Rajavarothayam Sampanthan M.P. (TNA/ITAK, Trincomalee District) gave Sri Lankans a wistful and even poignant glimpse of the ghost of parliamentary democracy a fortnight ago, when he delivered an incisive exposition of the arguments for the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces in the debate on the de-merger in Parliament. The speech was a three-fold argument that contains a masterful restatement of the historical dimensions of the merger. It also critiqued the reasoning of the Supreme Court’s decision, the gravamen of which was a mooted procedural flaw in the original merger, as well as the domestic and international political considerations applicable to the issue. The latter included the undertakings of the State under an international agreement, the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987, the consequence of which was the Thirteenth Amendment, a pivotal re-arrangement of Sri Lanka’s constitutional architecture. The result of Mr. Sampanthan’s dispassionate yet pungent speech is that the State emerges as both pusillanimous and menacing at the same time. This is a bizarre feat, but it captures the State in a relentless spotlight, exposing its moral cowardice in the unwillingness to address its own political infeasibility while resorting to ham-fisted coercion to impose its unwelcome will.
The speech also tells us at least two other things. Firstly, it is a stark reminder of the utter redundancy of Parliament. Mr. Sampanthan’s luminous oratory exemplified in both the mastery of his brief as well as parliamentary procedure and idiom, reminds us of the lamentable inferiority of the vast majority of his colleagues, whose contribution to the devaluation of Parliament is legion. It does not do to indulge in unseemly nostalgia about an illusory glorious past of parliamentary democracy in Sri Lanka. Never has any legislature ever lived up to the theoretical ideal, in Mill’s terms, as ‘the Nation’s Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinions.’ But it is undeniable that the woeful decline of the average legislator from the 1930s gentleman-amateur to the corrupt careerist of the present has been central to the deterioration of democracy and politics in Sri Lanka. The introduction of the executive presidency by the Constitution of 1978 is only a partial explanation of the undermining of democracy: witness the criminal dereliction of duty on the part of the principal parliamentary opposition to attempt even a pretension of holding the government to account through Parliament.
Second, it tells us something of Mr. Sampanthan himself, and the dying breed of politician he represents. It is reminiscent of the time that brilliant lawyers dominated the legislative process, enriching it with the type of forensic skill that Sampanthan employs in this instance to leave the Supreme Court decision in tatters. The speech contains the occasional rhetorical flourish, including such gems of the Sampanthan oeuvre as the customary paean to the inherent decency of the Sinhala peasant that he knows so well. Caustic critique is leavened by a sagacity that embodies decency, fair play, dignity and justice. There is none of the crass contumely and plain vulgarity that alas characterises parliamentary debate today. In this he represents the last of the third generation of great Tamil parliamentarians and orators of the Grecian mould which began with the Ponnambalam brothers and the Saravanamuttus, through G. G. Ponnambalam (Snr.), Chelvanayakam, Nadesan and Dharmalingam. In the predicament that the country now finds itself, it behoves us well to remember that this is a proud Sri Lankan tradition, not merely a Tamil one.
Sampathan’s last outing was a virtuoso performance, combining the pizzicato of fine legal criticism with thundering moral chords of Gladstonian grandeur, and for the sake of parliamentary politics in Sri Lanka, we hope there will be many encores.