What went wrong with Sri Lanka? (Part II)
Sri Lanka’s independence movement, Victor Ivan argues, was never a movement for liberation — and the elite that inherited the state kept caste and ethnicity as instruments of politics rather than dismantling them.
බලය ගල්ගැසුණු දෙයක් බවට පත් කළ ජේ.ආර්.ගේ ව්යවස්ථාව (ව්යවස්ථාවක් හදාගැනීමේ ප්රශ්නය-4)
Part 4 examines the 1978 constitution. Holding five-sixths of Parliament after the 1977 election, J.R. Jayewardene rushed through a new constitution without proper public scrutiny, stripping Parliament of supremacy and creating a president above the law, with the power to appoint and dismiss the cabinet at will. Citing K.M. de Silva’s biography of Jayewardene, Ivan argues that though it removed some Sinhala-only provisions, the constitution was drafted without Tamil representatives and did nothing to stop young Tamils being pushed towards a separate state.
මැතිවරණ තිබීම නිසා පමණක් රටක් ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදීවන්නේ නැත
The true test of democracy, Ivan argues, is whether the opposition has a fair chance of winning power. Before 1977 it did: governments changed at almost every election, spending was capped, election petitions worked and the police stayed neutral. J.R. Jayewardene replaced that with a petrified system in which the president can call elections at will and turn every contest into a puppet show. Ivan recounts the rigging of the Jaffna Development Council poll, the 1999 installation of an outsider as acting Elections Commissioner, and a commissioner too afraid for his family to investigate forged ballots. The UNP, he says, now reaps what it sowed.
පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණය ගැන
As the first Northern Provincial Council election approaches alongside polls in the North Western and Central provinces, Ivan warns the government not to repeat the blunder of the 1981 Jaffna District Development Council election, when its all-out bid to win led to violence, the burning of the Jaffna library and, with the 1982 referendum, the road to Black July and two insurrections. He expects the government to win in the South but with eroding support, as debt-funded white elephants, a squeezed economy, lost GSP+ and a rotting system shed flesh like a decaying body.
ඉන්දු-ලංකා ගිවිසුම ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
As the government retreats from diluting the Thirteenth Amendment before the Northern Provincial Council election, Ivan argues that the Indo-Lanka Accord is an international treaty that cannot be changed unilaterally — and that after the war India, as Shivshankar Menon told him, would have backed a better devolution scheme. Drawing on K.M. de Silva and J.N. Dixit, he corrects the popular belief that the Accord was forced on Sri Lanka by the 1987 airdrop: it grew from the 1985 Delhi Accord, and without the IPKF the state might not have survived two insurgencies.
බොරුව හා රැවටිල්ල ජාතික ලක්ෂණයක්ද?
Ivan asks whether deceit is a national habit, and finds it at every turn of modern history: D.S. Senanayake’s staged ‘farmers’ and the governor-generalship promised to Lord Soulbury, the 1962 ‘gin-and-tonic’ coup plot, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s Sinhala Only opportunism, and John D’Oyly’s bloodless capture of Kandy in 1815, whose native helpers’ descendants became the independence elite. Drawing on Marshall Singer, Henpitagedara Gnanaseeha and Robert Knox, he argues that leaders and people have deceived each other on language and religion until the country fell into an abyss.
හොඳම විසඳුම 13ද?-
India, the West, Tamil leaders and devolution advocates treat full implementation of the 13th Amendment as the best solution, but Ivan argues it was built for the North-East Tamils alone, on the unproven idea of a traditional Tamil homeland, and imposed on a reluctant J.R. Jayewardene under Indian pressure. Citing G.H. Peiris’s study of the Eastern Province and K.M. de Silva’s critique of separatist ideology, he says the homeland claim has never been rebutted, and warns that a solution resting on it will leave others feeling deceived. Sinhala and Tamil leaders should each apologise for their wrongs. He proposes village councils modelled on India’s panchayats, district councils able to merge into provincial and regional councils by popular consent, a smaller Parliament with a Senate, a human-rights charter, information rights, and strong election and anti-corruption commissions.
සටනකට පෙර ස්වයං විවේචනයකට
Responding to a public statement by a group of Tamil intellectuals led by the Bishop of Mannar, Rayappu Joseph, which urges the Tamil National Alliance to reject the 13th Amendment, boycott talks and stay out of the Northern Provincial Council election, Ivan argues that they are again pointing Tamils down the road to ruin. Before any new struggle, he says, the Tamil leadership must honestly ask why the last one failed: the separate-state goal was a fantasy of the traditional leaders, the 1977 mandate was far from overwhelming, J.R. Jayewardene’s 1978 Constitution met many language grievances, and Prabhakaran killed more Tamils than the security forces did. Like Gandhi’s Congress or Martin Luther King’s movement, Tamils should seek equal rights within a Sri Lankan nation and a democratic society.
ජේ ආර් ප්රේමදාස හා චන්ද්රිකා ආශ්රයෙන් රනිල් වික්රමසිංහ
Ivan compares the new Prime Minister with three presidents. J.R. Jayewardene thought big and was democratic with his cabinet though authoritarian towards the country; Premadasa was the reverse; Chandrika Kumaratunga had no national goal and was autocratic towards both. He credits Ranil Wickremesinghe’s restraint on the ethnic issue and his rapid lifting of northern restrictions, likened to John Major in Northern Ireland, but faults his hoarding of ministries and his ambivalence on the Chief Justice and holdover officials.