The first is a study of sexual health in tea-plantation populations (Jayasekara et al, 2011) and the second is a detailed study of beach boys and the supposed endemic sexual exploitation of children (Miller, 2011). The aims of these two studies are divergent, focus on two distinct cultures (tea workers and beach boys) and set about proving two different points, but they present data that overlap to an appreciable degree.

Both studies found that among men, first sexual encounters occur as early as at age 12, and the vast majority of those interviewed have had gay sex at least once (86% of tea-estate men and 82% of ‘beach boys’). It seems that (at least) a single gay experience is, by definition, the norm amongst rural Sri Lankan men. The majority of Sri Lankan men are also, then, eligible for imprisonment. I find it intriguing then, that we’re so homophobic. Logically I see two options—we can lock up a substantial proportion of tea-estate workers or admit that the country’s homophobia-augmentation law is just slightly daft.

2. Our bigotry might not be where we expect it

Some unexpected findings of Miller (2011) are that (1) the tendency to conflate homosexuality and pedophilia is best reflected in the activities of child-protection NGOs, which happily lump pedophiles, perverts and homosexuals into a single “deviant” category; (2) Religious charities, too, often try to ‘rehabilitate’ former prostitutes and (sometimes happily married) men to ‘cure’ their deviant traits; and (3) Oftentimes it is sexual health charities trying to lower the incidence of HIV that perpetuate the myths that homosexuality leads to AIDS, and that “if you have AIDS it’s entirely your fault”.

It seems though, that while rural Sri Lanka is happy and gay (pun absolutely intended), it is we urban folk who enjoy sitting at home and basking in our self-righteous bigotry. There really is a wealth of (sometimes rather frightening) information in Miller’s (2011) paper that I couldn’t hope to summarise. I can only encourage my readers to find it themselves.

3. We’re here, we’re queer, and you wouldn’t have guessed it, would you?

As far as I’m aware, I haven’t even a gay friend. I mean I might have—I just haven’t bothered to quiz them all on their sexuality. In fact, I worry about the relative extravagance of the approach of gay activism. The received wisdom seems to be that the way forward at gay-pride rallies is to make as profligate a display as possible about sexuality. Given the choice between the Stephen Fry and Gok Wan models of public perception, it seems to me that gay rallies have chosen the latter. I cannot identify with this.

The problem with the public perception of homosexuality is that in it, gay people are in some way “different”, deviations from the norm. The metaphorical schoolyard bully refers to gay people as poofs, queer, camp, fags, fairies, pixies and a litany of other pejoratives. A question I must ask: is dressing up is assless chaps, leather tights, balls and chains, fairy costumes and thongs before dancing on the street in a shower of glitter… is this helping the schoolyard bully’s case or not? Is this aiding the perception that gay people are “different” or not? In fact, what exactly does it do to further the cause? I don’t have an answer to that last question, which is why I ask it.

Here’s one strategy. Given that at a gay-pride rally the public expects a spectacle of weird, wonderful and rather confronting things, a powerful statement would be made if the next gay-pride rally consisted entirely of participants wearing what they wore to work yesterday. “But how would people know what the rally is even about?” I’m often asked. Exactly. We ought to stop thinking about gay people as glitter bugs and start thinking about them as doctors, engineers, coal miners, hairdressers, politicians, teachers, police officers, pilots, waiters, soldiers and people of every other occupation.

There’s an important distinction between being comfortable with ones sexuality and being overt about it. Most people, heterosexual or not, are uncomfortable with overt sexuality for the same reasons they don’t want their children watching pornography or teenage girls getting boob jobs. Parents ought to be able to look at every participant in a gay pride rally and think to themselves, “I’d quite like that man/woman to be my child’s babysitter, school teacher, gym instructor or cub-scout leader. (S)he’s just like me.”

• A homophobic Editorial: Professional negligence or genuine belief?
• Speak for yourself
• Women on Top: Sexuality and rights in Sri Lanka
• Celebrating a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning Sri Lanka
• In conversation with Prof. Harendra De Silva

[Editors note: See interview with members of Nrityagram and the Chitrasena Dance Company here.]

Samhara is a new dance work created by the Odissi dance ensemble, Nrityagram, together with their long-term friends and collaborators in Sri Lanka, the Chitrasena Dance Company. It was performed over the weekend at the Lionel Wendt Theatre in Colombo, fresh off the plane after a successful tour of United States and Mexico, having premiered in India.  In New York it went on the boards at the legendary Joyce Theatre, with none other than Mikhail Baryishnikov in the audience.   The show was choreographed by Nrityagram’s Artistic Director, Surupa Sen, with assistance from Heshma Wignaraja, the Artistic Director of the Chitrasena Dance Company (and eldest grand-daughter of Chitrasena, the founder of the Company).

It is difficult to describe in any depth my feelings about the show, without giving some history and context. It is important to note the history of the Kandyan dance form, Chitrasena’s role in preserving it, and the journey the Chitrasena family and Company have travelled to get to where they are today, in order fully to consider the significance of Samhara to this Company and to Sri Lankan dance. It is also important that I disclose my personal attachment – both to dance and to the Chitrasena family and Company – before I proceed.

As a baby, my mother handed me to Upeka (daughter of Chitrasena and the Company’s former Principal Dancer) to hold, and told her, ‘Now you have a dancer’. I became Vajira’s student at the age of 6, and went on to become Upeka’s student at the age of about 14.  I danced in several productions produced by the Chitrasena-Vajira Dance Foundation, both as a child and teenager, in a time period spanning more than a decade. I became intimately attached to the family, and to the dance. At age 18, I decided to stop dancing. It had become something I couldn’t relate to anymore.  I felt as though traditional dance – and perhaps the Chitrasena Company’s approach to it – no longer felt like it fully belonged in the modern world.

Onto a little history about the Kandyan dance: in Sri Lanka, all traditional dance forms – the Kandyan, the Low-Country and the Sabaragamu – were originally used in the ritual-ground, to heal diseases, to quell droughts or as a supplication for prosperity, good harvests and good health. Typically, dancers were men. Women were deemed inferior, impure and unfit for this special honour.

In the 1940s Chitrasena, a dancer, the son of an actor, faced with rapidly changing modern culture, decided that the only way to preserve traditional dance was to stage it as performance. Having studied the traditional dance forms rigorously, he became a dance teacher and choreographer, bringing traditional dance in Sri Lanka to the modern stage for the first time. In his hands, it was transformed: it was no longer outdated, it was animated, it was cutting-edge. Combining technical prowess with creative and conceptual agility and with modern-day production technique and technology, Chitrasena went on to create works that were revolutionary.

His ultimate act of radicalization was to introduce his wife and protégé, Vajira, to the stage. When awe-struck audiences watched her don the ceremonial regalia worn exclusively by male dancers and prove her mastery of the Kandyan dance, a spell was cast. The female dancer had arrived.

More than 50 years later, Chitrasena, the man who rescued traditional Sri Lankan dance, is survived by women: his wife, his daughters and his granddaughters.  So too is the Kandyan dance – originally reserved for men – now invested in women.

In this regard, Samhara is particularly special. This show is among many other things, an ode to the female dancer, the female body, the female form, the female herself: the Goddess, the mother, the source of all life.

Samhara bloomed into being in a space between the controlled gestures and upper-body undulation of the Odissi dance – the dance form that was derived from the seductively posed temple sculptures of ancient India – and the wilder, fiery, less controlled disposition of the Kandyan dance.  It developed a series of exchanges between the complex and nimble rhythmic structure of the Odissi movement, the more sturdy and reliable rhythm patterns of the Kandyan drum, the delicate, subtle story-telling of the Odissi hands and eyes, and the decisive, large movement of the Kandyan dancers. These two forms, both ancient, both rigorous, were meeting face to face: they were showing off, contending with each other, rivaling and yet complementing each other and the stage before us was the site.

The dancers melted from threes to twos to fours and fives in Sen’s flawless choreography – never predictable but always so fluid – and their bodies interacted on a bare stage lit by warm pinks and icy blues.  The dancers were in a state of constant flirtation: with each other, but also with themselves, their own bodies. As the Odissi dancers undulate their torsos seductively and the Kandyan dancers look lovingly at their own arm-movements, it feels as though these women are marvelling at their own bodies, and each others’, in a state of wonderment and joyful surprise at seeing what the dance is doing to them. The pieces dissolve from one to another; the dancing never ends. The lights fade but the movement never stops.  The audience holds its breath, captivated, as the slightest shifting of weight or the continuous, slow tilt of a head makes you believe the dancers are never still – even when you can’t see them.

In one moment, one of Nrityagram’s Principal Dancers, Bijayini Satpathy joins Thaji Dias, Principal Dancer of the Chitrasena Dance Company, in a phrase of Kandyan dance – and she executes it playfully and flawlessly. In one other moment, Thaji joins her in turn, in a single Odissi move. Besides these moments – so brief and yet immediately poignant – the dancers are always in conversation, but never take on the others’ styles. Samhara never pretends that the different styles are somehow one. They are not, and that is the crux of the show.

The Odissi dance form is sublime – its pin-point precision and its ability to combine every body part to create a perfect whole movement in an exact and definite moment, creates pure magic. It creates the kind of magic that only dance can really create. The presence of ‘Abhinaya’ (expression) within the form itself makes Odissi a form of story-telling, the dancers constantly emoting, constantly eloquent. The Kandyan dance form, on the other hand, is less precise and is less inherently complex. It is ‘pure’ dance; it is a blank slate on which you build movement to show-off technical skill. It has no story, it has no natural drama. The drama comes from the joy and the wild abandon of the movement itself.

Samhara consciously or unconsciously showcased this explicit difference between the two forms. While the Odissi ebbed and flowed with beautiful ease, the Kandyan dance struck out with strength and impact. However, it was clear that the Kandyan dance didn’t have the same vital subtlety and nuance that the Odissi did. And this created an interesting conundrum: it was almost like the Kandyan dance had never been challenged quite this way this before.

