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Positive moves are being made by both President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to resolve the seven decades-long ethnic issue. Following Wickremesinghe’s declared resolve to secure an agreement on the broad contours of a settlement by Sri Lanka’s Independence Day on February 4, the two sides have agreed on an agenda in which priority is given to issues on which decisions could be taken and implemented quickly.
The political setting for such a move is apt. While Wickremesinghe is keen on wooing the Tamils with an eye on the 2024 Presidential election in which he will need the Tamil vote, the TNA is keen on showing its constituency noticeable progress in its fight for the Tamils’ rights ahead of the local body elections in 2023.
Full Implementation of 13A
The first issue to be taken up is the full implementation of the 13th Amendment (13A) which devolves power to the provinces. On January 10, the TNA and the President will discuss a paper prepared by M.A. Sumanthiran TNA MP on what the party expects from the President on the implementation of the 13A. Former North Eastern Province Chief Minister Varadaraja Perumal pointed out in a recent article, the TNA and other Tamil parties have never clearly stated point by point what they want from a revised 13A, what it lacked, and how to rectify the flaws.
By agreeing to discuss the implementation of the 13A, both sides have come down from their earlier stands.
Successive governments have stuck to the stand that there is no need to improve the implementation of the 13A as the 13A is itself flawed having been an “imposition” by India under the India-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. Off and on, there were suggestions from the Lankan leadership that the District or the Grama Sabha (Village Council) should be the unit of devolution rather than the Province.
Additionally, successive governments have muddled the issue of devolution or full implementation of the 13A by frequently making moves to change the constitution lock, stock and barrel and opening Pandora’s box.
On the Tamil side too, there has been a tendency to seek the impossible, not as a bargaining chip, but as an end in itself. Before independence, G.G. Ponnambalam demanded a perfectly balanced representation of the majority and the minorities (the 50:50 formula). Upon independence, the demand was for a federal constitution. The 50:50 formula flew in the face of the population ratio heavily favouring the Sinhalese. And the federalist demand was unacceptable because the task of retaining Sri Lanka as one unit in the absence of British over-lordship was seen as being a primary and critical necessity.
The ethnic divide widened in the 1970s which led to the growth of Tamil militancy and the 1983 riots, the latter bringing India into the equation as a mediator. The India-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 envisaged devolution of power to a united Tamil-speaking North-Eastern Province. But both Sinhalese nationalists and the Tamils (barring the Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary Liberation Front –EPRLF) rejected the Accord and the 13th Amendment which concretized devolution of power to elected Provincial Councils.
While the Tamil moderates said that the 13A was inadequate, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militants had set their sights on a fully independent Tamil Eelam through the force of arms. With the help of President R. Premadasa, the Tamils destroyed the North Eastern Council headed by the EPRLF.
Throughout the war years, when the LTTE was the Tamils’ “sole representative”, the Tamils’ aspiration was for full independence, though the moderate parties responded to efforts by governments in Colombo to draft a new constitution. But these efforts failed due to a lack of consensus in the majority Sinhalese community.
Following the elimination of the LTTE in 2009, the Tamil parties gave up the demand for an independent Tamil Eelam and revived the demand for federalism with the “right of self-determination”. But the Sinhalese majority would not budge from the concept of a “unitary” constitution, though Presidents, under pressure from India, kept talking of going beyond the 13A to give more power to the Provinces.
During elections, promises would be made to devolve more power but these would be reneged upon routinely. As for the Tamils, they would participate in the constitution-making process but stick to the demand for a federal constitution backed by the “right to self-determination”.
But concepts such as “federalism” and the “right to self-determination” were anathema to the Sinhalese majority. That these concepts were huge stumbling blocks in the way to ethnic reconciliation, was noticed by Varadaraja Perumal, former Chief Minister of the united North Eastern Province. He told this writer that the Tamils should eschew demands that “frighten the Sinhalese.”
However, now, perhaps under India’s subtle prodding, the TNA has come a few notches down and is ready to discuss the “full implementation” of the 13A. Even TNA Supremo, R. Sampanthan, who seemed irrevocably wedded to the demand for a federal constitution and the right to self-determination, has agreed to talks about 13A’s full implementation.
Issue of Land and Prisoners
The President has told the TNA leaders that he will visit Jaffna in the Northern Province on January 15, and, sitting with army officials, settle the issue of releasing private lands taken by the army during the war.
On the issue of releasing Tamil militants in jail for years, Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe had apparently said that a Presidential Pardon could be considered for those who had served long years as convicted prisoners. As regards prisoners whose cases are still in the courts, a pardon could be considered at the conclusion of their cases.
The government could easily solve the return of private lands seized by the army and the release of Tamil prisoners. But there would still be another huge issue to be resolved – tracing and accounting for Tamils who went missing during the war. This demand is hard to meet and will remain to agitate the Tamils and challenge governments.
