Author: TELO Admin

The death of 23-year-old Mano Yogalingam, a Sri Lankan Tamil ‘asylum-seeker’ on a ‘bridge visa’ in Melbourne, Australia, after he set himself afire should have shocked human conscience in the western hemisphere. It begins with the question how and why a 13-year-old in 2013, when he landed in Australia as a refugee, should ever have left Sri Lanka full five years after the end of the war, when normalcy had almost returned to the war-torn nation.

But the question is also about the overt concerns of the western world to allegations of human rights violations and ‘war crimes’, as is the case with Sri Lanka. However, Mano’s self-immolation in a skating rink does not seem to have triggered well-meaning human consciousness in the western world. Media reports quoting Australian authorities have said how Tamils in Sri Lanka ‘face a low risk of official or societal discrimination’ and ‘a low risk of torture overall’.

Australia is accepted as a ranking member of the western world in other matters, starting with the four-nation Quad, and the three-nation AUKUS, for strategic reasons aimed at China, yes, but on other matters, the US has a combination of other western friends and allies, whose views on human rights in third countries, particularly Third World countries, are conditioned by their own local conditions.

Thus you have Scandinavian countries, and those like Germany, all of them in post-War Europe, telling South Asian families in their midst, how their children had to be brought up in the new environment. You can call it homogenisation of cultures and traditions by force, playing on the greed, avarice and vulnerability of those parents wanting a western identity, green-card and citizenship.

All their efforts to be what they are not, subsumes their original identity and culture, and they don’t care. They are in effect and also in fact ‘economic refugees’, not ‘political refugees’, as they want the West to believe. It was the case with many, if not most of them, even at the height of the ethnic wars in Sri Lanka, for instance.

The West too could do with their labour but without the hang-over of their politico-cultural past in a distant country. Allegations of human rights violations on the home-front also ensured that the merged their cultural identities with their next-door neighbours and the larger community they lived in.

Threats of taking away their children for better care (or, bitter care?) were a part of the process. An occasional demonstration of the institutionalised legal threat helped, even though that might not have been the original idea.

Different world

Today, when Sri Lanka is having the most challenging presidential elections, post-independence, the West is behaving as if they are in a different world, rather a different universe. Or, they seem to think that Sri Lanka does not belong to the Earth that they all live in.

Else, you cannot explain or appreciate why not one of those nations has appreciated and applauded every Sri Lankan and the larger Sri Lankan system for a relatively smooth-transition of elected national leadership with another, under another schemed prescribed by the very same Constitution, and the consequent return of normalcy, effortlessly. Through the past two years, post-Aragalaya, no one has talked about the mass-protests of 2022, nor have they threatened the State and the people with yet another of the kind.

If this is the western attitude towards democracy in the country, it is anybody’s guess why the Sri Lankan Election Commission (EC) should be bending backwards to invite a European Union (EU) team of poll observers to oversee the ongoing process, when on other matters Sri Lankan, all arms of the State swear by ‘sovereignty’, et al? It is equally so, why Foreign Minister Ali Sabry should be sparing time for the EU observers when he has squarely told the UNHRC, for instance, that the latter’s way of proceeding with ‘war crimes’ and ‘accountability issues’ interferes with and challenges the nation’s sovereignty, to begin with.

That way, Minister Sabry, and more so, the ‘independent’ Election Commission, and through them both the Sri Lankan State, have compromised the nation’s sovereignty, unlike in the case of the UNHRC and other UN affiliates, where ‘shared sovereignty’ of a kind has become an acceptable international premise applicable to all member-states, equitably if not equally. In such a scenario, what kind of ‘independence’ does the Election Commission assume that it enjoys – outside the Constitution, and not inside, where it still has its say and way.

Evaluating the vote

Leave the UNHRC, which is an extension of the UN but without the facility of power-play through the veto-vote of five designated member-States, and even the western-funded outsider-affiliates of the Amnesty and Human Rights Watch (HRW) kind, you now have the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) commenting on the continuing plight of the families of the Tamils missing in the ethnic war that ended 15 long years back. The ICRC in particular might not have exceeded its mandate, so to say, but their men on the ground at least should have known the politics of it all.

More importantly, the ICRC and HRW reports seemed to have been timed for the presidential poll, as if seeking to influence the Sri Lankan vote, one way or the other. It is unlike the UNHRC session, commencing on 9 September, where Sri Lanka has become a permanent agenda-item, much longer than the Ukraine War and even the West Asia tangle, if you forgot the past years when there was relative peace on the Israeli front, or Israel’s fronts within and with its disquiet citizens / neighbours.