Yet the challenge was precisely the thing that made it come alive. In Samhara, the Kandyan dance looked better than it had looked in years. And so did the Chitrasena Dance Company.

The Chitrasena Company has a long legacy of greatness, of inspired innovation within the traditional dance forms. At the height of its success in the 50s and the 60s, they were touring the world with Chitrasena’s masterpieces, pieces of dance theatre that were considered cutting-edge in the global dance arena. He recognized that technique was nothing without substance, nor substance without technique. And so what he did best was bringing the Kandyan dance to life – creating life on that blank, otherwise inexpressive slate. He gave it a soul – which it did not inherently possess.

And soul is perhaps what newer work from the Chitrasena Company has been lacking.

With the passing of the torch to Heshma Wignaraja, there is much hope that the work will finally begin, in this new era, to match or even surpass the greatness of earlier work. Heshma’s first true moment of genius as a choreographer came in the fund-raiser show produced  in collaboration with Barefoot, Sri Lanka’s premier boutique handloom brand, Barefeet in Motion (2003). Subsequent shows, The Art of Chitrasena (2006) and Guru Pooja (2008), both conceptualized by Heshma, were celebrated new pieces of work. And while it was clear that the Company had grown in technique and style, and had clearly begun its journey to re-establishing itself as an important artistic force, neither of these shows seemed to match the intellectual rigor and depth of thought that made Chitrasena’s own work so unique.

In 2010, Heshma choreographed Dancing for the Gods, and this was seen as a turning point. The choreography was beautifully structured, and it was conceptually brave – it was a reinterpretation of our most ancient ritual, the Kohomba Kankariya. The dancers were near-perfect. But just the previous year, Colombo audiences had had their first taste of Nrityagram. And so we couldn’t help but compare. And Dancing for the Gods felt incomplete: for dance that was meant to be ‘for the gods’, it lacked the sense of meditation, the deeply felt devotion and love expressed through every movement – every flick of the wrist or turn of the eye – of Nrityagram’s show. The stylish choreography of Dancing for the Gods felt somewhat flat and clinical.

So what is the secret to Nrityagram’s success? It is the genuine undertaking of a philosophy that was also Chitrasena’s own: preservation through innovation. This manifests wholly and rigorously in the expert choreography and creative thought of Surupa Sen. Nrityagram shows are the ultimate testament to the role of classical dance in the modern world. In their hands, classical dance is not clunky, old-fashioned or boring. It is as cutting-edge, as moving, as the best contemporary dance work in the world today. Nrityagram reminds us that classical dance can be vital and relevant while remaining pure and untarnished.

Therefore, in examining the Chitrasena Company’s work in contrast to that of Nrityagram’s, we are forced to ask a difficult question: is the Odissi dance form itself simply more interesting than the Kandyan dance form? Does it give a choreographer more meat, more substance to work with? It was at once puzzling and revelatory that the Chitrasena Company’s best work in recent years was in this collaboration.

And it truly was their best. As I sat at Samhara, it was the first time since I had stopped dancing that I thought ‘I wish I was a part of this’. There it was: form and content, soul and technique, perfectly balanced, hand-in-hand.

Let’s recognize Samhara as a true turning point for the Chitrasena Dance Company, and therefore dance in Sri Lanka.  It represents a kind of brand-new return to form, a restoration and a revival of traditions and values close to Chitrasena’s heart. One is of taking Sri Lankan dance to the world, and Samhara has reinstated the Chitrasena Company’s place in the international dance world through its phenomenally successful tour.  Another is presenting traditional dance as radical contemporary dance work, which Samhara has done successfully with Sen’s choreography and the immense skill of all five dancers. The last is the important tradition of artistic collaboration. Much of Chitrasena’s best work was created in close collaboration with musicians and artists who shared his values and artistic integrity. With Samhara, the Chitrasena Company returns to this idea, showing that perhaps their best work is created in partnership and friendship.

It feels like the Chitrasena Dance Company has truly arrived in a new era of creative excellence and they have done it with a little help from their friends. It feels like the Company has finally come home: home to where they really belong, alongside others like themselves who will inspire and challenge them to new forms of greatness.

Finally, it seems as though Samhara has delivered more than just the Chitrasena Dance Company home.  The Kandyan dance itself, it seems, has been reborn, emerging reinvigorated to meet the demands of a contemporary world. And it is housed in the body of the female dancer.

• Samhara: An interweaving of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble and the Chitrasena Dance Company
• Heshma Wignaraja: Thoughts on dance and choreography
• Interview with Vajira, Sri Lanka’s Prima Ballerina Assoluta
• Interview with Bijayini Satpathy, Director of the Odissi Gurukul at Nrityagram
• In conversation with Bijayini Satpathy, Director of the Odissi Gurukul at Nrityagram

[Editors note: Sanjay Senanayake in a comment below raises a number of concerns regarding inflammatory statements made by Rev. Dambara Amila Thero in the past, which invariably inform the appreciation of the interview below. Sanjay also alleges that the thero had in the past assaulted journalists from Young Asia Television, which produced this video. We have asked them for a response.]

When first put online by Young Asia Television after it was broadcast on Sri Lankan TV, Groundviews requested the producers to sub-title this video in English to make more widely accessible what Rev. Dambara Amila Thero has to say about the practice of the Dhamma in Sri Lanka today, his views on political Buddhism and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka.

What he says is particularly important and resonant in light of the outrageous violence spearheaded by the Chief Prelate of the Dambulla temple a few weeks ago.

This interview is essential viewing for those who expressed their condemnation over the violence in Dambulla, and refreshing take on the Dhamma over what is today the popular fashion of publicly worshipping the Buddha to bestow blessings on even the most heinous of deeds and men. At around 18 minutes into the interview, Rev. Dambara Amila Thero also supports religious co-existence and comes out strongly against religious extremism – noting that anyone who is such, is not really a Buddhist.

• Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
• Fake video and lies: The strange case of Dambulla’s Inamaluwe Sumangala thero
• The middle finger to the middle-path in Sri Lanka
• The transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
• Photo essay: Freedom, Religion, and Dambulla

Photo courtesy UN

May is the month of the diplomatic success of Sri Lanka and its friends at the Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2009. That battle and victory are now the target of criticism and historical revisionism. It is alleged that Sri Lanka was brought onto the HRC agenda by our success, that the Sri Lankan team in Geneva at the time should have kept the resolution off the agenda as had our counterparts in New York, that the success of 2009 was the progenitor of an inevitable setback of March 2012 in the same arena, and that if we are in a hole today, we dug that hole in 2009.

This criticism, whispered and murmured since 2009 and finally out in the public domain, has the dubious virtue of being entirely ‘home grown’, because nothing remotely along these lines has figured in the voluminous commentary on the May 2009 and March 2012 votes published overseas, be it ‘Wikileaked’ cable traffic between Geneva and Washington DC, critical research monographs or ‘higher’ journalistic analyses. Having recognised its psychological well-springs and domestic political coordinates, one could ignore it except that wrong diagnoses inevitably lead to wrong policy prescriptions and are injurious to the national interest.

In several senses, the battle in the UN HRC on May 26-27^th 2009 was inextricably linked to and a ‘superstructure’ of our military victory on the ground on May 18-19th. It was a run-on of that ‘ground war’. The West planned the resolution in the UN HRC as a means of securing a ‘humanitarian cessation’ of our final drive for victory against the Tigers. It followed through on the resolution, having earlier failed to move it in time to obtain a UN mandate for such a cessation. It failed because we in the UN HRC prevented the obtaining of the requisite sixteen signatures until the war was won. It remained one signature short for a week to ten days. The final signature was obtained shortly after, and the EU supported actively by the USA (as Secretary of State’s explicit instructions in a ‘Wiki leaked’ cable dated May 4th render incontrovertible) moved the Special session on Sri Lanka. Much is made of the fact that the US was not a member at that time, but by the same token, nor was Sri Lanka (having lost its seat at an election held in New York) –which did not mean that we were not active protagonists and players.

That Sri Lanka came on the UN HRC agenda in May 2009 due to its Geneva team at the time as alleged in an article in a well-known business magazine (and amplified in a Sunday column), is demonstrably false, several times over. Firstly there was an EU draft resolution against Sri Lanka as far back as early 2006, which we successfully removed from the agenda after I took over. Secondly, it is the EU backed by the US that sought a Special Session on Sri Lanka and tabled the resolution, thus bringing it on to the agenda.  Personally driven by David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner and carried on the wave of mass demonstrations in almost every Western capital by the Tamil Diaspora (including a self-immolation in front of the Palais de Nations), there was no possibility of  preventing it, though delay it we did. Thirdly, the comparison and contrast with New York is grossly erroneous. Sri Lanka was structurally safe in the UN Security Council, with the Russian and Chinese vetoes (and Russia and Vietnam as the rotating Chairs during the most intense weeks of the crisis), as it never was in the Human Rights Council. This is why, as an International Crisis Group report confirms, New York was never the intended pathway of the West’s move for a cessation of hostilities, while Geneva was. As UN Under Secretary-General Sha Zu Kang, China’s former Ambassador/PR in New York and Geneva, told me “they were looking for nothing less than a UN mandate, and knew it couldn’t come from the Security Council with us and the Russians there, or from the UNGA because the numbers were stacked against them; so they wanted it from Geneva. You not only deprived them of one, you gave them a negative mandate with your counter-resolution.”

What is richly ironic about this exaltation of a (professional) ‘New York model’ over a ‘Geneva model’ is that the issue of accountability entered the agenda and was conceded precisely in New York. Two successive Sri Lankan heads of Mission in New York had, during the final war, and indeed its final months, told me of the need for ‘a diplomatic endgame’ as distinct from a military one. Our current PR in New York, Dr Palitha Kohona, may recall an irate telephone call from me in May 2009 from the Serpentine bar at the UN Palais to Colombo (he was then the Secretary/MFA) to protest that we seemed to have conceded on accountability in New York, going by a communiqué issued after an ‘informal consultation’, which was being used in Geneva to put pressure on us. I told him I would not agree to anything of the sort. Dr Kohona urged me not to dissent on the record as we had to appear to be on the same page in New York, Colombo and Geneva. I am proud that when I left Geneva, I didn’t cut and run, leaving Sri Lanka dangling on an accountability hook.

