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President Ranil Wickremesinghe emphasized to Tamil Parliamentarians representing the North and East yesterday that he had already put forth a comprehensive proposal to address the problems faced by the people in those regions. He said that it was up to the Tamil Parliamentarians whether to take it forward or not.

Responding to Member of Parliament M. A. Sumanthiran’s statement regarding former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s support for the full implementation of the 13th Amendment, the President quipped that he was Ranil Wickremesinghe, not Ranil Rajapaksa.

President Wickremesinghe said that he genuinely wanted to resolve the issues faced by the Tamil people and that he did not have any ulterior motives. He elaborated on various bills and plans concerning the functioning of Provincial Councils, the Office of National Unity and Reconciliation, the Truth-Finding Mechanism, the Office on Missing Persons, and the development of the Northern and Eastern provinces.

The President highlighted the government’s development initiatives in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, including projects focused on renewable energy, water supply, infrastructure development, investment promotion zones, and the tourism industry. He said that the full enforcement of the 13th Amendment could only be achieved if all the leaders of various political parties in Parliament agree to a comprehensive devolution of powers.

The President’s proposal and discussions centered on multiple measures taken to address the challenges faced by the people in the North and East regions. President Ranil Wickremesinghe reiterated his will to uphold justice for the people of the North and East. He said that any further action taken for their benefit can only proceed with the full support of Parliament.

Sri Lanka’s parliament passed a controversial new central bank law which the opposition slammed for lack of accountability in a country where there is growing understanding of the inevitable effects of central bank rate cuts enforced by inflationary open market operations.

The law passed with 66 legislators voting for and 23 voting against in a partially empty house where the debate was disrupted earlier in the day amid protests that there was no quorum.

“The intention of the new law is to correct past mistakes,” State Minister Shehan Semasinghe said.

The opposition called for amendments to make the central bank which has a history of printing money through various liquidity tools for macro-economic policy.

Countries with bad money central banks run on so-called Keynesian policies end up in the arms of the International Monetary Fund again and again, while their currencies depreciate permanently due to conflicting aims and goals.

The passage of the controversial law is a requirement under the 17th IMF program that the flexible exchange rate central bank dragged the country into.

The opposition slammed the law for giving independence to the agency without proper accountability provisions.

“I am not at ease with this bill, because I feel we have come back to the same place again,” opposition legislator Kabir Hashim said.

“The central bank still has along with its primary objectives of price stability, contradictory, output gap targeting, exchange rate determination, policy rate determination, and inflation targeting.

“This is a toxic mix.”

Output gap targeting or active macro-economic policy involves printing money for growth or cutting policy rates using inflationary open market operations.

The IMF itself taught the country to calculate a potential output, dangling a goal for the central bank to print money to reach it.

The practice eventually ended in sovereign default.

Countries with bad money central banks with contradictory money and exchange policies continue to have exchange and trade controls, social unrest and repeated IMF programs.

Hashim said as far back as 1966, former President J R Jayewardene (before he became President) had engaged B R Shenoy to come up with solutions when the country ran into forex problems in 1966.

Sri Lanka had two back to back IMF programs – with the second starting before the first one ended – in that period. Shenoy had advocated a clean float.

In 1980 when Jayewardene liberalized the economy, the central bank was again printing money and Goh Keng Swee had and advised him not to allow the central bank to print money.
He also warned there was no benefit in depreciating the currency.

Singapore does not have a policy rate and operates on currency board principles.

But the advice was not carried out, Hashim said.

The law has a provision which legitimizes printing money to reach a potential output, or active macroeconomic policy while having exchange rate policy and reserve management objectives.

Opposition legislator Harsha de Silva said the law was a step in the right direction, but amendments were needed and hoped the government would accept them.

De Silva warned central banks cannot create growth.

The central bank will continue to print money for provisional advances for the government with an amendment that they would be printed at market rates, raising the question why the money was not raised from the market in the first place instead of being printed to blow the balance of payments apart as in the past.

Hashim told parliament that several East Asian countries showed during the Pandemic that it was possible to raise real money and even cut taxes, while countries that started Covid re-finance funds including Nigeria and Pakistan had ended up in crises, not to mention Sri Lanka.

Accountability in the new law was weak or non-existent, opposition legislators warned.