The revived / renewed UNHRC vote on Sri Lanka will come up for vote in the first week of October, but only after the results of the 21 September presidential polls are known. This means, whoever is elected President, including the incumbent, would seek and possibly obtain more time to address the issues highlighted in the new draft. Minister Sabry having dismissed the so-called ‘findings’ in the initial High Commissioner’s report to the Council, now in circulation, every future government that is predictably in place, post-results, would (or, would have to) stick to the same.

The Sri Lankan interest in the matter will then be confined to the nations that voted for the US-led Core Group’s resolution, who voted against it (and in favour of Sri Lanka) and who all abstained. Given the current mood and trend, the nation as a whole will be watching the performance of the northern Indian neighbour in particular. Having backed the US resolution after ensuring amendments in the first year, India has mostly been ‘abstaining’ from the vote through the past decade.

Cultural invasion

For their part, at least two front-line candidates, in JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake and SLPP’s Namal Rajapaksa – the former supposedly the front-runner, and the latter believed to be the last of the four in the top-rungs – have clearly stated that they would not allow any harm coming to the Sri Lankan soldiers in the name of ‘accountability issues’ of the UNHRC kind. Incumbent government of Candidate Ranil has already rejected the UNHRC report officially. The other front-runner, Sajith Premadasa too is expected to do so, when push comes to shove.

There is of course a ‘common Tamil candidate’, who is not unlikely to obtain more Tamil votes than some had thought earlier. But the sponsors of Ariyanethiran have been clear from day one that he was contesting not to win, but only to send out a ‘strong message’ to the Sinhala South and also to the international community. None of the other front-line candidates as yet, at least Namal’s SLPP has since stated that the presence of a ‘common Tamil candidate’ would only negatively impact ‘reconciliation efforts’ (?)

The most serious of all post-war reconciliation efforts began and ended with the forgotten TNA’s months of negotiations with the war-victorious regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The latter had a global stake for being known as much as a peace-maker as a war-victor against terrorism of an unprecedented scale. The TNA also knew that if post-war Mahinda could not tell the Sinhala nationalists that he would not compromise on the nation’s sovereignty, none after him would be able to do so.

Yet, when it came to that, ill-advised as the TNA was, they said the unthinkable: that they were behind the US-led core group moving the UNHRC on ‘war crimes’ and ‘accountability issues’ as far back as 2012. That was the end of it. All later-day attempts for a new Constitution as Prime Minister Ranil promised during the forgettable Government of National (dis-) Unity, 2015-19, were farcical at best, and the TNA too played along, knowing full well where it would end.

Today, in a way, all promises of a new Constitution, whether from Ranil, Sajith or Anura, are not going to meet the Tamils’ expectations – which under the constitutional scheme comprises re-merger of the North and the East, and also a federal structure, which is just not going to happen. But then, the divided Tamil polity, starting with the ‘common candidate’ movement is not saying anything, at least for now, about the ‘accountability issues’, as enunciated for them by the rest of the world. Nor have they said a word during the poll campaign about the ‘cultural invasion’ of the Tamil areas and Tamil symbols, not just by Sinhala-Buddhist hard-liners but the Sri Lankan State.

Greater consolidation

On the face of it, the ICRC and HRW observations, carefully timed as they might have been, may trigger a greater consolidation of Tamil votes behind the common candidate. The same cannot be said about the UNHRC session, which is pre-scheduled for particular months/weeks in the year. Only the presidential poll has coincided with it this time, not that anyone in Colombo expected anything else from the pen of the High Commissioner.

Whatever that be, any debate nearer home on these issues, especially in the face of the UNHRC session beginning next week, could lead to a sudden interest in an ethnic solution, and the larger political issue(s) that have not found their customary place and pace in the nation’s electoral process. That is because the economy, both national and personal, is of greater and immediate concern for every stake-holder, big and small, governmental and individualistic.

But any overnight pick-up in political momentum could have the potential to reshape the electoral campaign in ways not thought of since, this time round. If the debates were to trigger Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist sentiments as never before this time round, the question is if it could reset the national agenda at the last-minute when every candidate and political party is talking economics, which many of them just do not know, or even claim to know.