Fourthly, our victory in the vote in May 2009 did not put or retain Sri Lanka on the agenda of the UN HRC; the EU driven Special Session did, but our diplomatic victory removed it from the agenda and there was no further action mandated, not even the need to report back to the Council. The return of Sri Lanka to the UN HRC agenda has therefore to be sourced in the actions or inactions – the sins of commission and omission– in the years following the success of May 2009, i.e. the post-war years.

Ironies abound in the revisionist critique of our diplomatic success in May 2009. If a 17 vote majority, is a ‘hole’, how may one describe the high-stakes, Sri Lankan bid in late 2005 at the UN in New York which failed to obtain the vote of either China or India, or to put it differently, obtained the support of neither India nor China?  Surely the support of Asia’s two major players, or at least one of them, should have been ascertained before making a move which pathetically crumbled? If ‘preventive’ diplomacy were ever needed, it was to prevent such a fiasco.

Did Sri Lanka have the option of a dignified compromise in Geneva in 2009, a compromise that could either have kept the EU resolution from being placed on the agenda or one that could have led to a consensus? As the Special Session drew near, negotiations between Sri Lanka and the EU-led West were conducted at our behest by a Quartet, comprising our main neighbours India and Pakistan, and the current and incoming Chairs of the Non Aligned Movement, Cuba and Egypt, together with Sri Lanka. This arrangement was designed to reflect the chief concentric circles constituting Sri Lanka’s identity in the world: the South Asian neighbourhood and the global South. Those negotiations included one convened by the President of the Council, the Ambassador/PR of Nigeria, Dr Martin Umohoibhi, just before the vote was taken. The stance  of the West even at those last minute backstage talks, and more clearly and publicly, the amendment moved by Germany in the Council after formal session resumed (successfully forestalled by Cuba), clearly proved the impossibility of a compromise: the EU and its allies were dogmatically insistent that any reference to ‘sovereignty’ should be deleted from the text, that UN Human Rights High Commissioner should engage in a fact-finding mission to the war zone and report to the Council within six months, and that an international accountability mechanism was imperative. It is vital to recall the larger, real-world backdrop against which the issue was being posed: that of the bitter and victorious final battles fought back home. The Quartet, the NAM and I as SL’s PR rejected such a sell out of the Sri Lankan armed forces and citizens, our hard fought and finally won victory over secessionist terrorism, and the principles of the NAM.

My critics depict our stance and strategy of May 2009 as some kind of ultra-left, lone wolf confrontationist adventurism. This defies both logic and fact. Firstly, had it been so, it could not have garnered a near-two third majority of support, from Russia to Nigeria, from India to Indonesia, from the Philippines to Uruguay, from South Africa to Brazil. Secondly, a distinguished professional of the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry Dr Rohan Perera, whom I always kept in the loop, consulted on draft texts and was invited to crucial meetings in Geneva during those days, is witness that all our strategic and tactical decisions were taken in a collective and collegiate manner, at consultations with our coalition, including crucially, NAM and the BRICs. Not a single decision was taken outside of and other than by our ‘united front’; not a move made without consultation with and concurrence of trained, experienced and accomplished senior diplomats of a diverse array of states who were in touch with their capitals (with Russia represented by a former Deputy Foreign Minister and China by the Ambassador who would go onto be the PR currently on the Security Council). A lesson of Geneva May 2009 was Sri Lanka’s need for –and ability to—‘unite the many, defeat the few’, rally the broadest forces, construct coalitions, build alliances with those who stood for sovereignty and a multi-polar world, neutralise those vacillators in the middle, thus helping us balance off pressures on our national sovereignty from the Diaspora-driven, ‘humanitarian interventionist’ powers.

It is unsurprising though, that the revisionist critics fault me for failing to arrive at a negotiated compromise when the last example they set of successfully negotiated compromise was the post-tsunami ‘joint mechanism’ (PTOMS) of  2005 with the Tamil Tigers, leaving Hon Lakshman Kadirgamar out of the negotiating loop. This mechanism consisted of a top tier in which the legitimate Government of Sri Lanka and the Tigers were accorded equal representation and the more important middle tier in which the Tigers were conceded five seats to the elected government’s three! The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka froze the operation of the P-TOMS’ middle tier and effectively aborted that deadly act of appeasement.

It is amusing that the tactics of the Sri Lankan Geneva team of the 1980s are upheld as a model for the 2009 challenge. It was not, though the performance was skilled and competent.  In the mid–to-late ’80s in Geneva, Sri Lanka was on the defensive, through no fault of its ably led team. In a lesson that may be apposite for March 2012 and beyond, but had no relevance for 2009, the Sri Lankan team of the ’80s found itself on the opposite side of India, while the latter had many allies and proxies. In such a situation Sri Lanka had to play for a draw as it were in Geneva. The crux of the matter, which has been avoided by the revisionist critics of our performance in Geneva 2009 and 2012, is the pivotal strategic significance of India for Sri Lanka’s external relations and those policy measures needed in the ‘intermestic’ realm to retain the support of that most critical of variables. I have been an unflinchingly consistent advocate of precisely such measures, and as a student of geopolitical Realism, have held that given especially the new strategic alliances, the road to Washington lies through Delhi.

• A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC
• Geneva 2012: The signs missed, lessons unlearnt
• The Curious Case of Diplomats & that ‘Internal Conflict’
• Counter-productive propaganda and human rights in Sri Lanka
• Focus on Human Rights

Today in the contemporary society there is a cost for everything, from the air that we breathe to the burial of the dead. But we never question the money’s worth for what we pay. Governments come and go, rules are enacted and shelved and applied to ones choosing, babies are born, killed and one’s life is sometimes snuffed out before being born. No one questions these nor are there answers one would be obliged to provide, life goes for the survival of the fittest. Man a social animal with more animalist inclinations living in a concrete jungle called modern conurbations. This is where we are today. We know the cost of everything and value of next to nothing. So is the cost of distrust. We do not know the cost of trust hence we fail to fathom the cost of distrust.

A society built on trust is sustainable, cheap and effective and value based. As opposed to this, distrust is a negative reflection of trust and it is prohibitively expensive, it costs one’s life, social harmony and economic growth of a nation.

In Sri Lanka, cost of everything is high and shooting higher and higher, the more the society is individuated from homogeneity the more we become socially and economically unsustainable and it would undermine all the systems that support society.

Individuation and division of people into segments and groups under various pretexts is good for market forces to make profit out of such atomisations, but this produces an unsustainable society.

For a society to sustain itself, it has to be homogenous, interdependent, sharing and caring so that in return it would produce social security, social harmony, efficient resource use, productivity and peace. The kingpin of such a cohesive society is mutual trust, inter-dependence and reciprocity. This is what we were once, and then, we did not have endemic poverty, civil strife, communalism and divisions as much as we have now.

The issues of distrust in Sri Lankan society can be categorised at three levels – individual, social and political.  At the individual plane there is trust between people. The Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims in their neighbourhood have very cordial relations with each other as individuals and families. Similarly their individual business relationships and other transactions confirm inter-dependency amongst them. This is a healthy sign at the people level based on individual and family connections. Very rarely is there a rupture in their personal, private and business relations amongst them unless distrust by ones own misdemeanour spoils the relationship. Here, culture, language, race and religion have never been a dividing force and as opposed to this mutual understanding and respect and reciprocation has often strengthened the bonds across the divide. Remarkably, individuals and families hail from diverse backgrounds where mutual relationship is not inhibited by diversity, instead diversity plays a neutral role and it was humanity that binds these people together. That is why the many tourists and other foreigners call us a smiling people.

Apart from these, the commonality of the socio-economic problems that people face in general is common to all people irrespective of their diversity. Therefore, socio-economic problems of most Sri Lankans are common except where developments are driven to regions due to political power building than when it is national development centric. Therefore people, if left to themselves un-interfered by social and political leaders tend to maintain harmony and perpetuate good relationships amongst them at their plane.

For the people, ‘Distrust’ at their plane is prohibitively expensive and threatens survival. At this plane, there is no reason for distrust amongst them since everyone is fighting for their own survival and they have their own issues to look after than the issues of politics and economy which are controlled by the powerful segments of the society. Therefore, for them ‘Trust’ and mutual recognition is the way for their survival.

At the Social Plane the people are divided as communities,Sinhalese (Buddhists/ Catholics), Tamils (Hindus / Catholics) and Muslims (Consisting of many ethnicities) . Each group have their leaders who represent their communal interests in the larger fabric of society. There is a need for such leaders to genuinely represent their communities so that the interest of the community is furthered for their betterment. Like the people relationship at their plane, social and community leaders need to represent community at the higher plane to further engender social sustainability and harmony without undermining the sustainability of the other. Unfortunately, very often social and community leaders do not reflect the aspirations of the common people instead they tend to turn out to be liberators of their people and thereby carve a niche for them as another class. Then they use their liberationist thoughts about the other’s hegemony and create divisions amongst the people in order to consolidate and perpetuate their position as leaders. To justify their claim to leadership and to keep them perpetually relevant amongst their respective peoples, they invent new issues like Dambulla, Anuradhapura and similar issues so that they will have a following that gives credence to their leadership. It is this breed that spawn chauvinism in society for their private gains.

Since independence, how many social and community leaders have sacrificed their personal wealth and positions to the benefits of their communities? They are a very countable few and the rest are parasiting on their community and larger society.