Related Sri Lanka legislators slam new IMF backed central bank law for lack of accountability

“The central bank can continue to create instability as in the past mis-using certain clauses and powers in the bill,” Hashim warned.

“There are no penalties for central bankers who fail to meet inflation targets set by parliament.”

“They are allowed to make people poor overnight through inflation and go Scott free.

The Batticaloa Peace Committee, Batticaloa Justice Walkers, and Family Members of the Disappeared said, before establishing the Truth and Reconciliation mechanisms, the Government must follow -up on the already-established findings related to a number of emblematic cases in Batticaloa, that were presented to the Presidential Commissions and take concrete action on them.

They also demanded to fast-track process to provide every affected family member with copies of key documents related to the incidents or losses they have experienced which includes copies of police reports, records from various public commissions, and complaint records submitted to the Human Rights Commission (HRC), among others.

They said in cases where the original police complaint cannot be located in the police records, they propose recording new complaints linked to the original ones under this accelerated process.

They also demanded, in the absence or death of the family members who originally had made complaints, recognise the right of the next of kin in that family who is continuing the struggle for truth and justice to claim these documents.

The documents issued under the fast-track process must be guaranteed to have the same credibility for legal and administrative purposes as a police report made at the time of the event.

He also noted that as the follow-up on the already-established findings related to a number of emblematic cases in Batticaloa, which were presented to Presidential Commissions on numerous occasions with clear and credible evidence, including eyewitness accounts. Thorough inquires and investigations must be conducted within one year, and results of these must be made public.

They also recalled that many families have already identified to numerous commissions which camps their loved ones were taken. A list of those who are responsible mast be published. This way, families can make specific demands with regards to the whereabouts of their loved ones, and for overall accountability for enforced disappearance.

Also brought to light was that credible inquiries must be initiated into the role and culpability of all armed groups in abductions and enforced disappearances, including by groups such as PLOTE, EPDP, Karuna Faction and TMVP that worked alongside the government forces. Meanwhile, multiple civil society groups have written to the Government and even submitted a copy of the letter of concern to Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, expressing the victim community’s lack of confidence in any local commission or tribunal, including the recent National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC). These commissions have a history of obstructing truth-seeking and preventing the victims from attaining accountability. The groups have also highlighted that prominent officials and politicians consistently affirm their commitment to supporting war heroes and patriotic forces. The civil society said if the Government is interested in winning the public’s trust it should review the existing recommendations from previous commissions and develop a plan to implement them with a time frame.

Another group has also written to the Government stating that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by the Government should with the support of the International Community urged to fast-track a process of giving every affected family member copies of the key documents that relate to the incidents or losses they have experienced.

By Sulochana Ramiah Mohan

In efforts to full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, to safeguard the full powers of the Provincial Councils (PC) as mentioned under list one in the said Amendment with the exception of Police powers, a constitutional amendment has been mooted along with the inclusion of specified functions in list III in the PCs list subject to agreement among political parties in the Parliament.

This has been discussed during a meeting held yesterday (18) between Tamil Parliamentarians from the North and East and President Ranil Wickremasinghe. The discussion was held in order to discuss the issues relevant to the community in the Northern and Eastern Provinces such as ethnic issues, infrastructure development and the reconciliation process.

According to sources within the Presidential Secretariat, several important matters such as the implementation of the water for the North programme, the development of tourism in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, developing Jaffna as a University town, and the development plan for renewable energy had been taken into discussion.

Apart from that, it was revealed in the discussion that a draft law for the Office of National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR) has been sent to the Attorney General for constitutionality review and is to be presented to the Parliament shortly. The national action plan on reconciliation drafted by the ONUR is also to be presented to the Cabinet of Ministers soon.

As per the President’s Media Division, the Interim Secretariat for the Truth Seeking Mechanism was established with the Director General and applications are invited for key staff to facilitate stakeholder consultations and draft guidelines.

Meanwhile, President Wickremesinghe told Tamil MPs that the Anti-Corruption Law will undergo Committee Stage amendments in the Parliament today (19) and that amendments which were proposed by the Supreme Court will also be considered.

The discussion was held on the eve of President Wickremesinghe planning his first visit to India since he became the President of Sri Lanka, next week.

Since December 2022, Wickremesinghe had opened up a dialogue with the TNA in a bid to settle the long standing Tamil minority demand for political autonomy. Wickremesinghe mooted the idea for the full implementation of the India backed 13th Amendment which came to be opposed by the Buddhist clergy.

