A JOURNEY BEGINS
“Every great journey begins with a few small steps,” as the saying goes. And when TNA’s C.V. Wigneswaran was sworn in before President Rajapaksa, at Temple Trees, as the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, Tamil hopes took a leap forward. No one could fault them for believing it could lead to a new era of freedom and wellbeing they had been dreaming of since independence in 1948.
At one time the TNA was the “kingmaker,” in the democratic world of Sri Lanka, supporting a Sinhala party of its choice to form a government. But along the way they lost this capacity. Today it’s Sinhala MPs regularly inveigled into crossing the floor to the government side in parliament.
INDIA AND THE 13TH AMENDMENT
But what is the 13th Amendment going to do for the Tamils? It was designed by India to establish provincial councils in Sri Lanka, along the lines of Indian states. But some important considerations were overlooked. In Sri Lanka power is reposed in the President, who appoints a Governor vested with all the executive power needed to control and direct the province. Even the funds needed by the provincial council are determined by the President and rubber stamped by parliament.
In Sri Lanka there is nothing the elected Provincial Council Ministers can do without the consent of the Governor, who is also solely vested with the power to also implement the decisions of the council. It simply means that the elected representatives of the people are powerless to do anything.
In Sri Lanka power is concentrated in the President, and this has a debilitating influence on the democratic process in every aspect of governance in the country. But in India, the list of powers of states covers the maintenance of law and order, police force, healthcare, transport, land policies, electricity, village administration, and it continues embracing 61 subjects. There is also a concurrent list that covers 52 subjects. Not only that, the centre collects income tax and assigns it to the states.
TRAVAILS OF TAMILS
The Tamils have been crying out to manage their own affairs from almost 1948. But it was to no avail. Invariably it resulted in riots in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981, and 1983. It was always violence of one kind or another until the war ended it and brought everything to a shuddering halt in May 2009.
But a Channel 4 expose riveted the attention of the world on the atrocities committed in the war on Tamils. And in 2012 the UNHRC adopted a US resolution demanding Sri Lanka account for the gruesome violence in the war, and to implement the reconciliation process set out in its LLRC report.
One has to digest the numbers to get a grasp of the enormity of the Tamils suffering. Some 35,000 of them were killed in 2009 alone. About 135,000 Tamil men, women and children were killed or disappeared during the war. Over 600,000 were internally displaced. Another 1,200,000 fled the country to seek refuge in foreign lands.
Even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillai, a Tamil, came under fire when she visited Sri Lanka. Government ministers were set up to deride her, and paint her as a Tamil sympathizer, to deflect her from her mission. But it did not stop her from carrying out her task.
It is quite impossible to anticipate what her report will be like when it is tabled at the UNHRC council meeting in March 2014. But it is likely to bring some sanity into the situation in Sri Lanka, and assisting in the reconciliation process, and spelling out possible routes to a political solution.
Perhaps it will not fail to note that the population of the Tamils has decreased drastically, drifting to foreign lands to protect their families from violence, and the shrinking employment opportunities at home. It is estimated that more than one-third of the Tamil population now lives in foreign lands.
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
The Tamils and Sinhalese have lived side by side for many centuries on the island. The debate about who was first on the island is irrelevant, and does not help the reconciliation process.
After independence in 1948 the Tamils were shunted aside. They were sidelined politically for many years, massacred physically, and treated as some foreign interfering element, when all they wanted was to be treated like the Sinhalese. But it did not happen, and violence became a part of their lives.
They reacted in predictable ways that finally led to war and, and a violent end. But they could profit from the lessons of history and see a way forward.
German atrocities in World War II are well known, and reconciliation with enemies looked impossible. But today Germany and America are firm friends, so too are their relations with the UK and France. Japan destroyed Pearl Harbor, and America dropped Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but today Japan’s closest ally is America! Millions of Jews died in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, but today it this Holocaust is which binds the German state to the Jewish.
More recently, in 1994, some 800,000-1,000,000 perished in Rwanda, as Tutsis and Hutus killed each other in an ethnic war. Today they are united. Two public holidays mark the beginning and end of the genocide. It is hard to believe, but today they live side by side in relative harmony!
In Sri Lanka, the Tamils would surely want to take a second look at the 13th Amendment, because it does not meet the test of democracy. Why have provincial council at all if the President is going to fund, control, and steer everything from afar. It is the councilors who should be empowered to steer the fortunes of the province and implement their own decisions. There is hardly any need to say that this should also apply to the Sinhala provinces.
The Tamils would also like to see the Tamil language used to help people, and not be entrenched in the constitution like a dead language. It should be used when Tamils transact business with the state institutions, and in the courts of law. Note that in the West, state employees in multilingual countries, are paid a monthly allowance, if they gain competency in another national language.
The prime consideration of the Tamils is security, which determines their very existence. Now that the conflict is ended by the war, there will be an extended period to recast relationships between the state and Tamils, the Sinhalese and Tamils, to overcome past iniquities and focus on the future.
The Tamils must have the assurance that their security won’t be compromised again on any account. While the international community is there to afford relief, it takes time to assemble and implement their directives. It needs an effective local mechanism to prevent such a development.
One clear and unambiguous way of ensuring this would be to embed a self-determination clause in the Sri Lanka constitution as a clear safeguard against any excesses or discriminatory action by the state. At the same time, there must also be safeguards to prevent it being invoked frivolously.
It’s a small price to pay to be a part of a democracy!