The main tool that this breed of community leaders use is ‘Distrust’. They spread distrust amongst unsuspecting innocent people and create divisions among them and create a place for this special class. As was displayed in the Dambulla case, it is the silent majority that pays the price for maintaining this class of leaders. They do serious damage to the society, amongst a people who have no division, they divide and they spread mischief in a harmonious society in the name of looking after the interest of their community. This sort of leadership is a social evil that parasites on the society and does no good to the country.

This sort of leadership does not go after the social and economic ills that threaten their community or society. They are silent about the increasing number of drug addicts, alcoholism, spread of pornography, human trafficking, economic inequity, poverty, failure of health & education and social & moral degradation and the absence of social justice. Invariably they are very often found frolicking with those parties that suck the society through the aforesaid social ills and other means.

To the leaders at this level, building trust is an anathema and it threatens their survival and they are hell bent on spawning ‘Distrust’ among people in the name of culture, language, race, religion and country. Can we then expect them to build this nation as a civilised country that thrives in meritocracy and good governance?

At the political plane similar to the social plane, it was the social leadership that very often evolves as political leadership. As often, political leaders use social, religious or racial aspects as ladders to climb up the hierarchy by creating a voter base not based on intelligent policies but on divisive and chauvinistic beliefs.

Post Independence history testifies, that our political class parcelled out to people not pragmatic programmes of nation building but chauvinism, language to preclude the other, disfranchising the estate workers, removal of minority protection clause in the 1971 constitution, supposed Dharmishta Society and Dignified Peace as Unique Selling Propositions (USP)to come to power. In the process they let the country to bleed for 30years. No political groups accept responsibility for what they did to the country that destroyed the social fabric and economic infrastructure of a nation that Lee Kuan Yu once wished to emulate in the 1960s.

Even in Post War Sri Lanka, the political class is still bickering over how to consolidate power by hook or by crook than by presenting to people credible and pragmatic programmes and policies as a way forward to sustainable Sri Lanka.

The goodwill, bonds and human fraternity prevailing amongst all Sri Lankans are destroyed by the social and political leadership today. The USPs used by all these leaders is a mirage to people that they never achieved but resulted in distrust and division.

The people have built their lives around trust and understanding whereas the social and political leaders build their lives on distrust and division which percolates down the society as time goes and that is how our society has come to be so divided and vulnerable.

These point to a fact that when more and more people trust their social/communal and political leaders the people would breed distrust and get more polarised to give way for the corrupt leaders to drain the social and national resources for the betterment of the few who command.

Who gains by ‘Distrust’?

Today, spawning distrust in a society is an effective marketing tool. Spawning distrust in a harmonious society creates a paradigm shift and results in creating new market opportunities. As such, this society is bound to be conflict ridden as more and more market players would come to the scene to sell security, conflict resolution, anti-terrorism consultants and arms dealers. No doubt, Sri Lanka with all the paragons of peace active in their peaceful domains, distrust is an ever growing phenomenon and this is testified by the ever increasing defence allocation in Sri Lanka’s budget and the closeness that it is building with Israel – a country thriving in arms supply and paradoxical relationship with other countries in peace time.

• How high is our Social Esteem in Sri Lanka?
• LTTE offers tax break to Sri Lankan businesses
• Political Character of the UPFA Regime: Is Democracy Safe?
• Groundviews Person of the Year ?
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In many post-conflict contexts the idea of reconciliation dominates public discussion. This is no different in Sri Lanka. But what exactly is meant by reconciliation? As Susan Dwyer (1999) points out there has been a “global frenzy” on this topic in the post-Apartheid era with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission often held up as an exemplary model. Much of this discussion, though, lacks analytical clarity. This is a brief attempt to explore one challenge posed to the notion of reconciliation in Sri Lanka: where or how can an inclusive Sri Lankan imaginary be located? I approach this issue through the area of my disciplinary training, literature, and attempt to reflect on how literary representations in general have struggled to articulate an inclusive conception of Sri Lankaness. A pervasive historical consciousness and the dominance of realism as a genre of writing, I argue, emerge as two inter-related phenomenon that are intimately connected to this problem.

To some commentators the post-2009 era presents an opportunity to break with the past. This appears to be largely the official government desire as well. In his address to the nation, following the defeat of the LTTE, the Executive President of country made the provocative and controversial statement that minorities no longer exist in Sri Lanka. Yet post-war events in the country clearly suggest otherwise. The majoritarian imagination of the Sinhala polity along with the Tamil minority’s self-perception as a historically wronged community and Tamil nationalism’s lingering desire for separation as evidenced by the activities of some sections of the Tamil diaspora and local Tamil politicians are all part of Sri Lanka’s post-war reality. There are signs of further ethno-religious schisms as evidenced by the recent Dambulla mosque incident.

While reconciliation might be seen as a future process that builds trust and tolerance between divided communities, the term also carries strong implications of a return or restoration. However, Sri Lanka’s past, both pre- and post-independence, provides little evidence of an inclusive conception of nationhood. Other than the elite English-speaking Ceylonese identity that flourished briefly in the early twentieth century, and found political expression in the Ceylon National Congress, Sri Lankan political culture and more importantly its national cultural imaginary has always been marked by, for want of a better word, a communal and religious dynamic.

This is not to homogenize Sri Lankan history and suggest that ethno-religious divisiveness has been the norm. Indeed, it is possible to argue that as recently as pre-1956 there were better relations between communities and ethno-nationalist consciousness was not a dominant concern. For instance, in the contest for the ‘educated-Ceylonese’ seat in the 1911 Legislative Council elections the goigama Sinhalese backed a Tamil vellala caste candidate over a karava Sinhala candidate—caste concerns superseded ethnic/racial considerations. Nonetheless a space where Sri Lankaness could be evoked and experienced, as in ecumenical Gandhian nationalism in India, has been largely absent in Sri Lanka. The ‘imagined community’ of Sri Lanka, to invoke Benedict Anderson (1983), has never been fully realized.

Literature and the attempt to imagine an inclusive nation

Literary writing is often a space where the idealistic and imaginative is explored. In a number of post-1983 English language novels, writers have tried to counter contemporary ethno-nationalist polarization in the island by attempting to imagine moments of connection and collective identity. I chose here two novels: Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s iconic When Memory Dies (1997) and Yasmine Gooneratne’s The Sweet and Simple Kind (2006). Broadly similar in structure both novels look at the past and the familial domain to imagine spaces of inclusivity. Yet both texts also represent a failure of the imagination because they replicate the trajectory of the familiar narrative of Sri Lanka’s inexorable slide into ethno-nationalist conflict—the imaginative here is subsumed by the historical and the ‘real’.[1]

In When Memory Dies, a text that is unique and exemplary in the way it attempts to imagine an inclusive Sri Lankan identity, Sivanandan creatively exploits the early labor movement in colonial Ceylon to suggest a subaltern multi-cultural anti-colonial movement. The text also features a number of instances where individuals transcend ethno-religious boundaries. The young Vijay born to Sinhala parents but socialized in both Tamil and Sinhala cultures, because his Sinhala father dies before his birth and his mother subsequently marries a Tamil man, is the most iconic example of the text’s attempt to question the naturalization of ethnic identity. But like his parents inter-ethnic marriage, Vijay’s life ends in tragedy. While his mother Lali is killed by a Sinhala mob during the 1958 anti-Tamil riots Vijay who tries to act as an emissary of reconciliation between the South and North at the end of the book is executed by his own Tamil cousin, a rising figure in the northern Tamil militant movement.

Unlike When Memory Dies the Sweet and Simple Kind looks at the issue of a collective Sri Lankan identity from an elite English-speaking perspective. Gooneratne’s text suggests that it was the historic responsibility of the English-speaking elite to disseminate liberal values to society at large. Centering on the powerful Wijesinghes and their manorial residence Lucas Falls—easily identifiable as a pastiche of the Bandaranaike and Ratwatte families—the story is one of how the once liberal and British educated Wijesinghe patriarch and most of his clan succumb to expedient ethno-nationalist politics in search of political power. While the text’s historical vision and understanding of Sri Lankan history is far more limited than When Memory Dies, the narrative trajectory is similar—from the promise of an inclusive and tolerant society to one riven by ethno-nationalist divisions.

Both texts try to imagine alternatives to Sri Lanka’s current predicament by looking at the past, but the imagination falters when confronted by the ‘reality’ of the island’s present. I would argue that this is at least in part due to the realist genre. Realism is largely compelled to remain faithful to the historical record and reproduce things as they are. While a certain degree of creative license may be available the imagination can be stifled by the realist form. Its greatest strength is the very ability to generate what Rolan Barthes has called the “illusion of reality” and create believable life-worlds and this is also why the realist novel has played a central social role, especially in imagining the nation. But it is this same compulsion to be ‘real’ that limits and constrains the imagination.

If one were to contrast this with the career of the African novel in English, for instance, an immediate difference is apparent. The writing of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o or Chinual Achebe, for example in its early phase was both realist and nationalist. Both writers saw the novel as a central literary artifact in in the process of decolonization. But as African post-colonial nationalism floundered Ngugi in particular abandoned the realist genre. This is what, American philosopher of Ghanaian origin, Kwame Appiah calls the post-realist and post-nativist turn in African literature.[2] If the earlier realist literary tradition contributed to nativist thinking and the naturalization of ethno-nationalist identities, post-realism helps the imagining of alternatives. But at the same time Ngũgĩ and many other post-realist African novelists are not post-national. While they may reject the conception of nation and nationalism as inherited from the colonial experience they try to imagine it in radically different ways.

Authenticity and the realist novel

Sri Lankan Sinhala writing has also been largely dominated by the realist mode. It may come as no surprise, therefore, that Gunadasa Amarasekara, arguably one of the most important and influential contemporary novelists, is a staunch defender of realism. For Amarasekara realism equates to authenticity. In Abudassa Yugayak, first published in 1976 and later updated in 1996, Amarasekara argues that the decline the Sinhala novel, following the work of Martin Wickremasinghe, is accompanied by social decline—the Sinhala novel he argues has failed in articulating a social vision that will help the Sinhalese rediscover their authenticity and become truly decolonized. Amarasekara repeats this theme across a number of his fictional texts as well as socio-political tracts. Exploiting outdated, but unfortunately widely prevalent positivist views on Sri Lankan history Amarasekara defines this authenticity as a form of transcendent Sinhala consciousness and a righteous form of governance associated with Buddhism which has survived for millennia from pre- to post-colonial times. The work of the novelist, as Amarasekara sees it, is to explore this notion of authenticity and how it can be realized in a modern social context.