The 13th Amendment provides for the devolution of power. India has been pressing Sri Lanka to implement this which was brought in after the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement of 1987. The Tamil people’s side insisted on resolving the immediate issues of concern such as the release of private lands held for military purposes, the release of Tamil political prisoners and conflict reparations.

Although some of the lands came to be released and a few prisoners were also released, the Tamil community’s side remains largely dissatisfied. A few former militant Tamil parties who are not part of the TNA, have also written to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to pressure Wickremesinghe into the full implementation of the 13th Amendment.

Meanwhile, a group of religious leaders, educationists, and professionals from Sri Lanka’s Tamil majority from the North and East have written to Modi, urging him to “persuade” President Wickremesinghe to call for PC Elections, without further delay. The civil society members handed over their letter at the Indian Consulate in Jaffna. Sri Lanka’s PCs have been defunct for about five years now, with all nine Provinces under Governors’ rule since the elected Councils’ terms have expired in 2018 and 2019.

Complaints have been lodged against the police over a use of force against Hindus involved in religious activities at Kurunthurmalai archaeology site in Mullaitivu.

Thurairasa Raviharan, a politician, and three people’s activists complained to Mullaitivu police on July 14 over the incident earlier in the day.

The Vavuniya office of the Human Rights Commission too, has been notified.

The Mullaitivu magistrate permitted a Pooja at the site, notwithstanding a police request for a ban based on a complaint by a Buddhist monk residing there.

Monks and Buddhists who had gathered objected to the Hindu religious activity.

With tensions flaring, police ordered both sides to vacate, but neither relented.

Using force, police tried to drag the Hindus and Tamil political activists present there.

Despite the attempts, the religious function went ahead and the Hindus dispersed around half an hour later.

The incident comes in the wake of an assurance by president Ranil Wickremesinghe to resolve the controversy surrounding the site claimed by both Hindus and Buddhists.

Religious affairs minister Vidura Wickramanayake said they were awaiting a court ruling in that regard.

The month of July has had an uncanny relationship with landmark events in recent Sri Lankan history. The latest took place only last year. A cataclysmic mass movement (“Aragalaya”) resulted in an elected President fleeing the country and being replaced in an unprecedented manner by one whose party had been comprehensively defeated in the preceding parliamentary elections.

However, the truly epoch-making series of events took place way back in July 1983.

The July 83 anti-Tamil riots ripped Sri Lanka apart. They triggered the mass exodus of Tamils who came back to haunt Sri Lanka as the formidable “Tamil Diaspora”. The riots led to Indian political and military intervention. But most importantly, the riots gave birth to Tamil terrorism and a full-scale war for 26 years.

Sharvananda Commission

In 2001, eight years after the riots, President Chandrika Kumaratunga set up a three-man commission to go into the causes of violence in Sri Lanka between 1981 and 1984. Headed by S. Sharvananda, the commission had S.S.Sahabandu and M.M.Zuhair as its other members.

The commission reported that the violations of human rights directed against the Tamils were “unquestionably the worst in Sri Lanka’s modern history.”

“The killings, torture and harassment of unarmed Tamils went hand in glove with the more widespread destruction of and damage to Tamil homes, businesses and industries. Over 75,000 Tamils in Colombo alone and nearly 100,000 in all, were temporarily located in nearly 27 refugee camps. Refugees in large numbers were sent to the North by ships since the government had failed to stop the violence which raged for a period of ten days.”

On the death toll, the report noted that the government acknowledged 350 dead even as the Tamils claimed over a thousand dead. The toll included 51 killed in the North by the army on July 24, the 35 Tamil prisoners killed by fellow prisoners in Welikade on July 25 and another 18 prisoners killed on July 27.

More than 18,000 houses and numerous commercial establishments were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of Tamils fled the country “though many Sinhalese and Muslims courageously sheltered Tamils against the politically-backed hoodlums,” the report noted.

The pogrom was triggered by the killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Tirunelveli (Jaffna) on July 23.

But trouble was brewing even before July 23. The Sharvananda report quotes President J.R.Jayewardene’s telling the London-based Daily Telegraph of July 12: “I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people now. Now we can’t think of them. Not about their lives or their opinion about us on terrorist issues. We are going to deal with them ourselves, without any quarter being given”.

