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Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka on history of power-sharing in Sri Lanka and the 13th Amendment

The Centre for Policy Alternatives recently launched Power-sharing in Sri Lanka: Constitutional and Political Documents 1926 – 2008, a compendium of important constitutional proposals and political ideas that have featured in debates about power-sharing and the constitutional form of the Sri Lankan State since before independence to the present.

Invited to critique the tome was Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka’s erstwhile representative at the United Nations in Geneva. In his submission, Dayan pointed out that,

“in a poly-ethnic mosaic such as Sri Lanka, the most realistic thing to do, is to go for the activation of what is already in our constitution, the 13th Amendment. I fear another ten, fifteen years going round and round the Mulberry bush talking to the TNA or on internal self-determination whilst things change on the ground in a very different way. This is where I stand on the issue of power-sharing.”

Speaking of three models of power-sharing – accommodation, assimilation and domination, Dayan went on to note,

“I speak of the Chechen model, that some Liberals shudder about, where there is a full on military defeat of separatist terrorism followed by limited but very real autonomy, and the rule of the liberated areas, through local representatives and partners. Cynics may say proxies.The other model is assimilation on the basis of equal citizenship, which means that the State has to be reconstituted so that no single community – ethnic, religious or linguistic – has built in privilege. The third model is of occupation, of internal colonisation, and domination and hegemony. Not only is this morally and ethically wrong, I believe it is diplomatically unsustainable and I believe it is unrealistic.”

For a related video exclusive to Groundviews and watched, to date, over 87,000 times, see Dayan Jayatilleka: From Geneva to Sri Lanka.

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