Given the close association of the novel with the nation and the nationalist imagination it is unsurprising that a nationalist thinker like Amarasekara feels the need to defend it and uses it as a site to promote nativist thinking. What this evinces though is an inability to think beyond the legacies of certain modes of colonial thinking. Just as the form of the Sri Lankan nation state is the product of colonial-modernity so it seems is the literary imagination that accompanies it. The very ethnic identities that we take for granted today were crystalized in a complex negotiation between local actors and colonial forms of knowledge, institutional practices and practices of political representation. Imagining alternatives means the ability to be able to both critically reflect on these legacies but also to think beyond and outside them. From the perspective of literature perhaps we need a post-realist turn in Sri Lanka.[3]

To return to where I began if reconciliation means some kind of return, Sri Lanka needs to critically engage with the notion how an inclusive Sri Lankan identity can be generated. This necessarily means an encounter with the past—else we may have utopian declarations such as the one that minorities no longer exist. The past might not be the best inspiration for reconciliation in Sri Lanka but it does provide a template for how the nation should not be imagined. While Sinhala nationalism’s primary failure was and continues to be its unaccomodative majoritarianism, Tamil nationalism was equally majoritarian—it imagined and fought for a mono-ethnic Tamil nation. An ethical alternative to such majoritarianism needs to emerge. While critically engaging with the past we cannot be defined by it—only then might we be freed from the ‘tyranny of reality’.

References

• Amarasekara, Gunadasa. 1976 (1996). Abudassa Yugayak [An unreal time]. Boralesgamuwa, Sri Lanka: Visidunu Publishers.
• Anderson Benedict.1983 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
• Dwyer, Susan. 1999. “Reconciliation for realists”, Ethics & International Affairs 13(1): 81–98, March 1999.
• Gooneratne, Yasmine. 2006. The Sweet and Simple Kind. Colombo: Perera and Hussein Publishing
• Sivanandan, Ambalavaner. 1997. When Memory Dies. London: Arcadia.

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Audiences in Colombo were over the weekend treated to Samhara, a collaboration between India’s Nrityagram Dance Ensemble and Sri Lanka’s Chitrasena Dance Company. Groundviews caught up with Nrityagram’s lead dancer Bijayini Satpathy, the artistic director and choreographer of Nrityagram, Surupa and Chitrasena Dance Company’s choreographer, Heshma Wignaraja.

We talked about the production, and the creative process that gave rise to it. The conversation focussed on rave reviews of the performance at the Joyce Theater in New York, and why they are averse to calling it a fusion of dance forms. We talk about the creative tension of modern day choreography juxtaposed with the form and tradition of Kandyan as well as Odissi dance, and how young, new audience with their own expectations are influencing each company to perfect their dance. Given the sheer technical prowess of dancers in this production, we also go discuss the problem of inspiring the next generation of dancers when so many are unwilling to make the self-effacing sacrifices needed to come remotely close to what audiences saw on stage at the Wendt.

The interview runs for just under 39 minutes. Some photos of the production sent to Groundviews by Nrityagram can be viewed beneath the video.

Groundviews and the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble have a long history. Nrityagram’s Director of the Odissi Gurukul Bijayini Satpathy was first interviewed by us, at the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya, in July 2009. As we noted then,

What Orhan Pamuk is to literature, Bijayini is to dance. She is effortlessly captivating. Having seen her dance on a couple of occasions, I was delighted when I got the opportunity to speak with her at length on the art of dance, her sojourn in Sri Lanka, her take on our own dance traditions, her bond to the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya and, in general, her experiences as a dancer, life in Nrityagram and the nature of a relationship between the guru and the student.

A year later, we caught up with Bijayini in an interview broadcast on public television in Sri Lanka.

Groundviews has also interviewed Chitrasena Dance Company’s Heshma Wignarajah. In that interview,

We speak about how difficult it is for a woman to be part of what is a predominantly male Kandyan dance tradition and form. Given the changing nature of audiences, I ask Heshma who she sees as her audience – her answer is interesting, noting that it is not just an older generation interested in the Company’s productions. Towards the end of the interview, I ask Heshma about her approach to choreography, the sources of her inspiration and choreography’s place in a dance production.

• Heshma Wignaraja: Thoughts on dance and choreography
• In conversation with Bijayini Satpathy, Director of the Odissi Gurukul at Nrityagram
• Interview with Bijayini Satpathy, Director of the Odissi Gurukul at Nrityagram
• Thoughts on ‘Dancing for the Gods’ by the Chitrasena and Vajira Dance Foundation
• What Samhara Means: A review of Samhara and an unraveling of what it really means for Sri Lankan Dance

More than 5000 people packed Colombo’s Sugathadasa stadium (photo above) for the inaugural conference of the Peratugami Samajawadi Pakshaya (Frontline Socialist Party, FSP) on April 9, 2012. Photo and description courtesy Troubled Kashmir

Reading through Groundviews especially during the recent past, one would note that most contributions were in fact raising serious concerns over the core issue of governance as it is in Sri Lanka and the regime’s ideology in finding adequate answers for socio economic ills, the system itself carries as endemic.

One could safely assume, though Groundviews exposed and writers to Groundviews condemned the most recent Dambulla incident of insulting and depriving religious rights of the Muslim people, wanting reasonable and justifiable answers from this regime, there will be none. There were no reasonable answers for and culprits dealt with, in any of the previous attacks on churches and on the Muslim shrine in Anuradhapura in September, 2011. Every single such attack on other religious places had been instigated on a call from a Buddhist monk, or they have joined the religious mob parade, in the name of Buddhism. Funnily, Buddhism can only be “owned” by the Sinhala people within this island.

It runs on that awfully dominant social psyche created for waging war, now used to keep the military intruding into civil administration and the daily life of people, not only in North and East, but elsewhere too. It is the politicising of the whole State on this intimidatory Sinhala Buddhist politics with military power, that makes LLRC Recommendations anathema to this Rajapaksa regime. This type of power cabals can not provide any decent and disciplined governance, even to the racist constituency it uses for usurping unrestricted power, extending beyond the Constitution.

Hence the dismantling and muting of all institutions responsible for law and order in the country. This regime needs it to push and straighten its muscles and its goons the way it wishes. A disciplined and a “law and order situation” would not allow Mervyns, Dumindas, Muthuhettigamas and goons to continue with a Secretary to the Defence Ministry whom the foreign media tags as “the most powerful Secretary of Defence”, though Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is the most inefficient Secretary to the defence ministry since 1948.

The media avoids discussing Gotabhaya’s performance as Secretary to Ministry of Defence, which is appalling. Beginning in January 2010 which is post war, the police web site says, 877 out of 894 abductions reported, were accepted for investigations. The first quarter of 2011 has 235 abductions reported to the police, says the police web site. The GV noted in early April that according to media reports, February and March this year (2012) witnessed 29 abductions, while during the past 06 months up to April, there had been 56 abductions reported in the media.

In such context of mass abductions, police stations are mobbed and attacked by local citizens for custodial killings. Murder, rape of women and sexual abuse of children have all gone high during this Rajapaksa regime. Police and army personnel are accused of contract killing. There is also an increasing rate of suicides and homicides in the security forces, while every year since the war was declared victoriously over, the defence budget was consistently increased, at the expense of education and health. That defines the efficiency of this Secretary to the Defence Ministry, having taken the police department too under the ministry.

There is more to this regime, as to why it should be changed. Never has a Governor of a Central Bank (CB) played politics dirty and low as the present Governor Cabral. Never had one whose business into “Pyramid schemes” investigated by the CB, been appointed as its Governor. Never had any regime before, handed over the Treasury to one who was found responsible for big time fraud and was asked to leave public service by the Supreme Court for such fraud. And never had any Supreme Court allowed such proven guilt to be pardoned over a personal appeal to allow that same culprit to assume office as before. Now the two most important positions for the country’s economic survival and growth, are left at the hands of two, whose integrity and efficiency are beyond discovery.

This is no accident and not without political reason. Massive frauds are not possible, if a regime appoints clean and principled men to key positions. It is here worth noting that no ministry would have any mega corruption issue, IF the Secretary to the Ministry, who is the Chief Accounting Officer in the ministry and under whose signature all financial transactions take place, stands on his or her own integrity and open administration. The Sri Lanka Administrative Service (SLAS) is far from moulding righteous men or women.

This country, after 64 years of unrealised independence and people’s robbed sovereignty including over 06 years of Rajapaksa rule, can not be put to right with  change of faces. Politics that decides power with mega corruption has BOUGHT OVER the whole State, justified by and continued as such with Sinhala Buddhist supremacy. The whole system of governance has now come to live as a Sinhalised corrupt system that needs total overhaul. That needs a democratic programme with a democratic leadership, not just a regime change. That’s where a decent, democratic “Left” programme could stand the test of social necessity.

Wickramasinghe, a political schemer though no public leader, seems the only Sinhala leader who understands this political dilemma. This Sri Lankan political dilemma is not in for any “Spring”, Arab or not. Not for now. For now, its the next parliamentary or presidential elections, hopefully in 2015 or 2016 if not earlier, that still holds hope for a regime change. Its for that elections the UNP leadership with Ranil Wickramasinghe (RW), is now gearing for. Its for that elections he is building bridges for a Sinhala – Tamil alliance. Wickramasinghe is hopeful, there would be a substantial Sinhala middle class drift, away from this Rajapaksa regime in the coming year or two.