Civil servant Devanesan Nesiah said in an article in Groundviews in July 2013, that the regulation permitting the police to get rid of bodies without a judicial inquiry was extended island-wide with effect from July 18, well before the commencement of the pogrom.

On July 28 in the midst of rioting, President Jayewardene appealed for calm over television, but he had no message for the victims or apologies, the Sharvananda noted.

First Suicide Bombing

On July 5, 1987, Sri Lanka saw its first suicide bombing. Vallipuram Vasanthan alias Capt.Miller, an LTTE cadre, drove a truck laden with explosives into an army camp in Nelliady (Jaffna) killing 40 soldiers. This day was observed every year as ‘Black Tiger Day’ by the LTTE till its decimation in 2009. Between 1987 and 2008, 356 called ‘Black Tigers’, had laid down their lives in suicide missions.

The India-Sri Lanka Accord was signed by President Jayewardene and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on July 29, 1987. It aimed at ending the fighting between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE and laying the foundation for the devolution of power to the provinces, principally to the Tamil-speaking North and East.

But the opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led an agitation and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) took to violence against the Indian intervention. On July 30, Rajiv Gandhi was hit on the neck by a naval rating Wijemuni Vijitha Rohana de Silva who was participating in the Guard of Honour. He took a swipe at the Indian leader’s head with his rifle butt, but only managed to graze his neck.

Rohana de Silva faced a Court Martial that charged him with attempted murder, but his defence team, made up of top lawyers like Sarath Wijesinghe, Susil Premajayantha, Stanley Thilakaratne and Nalin Laduwahetty, argued that he was not aiming to kill Rajiv Gandhi since he did not stab him with the bayonet affixed to his rifle but only hit him with the butt.

The court martial found him guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced him to six years in prison. But he was pardoned by President R. Premadasa two and a half years into his prison term. Subsequently, he became a graduate, a professional astrologer and a seller of Buddhist and Hindu religious videos. He even contested the 2000 general election as a “Sinhala Urumaya” candidate.

On July 18, 1996, the Mullaitivu army base in the North was overrun by the LTTE, killing 1,400 Sri Lankan troops. This was a major blow to the army which had wrested Jaffna from the LTTE only a year earlier. On July 24, 1996, bombs placed by the LTTE in four railway carriages in Dehiwela killed 64 and injured 400.

The next major LTTE strike was at the Bandaranaike International Airport cum air force base at Katunayake on July 24, 2001. Fourteen LTTE Black Tiger cadres destroyed or damaged 26 military aircraft including jet fighters and choppers. Parked Airbus civilian aircraft were also damaged causing a loss of US$ 350 million. Tourism caved in and the GDP growth became negative as a result of the attack on the country’s only international airport.

On July 29, 2017, a controversial agreement was signed by Sri Lanka and China with the former leasing out Hambantota port for 99 years to a Chinese company for US$ 1.1 billion. India and the West harboured apprehensions about the use of the port by China for its military expansion, though the Lankans and the Chinese insisted that it would be a commercial port.

Exit of Gotabaya

The dramatic and ignominious end of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa Presidency took place in July 2022. President Gotabaya would go down in history as the first Sri Lankan Head of State and government to flee from the country as a result of a public uprising.

His mismanagement of the COVID-hit Sri Lankan economy made Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ambition of opening “Vistas of Prosperity” for Sri Lankans, a tragic farce. In July 2022 the offices and residences of the President and the Prime Minister were stormed and occupied by mobs. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s personal residence, housing thousands of books and works of art, was burnt to ashes by a mindless rabble.

President Gotabaya had a tough time getting out of the country as the airport and airline staff did not allow him to take a flight. He had to be flown to Maldives secretly by an Air Force plane. With the Maldives allowing him to land only as a transit passenger, he flew to Singapore by the next available flight. But even Singapore allowed him only a temporary sojourn. On July 13, he sent in his resignation by email.

July 2022 also saw Ranil Wickremesinghe becoming President, not by a popular vote but by a vote of parliament in which his party had no elected member. Wickremesinghe had been appointed Prime Minister by President Gotabaya in May following the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Wickremesinghe became Acting President on July 13 and was elected President by parliament on July 21, bringing the curtains down on the most unusual political turmoil in Sri Lanka in recent times.

By P.K. Balachandran/Daily Mirror