That is the kind of situation some of the candidates may be hoping for – and others may not wish for. And thereby may hang another tale!

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)

Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa has strongly denied rumors of a potential merger between himself and United National Party (UNP) leader President Ranil Wickremesinghe, reaffirming the SJB’s commitment to an independent and clean political stance.

Speaking at a campaign rally at the Samanala Ground in Galle on Tuesday, Premadasa made it clear that the SJB would not align with any political parties that it deemed corrupt. “We have a clear program and a vision, as outlined in our manifesto. The current Government, led by the President, has claimed that many of our proposals are unachievable, yet they are now sending SMS messages to the public in a bid to compete with us,” he said.

Premadasa went on to accuse the rival Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the President of spreading false rumours about a possible alliance between the SJB and the UNP. “I want to address the false rumours being spread by the JVP and the Presidency, who are paying various websites to post misleading news on Facebook of a possible alliance as our victory becomes evident,” he said.

He reiterated that the SJB, if victorious on 21 September, would unite solely with the 22 million citizens of Sri Lanka and would not form alliances with what he referred to as “rotten losers and extremely corrupt political parties”.

Premadasa also referred to a perceived desire among certain leaders for a merger between SJB and the UNP including the President and the leader of the Malimawa (NPP). However, he dismissed the idea of any alliance. “Let them merge. The Samagi Jana Balawegaya and the Samagi Jana Sandanaya will not align with those who are destroying this country. On 21, a new era for the 22 million people of this nation will begin,” he declared.

Premadasa’s remarks come amidst increasing political speculation and tension ahead of the upcoming Presidential election.

People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) urged the Election Commission to take steps to end the spread of fake postal voting results on social media.

The request comes in the wake of doctored reports being spread on social media, claiming to predict the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election. One such opinion poll falsely attributed to the European Union (EU), stated that the National People’s Power (NPP) held the majority vote, with the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party and Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) being second and third respectively.

In a letter to the Election Commission, PAFFREL said that it is the responsibility of the Election Commission and the police to take appropriate action at the earliest opportunity.

“There is a lot of room for undue influence on public opinion through such fake survey reports,” it said.

“With the help of Facebook and the Cyber Crime Unit of the police department, the attention of the authorities should be directed towards finding out who is behind the creation of these fake reports and penalize them accordingly,” PAFFREL wrote.

PAFFREL urged the Deputy Director for verification of facts in the Presidential Media Division, Sandun Arosha Fernando and Indika Pushpakumara to take a stand against misinformation at this vital stage. “Such falsified reports will cause great damage to the integrity of the election system and it is imperative that groups responsible for election proceedings intervene,” PAFFREL said.

In the age of deep-fakes generated by Artificial Intelligence and falsified internet reports that threaten to undermine the credibility of the democratic process, voters need more than ever to read between the lines and discern truth from lies.

The minority Tamils of Sri Lanka have been promised devolution of power since the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord was signed in 1987. The J.R. Jayewardene government even got the 13th Amendment (13A) to the Constitution passed by an overwhelming majority in Parliament.

But to date, the 13A has not been implemented in full with devolution of powers over the police and State land. As of now, what goes as devolution is only a shell comprising an elected Provincial Council and a Board of Ministers. Moreover, over the years, the Centre has seized powers that had been devolved using the Concurrent List in the 13A.
But come national elections, whether Presidential or Parliamentary, political parties in the fray make promises to the Tamils about devolving power to the provinces either in the form of a fully implemented 13A or in the form of an entirely new Constitution drafted as per a consensus evolved in Parliament.

In the current election campaign, Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National Peoples’ Power/Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (NPP/JVP) has said that he will bring about a new Constitution based on the interim proposals made by the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly after in-depth discussions held between 2015 and 2019 when the President was Maithripala Sirisena and the Prime Minister was Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Dissanayake promised to complete fresh discussions on the proposals quickly so that political and administrative powers could be shared with each local government institution at the district and provincial level under a system of participatory governance. Significantly, the NPP-JVP manifesto makes no reference to the 13A.

President Wickremesinghe, the independent candidate, has said that power will be devolved as per the 13A. And powers that the central government had taken away from the provinces will be given back to them. The responsibility for deciding on police powers for the provincial councils will be given to the new Parliament, he added.

The Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) candidate Sajith Premadasa has said that his alliance is committed to fully implementing the 13A till the passage of a new Constitution. He also reaffirmed his commitment not to take back powers granted to the provinces under 13A.