He is not too far away from such possibility. The economy is turning out to be a major factor that decides allegiance of the Sinhala middle class; the academics, the professionals, public officers in districts outside Colombo and the small time service providers in urban and rural towns. RW is also well aware, the Colombo centred trade unions have turned away from supporting the Rajapaksa regime. In fact the workers go on record as the first organised sector that successfully challenged and defeated the government on the Employees’ Pension Fund Bill and on salary increase demands.

The UNP is being dragged to add the extras on to the growing slice of the disillusioned Sinhala vote, RW believes he could now muster. He believes the North – East Tamil and Muslim vote and that of the plantations, could tilt the balance in his favour. He may not be wrong as Rajapaksas are now facing mounting pressure from many fronts; international, economic and from the Indian side.

Yet what remains unanswered is, can RW and his UNP provide answers for all ills ? UNP can only talk of “corruption free” economic management. How true would such promises mean with the type of men RW could have in his cabinet ? Even if he runs with a small cabinet of ministers with “good people”, what is his development programme ? His neo liberalism, yet to be told is not what he advocated through “Regaining Sri Lanka”, is now a discarded model, worldwide. Well, yes ! The next man (or woman) bidding to head the SL government should now say where he or she stands on economic policy and social development, before asking for power.

Mitt Romney the next Republican prospect for US Presidency, accused Obama for leaning towards “Euro Socialism” in his efforts to turn around the ailing US economy. “Socialism” has already entered presidential campaign jargon. Two working papers (12/64 and 65) released by the IMF on 01 March, 2012 though not representing official IMF positions indicate, it was those few countries with strong protective labour laws that withstood global recession this time. This rubbishes the claim that SL has too rigid labour laws for growth, the cry of the second generation neo liberals.

Launching his latest book in Colombo, January this year, “Marx’s theory of Price and its modern Rivals”, the Hague based business consultant Prof. Howard Nicholas said,

The US and European Central Bank have together printed US$ 20 trillion in three years. Where is inflation? More money has been printed than was in the last 50 to 60 years in GDP terms. But you open any economic text book, what is the fundamental principle; inflation follows too much money. But where is the inflation? Neo classical economist cannot get out of this. Keynes tried to get out, but he never left a theory of price, resulting in an equally redundant theory of money. You have to come back to Marx.

He then said [quote] I became so impressed with Marx’s economics, purely as a scientific analysis of capitalists society, that I wanted to translate it into plain English. I want to butcher neo classical economics, the idealogical nonsense misleading generation after generation. Marxism does provide that alternative [unquote].

There is certainly an opening for a “Left Agenda” now. One that would propose a far reaching democratic agenda than what RW and his alliance with even the TNA could possibly offer. Serious reforms, this country needs for post war reconciliation and development. That agenda certainly would have to revert to a nationalist economy, that would guide the market on terms and conditions required for selective growth in the economy. It would not be a “free for all” economy and it would not be a “State owned and controlled” economy either.

It would be democratic to the extent, the whole development process would be within a “National Development Policy” that would go through a serious social dialogue, before achieving legal status through parliament. That national policy would define and decide the shape, size and colour of education, health, public transport, industry and agriculture for at least a 10 year period.

What is seriously more important should be, the total State Reform the “Left Agenda” has to offer, that RW and the UNP can never offer. This Sinhala State can not be changed with a few “independent commissions” though campaigned for as transitional issues against the Rajapaksa’s 18 Amendment. This centralised State would give no meaning to the 13^th  Amendment, even if it is given the colour of full implementation. It is too heavily centralised in many ways, for such implementation. This State therefore needs a complete overhaul with the abolition of the heavily centralised Executive Presidency. There can not be and will not be any worthwhile devolution of powers, even under RW, if centralised power is allowed in any form.

It is therefore important, the “Left Agenda” takes upon itself the responsibility of pushing through the proposal in the “Final Report” of the APRC, handed over to President Rajapaksa in June 2010. This proposal, though in the absence of the UNP and the TNA, brought together the widest consensus possible in the Sinhala South. It got all shades of Sinhala chauvinism to agree for power devolution within a Constitution that gives back a bi – cameral parliament, the powers now enjoyed by the Executive President. It is a new solution, the UNP and the TNA can not politically oppose. It thus could be campaigned for as the post war solution for Constitutional reform, with the strongest possible consensus among the Sinhala South, the Tamils and the Muslims.

Such far reaching changes on State Reform and economic development would not be offered by the UNP and Wickramasinghe, but in the present context, RW and the TNA can not afford to ignore such reform, if campaigned for. That provides a “Left Agenda” more space now in SL, despite the fact that there is no serious and credible “Left” political party or movement to lay claim for such an initiative.

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Poster for the film Oh My God

I was born into a Malay family, where religion never seemed to play an important role. Most of the women in my family hardly covered their heads and the men usually consumed alcohol at every family gathering. There were a few who were staunch believers and prayed five times a day; some of them even covered their heads. But this was a rare instance and most often, it was looked upon as an act of extremism.

Growing up, religion was never imposed on me. Unlike most Muslim children I knew at the time, my parents never forced me to pray, never pressured me to cover or refrained me from doing things that were usually frowned upon in Islam. They did, however, teach me some aspects of Islam. I was taught the Kalimas, the six articles of Islamic faith, the stories of Prophet Muhammad, of Adam and Eve, and of Jesus. I was taught to be scared of the fiery depths of hell, to be aware of the wrongful path of non-believers and to believe that they were all doomed to Hell. I was told to not have doubts about God, to not question his will because it was a sin to do so.

At the age of 14, I transferred from a government school to an all-girls private Muslim school, where I was exposed to stringent Islamic beliefs. I was taught how to read and write Arabic, how to recite the Holy Quran and how to pray and worship God. I saw that teachers were using fear as a technique to help children stay away from what was deemed evil. I learned that the things I thought were acceptable were no longer right, yet I still watched movies, listened to music, and celebrated birthdays. I still drew figures with eyes, and collected photos for family albums. I experienced the stigma of being a “Modern Muslim”, a “Hypocrite”, a “Malay” in the midst of those who followed the words of the Quran. I listened to the stories of my friends, stories that echoed their difficulties in having heart-to-heart conversations with their parents or their inability to go out without adult supervision. I felt their resignation to their already-planned future and I remember the ominous sound of their acceptance ringing in my ears. I heard of the 14-year old girl who got engaged, about the 18-year old who got married, about the 20-year old who already had two children. Throughout all this, I hardly prayed, yet I still believed.

It became clear that there were two types of Islam being practiced. One considered to be the right path by the majority, the religious and the pious – those who stayed away from alcohol, who prayed five times a day and who covered – yet were victims of basic human errors, of lying, of slander, of selfishness and of greed. The other were moderate followers, who believed in the same – in God, in Heaven and Hell, in the Prophets, in marriage to your own kind – yet rarely covered, or prayed, or abstained from temptations. I saw the pious looking down upon the moderates, while the moderates looked down upon them.

Later when I grew older, I was given the freedom to make certain decisions for myself. I was then told that when the time came, I had to marry a Malay. “It is a sin to marry non-Muslims”, she said, “But the moors are too religious. They will not get along with our family. A Malay.. You need to get married to a Malay”. She did not need to say what would happen if I said no, if I by some chance married an outsider. It was a silent acknowledgment and I knew, I knew that I would lose her if I disobeyed her wishes.

Then, the day came when I had to go off to work and suddenly, the world was not black and white anymore. Perhaps it was the non-Muslim environment, or maybe a part-and-parcel of growing up, but suddenly I felt the need to question God. What is the purpose of life? I remember the confusion, the unanswered questions, the countless hours of research. Shouldn’t religion give us the answers we seek? Or maybe my teachers were right, maybe if you analyze Islam too much, you might find yourself going astray? I tried to stop myself from letting my thoughts wander, to ignore the incessant questions in my mind but with each day, the need to find answers became stronger.

I looked around and saw the Muslim world suffering – the innocents in the Middle East, the terrorists fighting in the name of God and the image of Islam tainted and I could not understand why there was no divine intervention. It seemed convenient for God to simply let us be after the death of the last Prophet, after years of guiding humanity since the beginning of time. Are we not worthy? Are we not your creation too? If you are so humble and modest, why is that our lives/actions are judged according to how much we worship you? Why put us in this world to test our devotion to you? Do our lives, the hardships, the victories, the people we love, the people you made mean nothing but a twisted game to show Satan that humans still follow what you have to say?

I suddenly could not understand why it was forbidden to fall in love with another who believed in something different. Why is it that we were to think we are much better than the non-believers? I have spoken to them, laughed with them, confided in them, shared my food with them and worked along with them. They do not seem bad at all. In fact, they were friendly, compassionate and engaging – just like us. The more I spent time with them, the more I felt the barrier between non-believers and myself begin to blur. I no longer saw them as Buddhist, Tamils, Moors or Christians – I saw them as individuals. There were no preconditioned thoughts anymore and I no longer saw any reason to judge anyone, or look down at anyone who was in a relationship with a person of another faith.

Soon, I found myself no longer understanding Islam. In fact, I no longer understood religion. It seemed pointless – the conflicts, the arguments, the wars – which at the end of the day was one person’s view of making sense of the world over another’s.

Yet, I understand the need for religion in our society. Although, I believe that the religion we see today is a system of man-made beliefs, I realize that religion serves as a moral compass and limits us from committing certain acts, thereby establishing social order. I understand that the world is a scary place and that looking up to God in times of hardship helps. I also know that death is frightening, and believing that everything you go through in this world will pay off after-death is comforting. I know that sharing the same beliefs with another brings about a deep connection, along with an identity and sense of belonging. I see that in this complex world, finding  meaning to your existence, a reason to live and a sense of purpose helps you get up every day. It makes people do good deeds, help those in need, to be selfless, to be kind, to accept one another and to be just.

But somewhere along the way, these harmless, good, and necessary elements of religion seems to have been forgotten. All I see now is conflict. I see people of a faith claiming to be far more superior than others. I see men oppressing women, women/men oppressing children, and children oppressing children of other faiths. I see men being killed and violence being carried out – all in the name of religion. I hear stories of couples eloping, their love for another rejected by their families, of children who think twice to confide in their parents in fear of being rebuffed and of homosexuals cowering in fear and committing suicide when society condemns them – all due to religious beliefs.

It is clear that rationality has become the enemy of organized religion, a force which drives wedges between people. It creates a mentality of “us vs them”, which refrains an individual from befriending others – breeding distance, suspicion and distrust – which leads to conflict, confrontation and warfare. It promotes the notion of “group thinking”, discourages individuality, encourages conformity and looks to “magical” answers rather than relying on science/technology. It fixates on storied past events, through which it derives social mores and beliefs – as if our understanding of the world has not expanded since then. It presumes that knowledge is static, and opposes anything that differs because it leads people away from God. It glorifies the concept of submissiveness, and advocates gullibility to believe on faith alone, regardless of seeking evidence.

Here’s what I think. I think, we need to start thinking rationally and question what we believe in. Its 2012, we have witnessed, learned, touched and experienced so much more (things deemed unimaginable a century ago) than those who compiled the holy books, who knew so little of the world, who probably would have come up with illogical reasonings to explain things that were beyond their comprehension. We need to take the good out of religion – its core values of peace, unity, tolerance, love, acceptance, selflessness, generosity, kindness and modesty and keep the bad out -  superstition, sexism, racism, extremism, homophobia and violence. We are all given a rational mind and its time to be open-minded, to think objectively and critically about things that matter and about things that affect our families, our communities, our society and our country.

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• Interview with Ameena Hussein
• The Fear of Peace

March 12 1997 was a dark day when personal power was used to subjugate not only national laws  but also to subvert the international environmental obligations of this nation. On this day, the President of Sri Lanka Mrs. Chandrika Kumaranatunge issued a directive under emergency regulations which stated that neither the national Environmental act no.47 of 1990, the Urban Development Authority law no.41 of 1973, the Nuisance Ordinance (chapter 230), nor the Criminal Procedure Code Act no.16 of 1976 “shall be in force or effect in so far as they relate to the generation of power and energy”.  The public was never consulted and the move seems to stem from the insistence of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) the national power generating authority to override any environmental or social concern over their operating procedure.

This unilateral action by Mrs. Chandrika Kumaranatunge acting as the President of Sri Lanka, to suspend all national legislation pertaining to the environment and public safety in matters of power generation, heralded a new and somber period for both social and environmental rights.  Power generation to feed the insatiable appetite for cheap power by foreign investors became a national priority.  In terms of public health and environmental concern, this became a period of disenfranchising the democratic process by executive order.  The poisonous seed sown then continues to yield, its bitter fruits even today

Internationally this action points to the impunity demonstrated by our ‘leaders’ towards their global responsibilities.  Sri Lanka is a signatory to many international conventions and protocols, a case in point being the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), we have signed and ratified it.  But what does this mean if in the interest of power generation all obligations under the convention can be relegated? Further, Sri Lanka is obliged to report to the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD), as well as to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) have we ever reported that all environmental safeguards have been nullified by presidential decree? Of course not!  An example of the fiction still being presented to the world by the bureaucrats is illustrated by an example from our 2008/2009 report to the MDG, under MDG #7 We answer the (target) question 7B, What progress have we made ‘To reduce Biodiversity loss, by 2010? as  ‘Satisfactory Progress’. Satisfactory progress? Ask any Sri Lankan with a modicum of knowledge as to how our biodiversity has progressed in those years!

Unfortunately such impunity has also gone unaddressed by the international organizations concerned. Soon after the odious presidential decree of 1977, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) agreed to supply Sri Lanka with money to develop a national program on environmentally safe power generation.  The implementation of this project in a scenario where all environmental laws are suspended for power generation brings into question the credibility of the GEF process in Sri Lanka and undermines the hard work of a multitude of Sri Lankan citizens who created and framed the national environmental legislation.

The impunity demonstrated then has grown into a veritable monster today. We are a state unaccountable to the global responsibilities that we have committed ourselves to maintain. As we prepare for our role at the Global Environmental meeting Rio + 20. We are moving rapidly from being a Carbon sink to a Carbon emitter. Burning ever increasing and expensive fossil fuels, to power the ‘idiot development’ of today.  Even the reflective day of Vesak, has been turned into massive carbon emitting circus today. In this context,  it might behoove us to examine the stand of other nations claiming to be Buddhist and globally responsible, the Prime Minister of Bhutan, in the lead up meetings to Rio +20 has categorically stated, “Bhutan will always be a Carbon sink.”

In his recent statement in reference to Bhutan’s contribution to Rio+20, he noted,  “ We need to re-think our entire growth based economy so that we can thrive more effectively on our own resources in harmony with nature. We do not need to accept as inevitable a world of climate chaos and financial collapse “. Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka we have a cacophony of  ‘economic-growth-is-development’ sycophants who cry for the acceptance of the current economic status quo, fearful of change and asking someone else to make the first move.

Well, someone has. The Hon Prime Minister of Bhutan also states “ Economic growth is mistakenly seen as synonymous with well- being. The faster we cut down forests and haul in fish stocks to extinction, the more the GDP grows. Even crime, war, sickness and natural disasters make the GDP grow, simply because these ills cause money to be spent”. I wonder if our ‘leaders’ can ever realize such fundamental truths.

As we ready ourselves for Rio+20, who will represent us? Will those attending present the public with what we, as a nation will present?   Or what our national stand will be? Or will some nameless bureaucrat or dense politician mouth some meaningless platitudes and use the opportunity for travel and shopping?

Desire; as the Buddha has said will always lead to pain. No Nation claiming to be Buddhist can promote consumerism and desire as development.  Now that another Buddhist nation has shown a lead will we support this brave call for a change? Or will we always be a nation of hypocrites, merely voicing Buddhism as a cover for our ills and misdeeds and never demonstrating any action to conform to the values and ideals set out by the Buddha?

• Can Sri Lanka propose a New Growth Paradigm?
• Oil, Coal, Gas and Carbon: Fundamental Truths From Indigenous Peoples
• Climate Change
• SRI LANKA MAY WANT – AN ECONOMIC VISION 2030
• Restoring Shelter

Photo credit JDS

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1991 in a contribution titled “Human development and human dignity” stated that “Respect for human dignity implies commitment to creating conditions under which individuals can develop a sense of self-worth and security. True dignity comes with an assurance of one’s ability to rise to the challenges of the human situation. Such assurance is unlikely to be fostered in people who have to live with the threat of violence and injustice, with bad governance and instability or with poverty and disease. Eradicating these threats must be the aim of those who recognize the sanctity of human dignity and of those who strive to promote human development. Development as growth, advancement and the realization of potential depends on available resources—and no resource is more potent than people empowered by confidence in their value as human beings. The concept of human development is no longer new. But some analysts still consider its aspirations bold and daring—some might say overwhelming and foolhardy. The problems are innumerable, forever changing and forever the same—a complex, fluid spectrum of social, economic and political issues that is impossible to grasp entirely. That it defies delimitation is the core of the challenge posed by the task of human development. It demands constant effort and capacity for rethinking, flexibility and fast reactions. The process of human development calls for human resolve and ingenuity. Hopeless, helpless people stripped of their dignity are hardly capable of such activities. And so we return to the link between human development and human dignity.

Human development encompasses all aspects of human existence. It is generally accepted that its

scope includes political and social rights as well as economic ones—but the different rights are not always given the same weight. For example, some people still claim that humanitarian aid and economic assistance cannot wait for political and social progress. This insidious idea creates dissonance between complementary requirements. If the people that aid targets are not empowered, it cannot achieve more than a very limited, very short-term alleviation of problems rooted in long-standing social and political ills. After all, human development is not intended to produce impotent objects of charity.

At this time when the world is preoccupied with the menace of terrorism, it is worth considering that

people who feel deprived of control over their lives—necessary for a dignified life—are liable to search for fulfilment along the path of violence. Merely providing them with a certain material sufficiency is not enough to win them over to peace and unity. Their potential for human development has to be realized and their human dignity respected so that they can gain the skills and confidence to build a world strong and prosperous in harmonious diversity.

The Human Development report Office, addressing the issue “Good governance—for what?”,  takes the position that “from the human development perspective, good governance is democratic governance. Democratic governance means that:

• People’s human rights and fundamental freedoms are respected, allowing them to live with dignity.
• People have a say in decisions that affect their lives.
• People can hold decision-makers accountable.
• Inclusive and fair rules, institutions and practices govern social interactions.
• Women are equal partners with men in private and public spheres of life and decision-making.
• People are free from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, class, gender or any other attribute.
• The needs of future generations are reflected in current policies.
• Economic and social policies are responsive to people’s needs and aspirations.
• Economic and social policies aim at eradicating poverty and expanding the choices that all people have in their lives”.

This article next draws on the project entitled “Map-Making and Analysis of the Main International Initiatives on Developing Indicators on Democracy and Good Governance” commissioned by the Statistical Office of the Commission of the European Communities (EUROSTAT) with the overall objectives to provide a synopsis of the different approaches and methodological options available for measuring Democracy and Good Governance and the increased efficiency in the development of indicators related to Democracy, Human Rights and Good Governance aimed at monitoring governmental action. Refer University of Essex – Human Rights Centre publication.