The Tamil parties have come up with their own varying demands on devolution. Some of them support Premadasa, and some others President Wickremesinghe. Others have rallied behind a “common Tamil candidate” Pakiyaselvam Ariyanethran. All Tamil parties want devolution, either in the form of a fully implemented 13A or an improvement of it.

But, experience shows that while the Sinhalese parties (or national parties as they see themselves) say that they favour devolution under the 13A, they routinely renege on the promise.

2016-2018 Exercise

A serious attempt was made to draft a new Constitution with devolution of powers to the provinces when Sirisena was President and Wickremesinghe was Prime Minister in 2015-2019 during what was called the “Good Governance” regime.
Consensus had emerged on most issues and a Constitution more or less satisfactory to the Tamils could have been finalised. But serious contradictions between President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe over issues unrelated to the Constitution-making process, vitiated the proceedings.

But it is worth recalling the process undertaken at that time to understand the political limits of Constitution-making efforts in Sri Lanka.

The process of making a new Constitution began in 2016. By a resolution, Parliament established a Constitutional Assembly (CA), sitting simultaneously with the elected Parliament. The CA was to be led by a Steering Committee (SC) chaired by the Prime Minister and comprising leaders of all parties represented in Parliament, plus some senior MPs.

A Panel of experts comprising academics and lawyers nominated by the parliamentary parties was to assist the SC. The CA formed subcommittees on different subjects.

The Interim Report (IR) of the SC was published in late 2017. However, due to the deteriorating relations between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (on matters other than the Constitution) the Interim Report was incoherent on key matters.

The SC then asked the Panel of Experts to formulate a Discussion Paper (DP) based on the IR and the Subcommittee Reports, with the aim of finding a consensus. The DP was to be tabled in the CA in 2018, but the politico-constitutional crisis involving Sirisena and Wickremesinghe prevented that.

However, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe tabled the DP along with certain other documents in the CA on January 11, 2019. It was de facto the first draft of a new Constitution.

Sri Lanka was described as an ‘Aekiya Rajyaya’ in Sinhala, which means ‘Unitary State’. It was called ‘Orumiththa Nadu’ or ‘United Country’ in Tamil. The reference to the country being undivided and indivisible in Clause 1 was reinforced by a prohibition of secession in Clause 4.

But, Dr. Asanga Welikala of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) argued in his paper of the DP, that a ‘Unitary State’ is distinct from a ‘United Country’. The Tamils pointed this out and expressed their disappointment with the use of the two terms.

Dr. Welikala said that the CA could have gone by the examples of multilevel territorial systems created without using the terms “Unitary or Federal” or created new concepts.

As expected, devolution of power was a very contentious issue in the deliberations in the CA. Therefore, the DP adopted a “cautious and incremental” approach to devolution. It accepted the 13A as the basis, but the plan was to either remove or clarify the Provincial Governor’s powers, thereby consolidating the autonomy of the provincial Board of Ministers and the Provincial Council.

Considerable attention was paid to the controversial issues of devolution of powers in regard to the police and State land. To allay fears of secession among the majority Sinhalese, the DP outlined frameworks for cooperation between the Centre and the Provinces on State land and police. But the DP did not indicate the distribution of competences between the Centre and the Provinces.

Dr. Welikala speculates that this could be due to political sensitivities. While the majority community desired the retention of Concurrent powers, the minority Tamils wanted its abolition as it was being cynically used to water down devolution.

However, Dr.Welikala submits that “a genuine framework of concurrency is not only workable and appropriate, but also consistent with the design of multilevel systems in comparable countries, which eschew the older method of trying to define exclusive spheres in the context of the realities of modern governance and the needs of a developing society.”

The DP introduced the concept of “non-derogable rights” and gave an extravagant list of such rights. But Dr. Welikala wonders how such an extravagant wish-list of claims on the State and its resources could be enforced.
The DP had Directive Principles of State Policy and Citizens’ Duties. There were also references to a unitary ‘composite culture’. But objecting to this, Dr. Welikala said: “In a deeply pluralistic society, heavily ideological statements about the nature of collective identity in a society where ethnicity is widely resonant, raise more questions than answers about this model of constitutional identity.”

Second Chamber

The most noteworthy innovation in the DP was the provision for a Second Chamber in Parliament consisting of 55 members. Each of the nine Provincial Councils would elect a Provincial Delegation of five to the Second Chamber, which might include the Chief Minister (but not other provincial ministers).