Some critical issues and comments extracted from the above report noted below read together with the aforesaid two quotations are of value to those in Governance in the effective implementation of the LLRC Report;

1. Both democracy and good governance remain ‘essentially contested concepts’ (Gallie 1956), since there is not now, nor will there likely be, a final consensus on their definition or content. It is not surprising, therefore, that the European Union avoids defining the term ‘democracy’. For instance, in the revised fourth Lomé Convention it opted instead for the phrase ‘democratic principles’ (Article 5, revised fourth Lomé Convention). It did so in order to emphasize ‘the universally recognized principles that must underpin the organization of the state and guarantee the enjoyment of rights and fundamental freedoms, while leaving each  country and society free to choose and develop its own model’ (European  Commission 1998). The European Commission considers that the principles can be defined in terms of three fundamental characteristics: legitimacy, legality and effective application.
2. There is much greater clarity concerning human rights. These have now been codified in a wide range of UN and regional texts. The UN legal framework comprises the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and six other core treaties and covers civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. Human rights have been recognized by the world community as being universal – every human being is entitled to these rights simply by reason of being human.
3. It is also recognized that all human rights, be they civil and political or economic, social and cultural, are indivisible and inter-dependent (World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna, 1993). Neither branch of human rights should be given priority over the other, and states have the primary obligation to respect, protect and ensure the universal enjoyment of all human rights. Governments have the obligation to ensure enjoyment of some human rights immediately, whilst others, predominantly economic, social and cultural rights, are to be realized progressively. These are important distinctions when it comes to measuring government performance in the field of human rights. It is also important to distinguish between government obligations on the one hand, and enjoyment of human rights by individuals and groups on the other, in order that appropriate measurement tools might be developed for each of these aspects.
4. The term ‘good governance’ emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s primarily in the World Bank, which was concerned about the ways in which governance influenced economic performance (see World Bank 1992). The economic dimension of good governance has variously included public sector management, organizational accountability, the rule of law, transparency of decision-making, and access to information. This idea was taken on board by the OECD and EU and integrated into its requirements for development assistance. It was later expanded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to incorporate a political dimension that includes government legitimacy, government accountability, government competence, and the protection of human rights through the rule of law.
5. The European Commission has defined good governance as ‘the transparent and accountable management of all a country’s resources for its equitable and sustainable economic and social development’. It lists a number of aspects of good governance, such as equity and the primacy of law in the management and allocation of resources, an independent and accessible judicial system and transparency, and recognizes that corruption is the main obstacle to good governance (European Commission 1998).
6. More recently, the European Commission has regarded the term as comprising six components: human rights, democratization, the rule of law, the enhancement of civil society and public administration reform (including decentralization) (Draft EC Good Governance Manual, version created 04/02/2003). In other words, it regards democratization and respect for human rights as being essential ingredients of good governance. As we have seen above, the EC also regards democratic principles as “Underpinning the guarantee of the enjoyment of rights and fundamental freedoms, and thus regards all three categories as being interlinked.”
7. Indeed, the most popular definitions of democracy and good governance now include reference to the protection of certain categories of human rights, especially civil and political rights. But they also make reference to some economic and cultural rights, such as property rights and the rights of minorities (see Foweraker and Krznaric 2000). Similarly, definitions of human rights, drawn from the long history of their international legal evolution make reference to the right to participate in public affairs and democratic decision-making, and make explicit reference to a right of everyone to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives (e.g. Article 21(1) of 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Moreover, many consider democracy to be ‘hollow’ without the protection of civil and political rights (Diamond 1999), while governance is considered to be ‘bad’ without the rule of law and the protection of human rights.
8. Despite their inextricably linked components, the concepts of democracy, human rights and good governance should not be seen as equivalent concepts since each has important exclusive characteristics as well as shared elements.

UN Development Report 2002 states that the following objective criteria alone do not reflect the state of democracy; Human Rights and Good governance are effectively in place;

13. UN Development Report 2002 has identified the following as the subjective indicators that must be assessed;

Some of the key recommendations of the LLRC Report (extracted from a document developed by the Marga Institute) are summarized below linking the recommendations to Democracy, Good Governance, and Human Rightsas defined above;

1. Death or injury to citizens and Disappearances after surrender/arrests -(Ch.4)-Ascertain more fully the circumstances under which such incidents occurred, investigate, prosecute and punish wrong-doers and provide redress to next of kin-promotes accountability/rule of law
2. Medical supplies-(Ch.4)-Further examination of supplies during the final days given humanitarian considerations- validates effectiveness of public health care
3. Conduct of LTTE and Lessons to learn on application of IHL -(Ch.4)-Violations of Human Rights and IHL by ex combatants and cadres be investigated, offenders prosecuted and punished and formulate an effective legal framework -Upholds HR conventions and Rule of Law
4. Casualties-(Ch.4)-Conduct household survey covering all affected families in all parts of the island and the circumstances of death, injury and damage to property- promotes accountability/rule of law
5. Channel 4 Video-(Ch.4)- Institute an independent investigation and act in accord with applicable laws- promotes accountability/rule of law
6. Missing persons, disappearances and abductions-(Ch.5)- promotes civil liberties, accountability/rule of law
1. A Special Commissioner to investigate and provide material to AG to initiate criminal proceedings
2. An Independent Advisory Committee to examine detentions and arrests under Emergency Regulations and PTA
3. Domestic legislation to criminalize enforced or involuntary disappearances
4. Island wide HR education programmes covering armed services, police and youth and children etc
7. Detainees-(Ch.5)- promotes civil liberties, accountability/rule of law

• Full implementation of Interim Recommendations
• Centralised comprehensive database
• Cooperation and constructive engagement with ICRC and similar humanitarian organizations assuring welfare of detaineesFull implementation of the action plan for rehabilitation of ex-child combatants
  • Investigate allegations and institute proceedings against offenders
  • Disarm all illegal armed groups
• Establish a multi-disciplinary task force towards a comprehensive child tracing programme
• Investigate perpetrators of conscription and offenders be brought to justice
• Effective high level monitoring of civil administration officers tasked with the implementation of policies aimed at nurturing ethnic harmony and national reconciliation ensuring no unnatural changes to demographic patterns, with irrigation and land settlements, distribution of state land and effective return and resettlements taking place with social justice and in line with the Constitution.
• Towards this objective ensure political leaders, implementers, public officers and community leaders are made aware of overall objectives, risk mitigation action steps, effectively communicated in languages of choice
• Establish as per 13^th amendment a National Land Commission to propose future national land policy guidelines

8. Illegal Armed Groups-(Ch.5)- promotes civil liberties, accountability/rule of law

9. Conscription of Children-(Ch.5)- Upholds HR conventions, promotes civil liberties, accountability and Rule of Law

10. Vulnerable groups-Meeting basic needs in the post conflict environment and providing comprehensive medium to long term sustainable solutions for challenges and cross cutting issues faced by Women, Children, Elderly, disabled and internally displaced persons, Muslim Community in the NE, Freedom of expression and right to information, freedom of religion, association and movement, all coordinated by an Interagency Task Force -(Ch.5)- promotes of democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
11. Land Issues-(Ch.6)- promotes of democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.

12. Restitution Compensatory Relief-(Ch.7)- The State to review the role and capacity of Institutional support in the post conflict environment and in providing compensatory relief to persons affected by the conflict-Promotes Good Governance
13. Common Vision-(Ch.8)- The need to articulate a common vision of an interdependent, just, equitable, open, and diverse society towards developing a shared value throughout the Sri Lankan society built as one yearning for peace, security, amity and harmony ensuring the realization of legitimate rights of all citizens. – Will be the foundation for promoting democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
14. Grievances of the Tamil Community, Grievances of the Muslim Community, Grievances of the Tamils of Indian Origin, Grievances of the Sinhalese in Adjacent Villages, Majority Minority Relations, -(Ch.8)-Effectively addressing these grievances will promote harmony, reconciliation and pave the way towards achieving the common vision.- Will be the critical first steps in promoting democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
15. Failure to give effect to Rule of law-(Ch.8)- The need for effective law enforcement by an  independent and impartial Police with an independent permanent Police Commission- A fundamental building block for democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
16. Issues of Governance, -(Ch.8)-The need for concerted action by stakeholders to ensure efficient and effective administrative systems delivered by independent and impartial civil service upholding good governance. – A fundamental building block for democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
17. Institution to deal with citizen grievances- Giving teeth to an independent and impartial office of the Ombudsman linked to feeder institutions at district and provincial levels and be supported by an independent Public Services Commission and the administration of the Northern province reverting to civilian administration are amongst the several key recommendations-Fundamental building block institutions for democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
18. Devolution of Power, -(Ch.8)- . A political solution involving effective and resourced power devolution is imperative to address the cause of the conflict- Will be the foundation for promoting democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
19. Language Policy-(Ch.8)- Full and effective implementation of the Language policy in a manner promoting understanding, diversity and national integration.- Will be the foundation for promoting democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
20. Education-(Ch.8)-Removal of all barriers towards equitable and effective education facilities for all segments of society across the island targeting talent development meeting national human resource needs- Will be the foundation for promoting democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.
21. Diaspora-(Ch.8)-A multi disciplinary task force to engage the Diaspora get them involved effectively in the reconciliation process-Will support shared values to develop amongst the Diaspora and be an added building block
22. Interfaith activities-Role of Religion-(Ch.8)-Establish a mechanism to serve as an early warning system as a preventive measure to ensure that communal or religious tensions does not lead to conflict  and undermining law, order, peace and reconciliation.
23. Art and Culture and People to people contact- -(Ch.8)-Will support shared values to develop and be an added building block
24. Need for Political Consensus -(Ch.8)- The process of reconciliation requires a full acknowledgement of the tragedy of the conflict and a collective act of contrition by the political leaders and civil society, of both Sinhala and Tamil communities. A separate event be set apart on the National Day to express solidarity and empathy with all victims of the tragic conflict and pledge our collective commitment to ensure that there should never be such bloodletting in the country again.- Will be the supportive roof of the  shared values embedded house of Sri Lanka.
25. Overall- A high level monitoring mechanism to oversee the implementation expeditiously- The most critical action towards assuring democracy; Human Rights and Good governance.

It can therefore be concluded that expeditious and effective implementation of the LLRC recommendations will lead to meaningful democracy; Human Rights and Good governance in Sri Lanka.

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