The provincial delegation could collectively but not individually be recalled by a Provincial Council. The other ten members of the Second Chamber were to be elected by Parliament. These must be persons of eminence and integrity who have distinguished themselves in public or professional life, and were not Members of Parliament or of Provincial Councils.

“Thus, the proposed Second Chamber is a house both of provincial representation in the central legislative process, as well as, to a lesser extent, a forum of independent expertise. Both are important rationales in the Sri Lankan context,” Dr. Welikala noted.

But he added that the powers of the Second Chamber were only very sparsely mentioned.
“Parliament will ‘refer’ Bills to the Second Chamber which has one month to ‘consider’ them. When the Second Chamber returns Bills to Parliament, it may specify ‘areas’ which require ‘reconsideration’ and Parliament shall give ‘due consideration’ to the views of the Second Chamber. No more is said of the relationship between the two chambers than this, and this is clearly an area that requires much greater elaboration.”

Stumbling Blocks

Would anyone elected as President now be able to or be willing to deliver on devolution or 13A?
Historically, no government has been able to deliver on promises on devolution made to the Tamils. This has been due to an innate fear of Tamil secession. There is a contemporary aspect also. It is that the entire attention of the people of Sri Lanka (except perhaps the Tamils of the North and East) is now on the dire economic situation marked by high prices and stagnant incomes especially in the urban organised sector. It is doubtful if voters in the majority community would ponder over the pros and cons of devolution to a minority community.

Under a Samagi Jana Balawegaya an independent public prosecutor will be set up, and rule of law will be established, state procurement will also be revamped to eliminate corruption, Eran Wickremeratne said.

Corruption cannot be tackled by depending on individuals, but systems has to be put in place that last beyond them, he said.

“When people ask what is the biggest problem in the economy, I never say it is the economy,” Wickremeratne told the business community unveiling the party’s platform.

“This is so small it can be put right. The biggest problem in this country is the rule of law. If the rule of law is working and every citizen feels the law equal and have dignity we can fix the economy.

“Even foreign direct investors will have confidence because they know that the law actually works. From the President to the man on the street the law must actually.”

Wickremeratne said he strongly believed that the Supreme Court must be independent. The Supreme Court has given two orders recently about the President violating the constitution.

“We are going to create an independent public prosecutors office,” Wickemeratne. “At the moment the government’s lawyers is the Attorney General Department. Clearly there is a conflict of interest.

“He is my lawyer one day. I rob and steal the next day and he is supposed to put a case against me. It just does not happen. We studied the model in Hong Kong, I have been there a couple of times.

At the moment the sole discretion of withdrawing the case is with the Attorney General.

“We want to do away with that,” he said.

The CIABOC law will be strengthened.

Wickremeratne said he presented a private members bill on asset declarations.

Now there is discourse about asset declarations.

“I am glad the government accepted that,” he said.

E-Procurement will be used and a new law will cover all public procurement.

“You know that, you may have been a victim. There will be a platform. All global best practices will be in the law.”

The stolen asset recovery law will be passed.

Like the asset declaration law, there was also a private members will on stolen asset recovery.

“Lets get out of the mindset that we are going to look at individuals,” Wickremeratne said. “We need system schange. And we need to put systems in place. It does not matter who sits on the chair today. But we need a system change.”

“A good leader is measured not when he is office. But once he has left office if the good things he has put in place continues, then we know we have had a great leader.”

The involvement of Sri Lankan mercenaries in the Ukraine-Russia conflict has raised significant concerns. Reports have emerged linking human trafficking rings to the recruitment of ex-servicemen for combat roles in the conflict zone.

Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Levan Dzhagaryan, addressed the matter during a press briefing in Colombo. When questioned about the status and potential release of Sri Lankan mercenaries fighting for Russia, Dzhagaryan highlighted ongoing collaborative efforts with Sri Lankan authorities. He said about the importance of cooperation between the Russian Federation and Sri Lanka, noting that the Sri Lankan embassy in Moscow is actively engaged in resolving the issue.

Dzhagaryan also pointed out the need for balanced attention regarding Sri Lankan mercenaries fighting on both sides of the conflict, suggesting inquiries about those fighting for Ukraine should also be directed to the appropriate channels.

While specific details about the situation remain confidential, Dzhagaryan assured that efforts are being made in close coordination with relevant authorities to address the issue.