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NEW DELHI, May 19,2013

Khurshid asks Colombo to request Army not to purchase land in conflict-hit areas

India tried to contain the after effects of a selective briefing it gave on Friday about its relations with 
Sri Lanka.
During a telephonic conversation on Friday, the External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid advised his Sri Lankan counterpart G L Peiris not to take any steps that would dilute Colombo’s assurance of a better deal to island Tamils who had been hit hard by the conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The Indian advice came in the wake of reports about a small nationalist party, the JHU, planning to move parliament soon to abolish the thirteenth amendment — which aims to empower the Tamils regionally.
Asked whether a small party would be able to get the government to drop a clause that it has promised to the world to implement, official sources they feared that an upsurge of nationalist sentiments in the Sri Lankan Parliament may well carry such a proposal through. That’s why Mr. Khurshid thought it prudent to caution Mr. Peiris.
The second counsel by Mr. Khurshid was to request the Lankan Army not to purchase land in conflict-hit areas. Here too the same approach of cautioning the Lankans has prevailed with sources pointing out in the past too, India has drawn Colombo’s attention to the issue of the Sri Lankan Army squatting on prime pieces of farm land years after the conflict ended.
Sri Lankan diplomatic sources continued to remain baffled over this interpretation of the conversation. “This is strange because I hear there are factual inaccuracies in the reports,” they said. Indian sources also tried to play down the reports that have got adverse play in the Sri Lankan media.
“We were not as stern but we had to take this risk of pointing out the pitfalls. People will take us to task if we didn’t point it out,” they explained while preferring to highlight Mr. Khurshid raising the issue of early release of 26 Indian fishermen detained by Sri Lanka.

JAYALALITHAA’S ‘INDIFFERENCE’

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s indifference was one reason for the arrests and long detentions of prisoners, said the MEA sources. They accused Ms. Jayalalithaa of not allowing Tamil fishermen from both countries to meet in order to resolve most issues of discord among themselves.
The sources also blamed her for Indian fishermen being detained in Sri Lanka for long periods because her government tends to arrest fishermen from the other country and not respond to pleas to release them. “The MEA has written several letters to the Tamil Nadu government on releasing the Sri Lankan fishermen after completing the formalities. But she has rarely, if ever, replied to them,’’ they said.


Of those constitutional ephemera



May 19, 2013
Constitutional proposals are apparently ten a penny in this country. Presented from time to time they end up as mere political ephemera and we have been left with a seriously flawed constitution which has more amendments than the original text and easily lends itself to misinterpretation and thereby abuse. Its architect, the late President J. R. Jayewardene, wanted it that way and his predecessors have faithfully retained it, relishing as they do its draconian powers while hypocritically condemning them in public.
The UNP has said it is working on a new constitution which, contrary to its promises, will retain the executive presidency albeit with reduced powers. In 2010, it refrained from contesting the presidential election and threw in its lot with Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who vowed to abolish the executive presidency. Today, it tells us it won’t scrap that institution. Its volte face cannot be justified on any grounds.

What has put paid to all past efforts to introduce a new basic law is politicians’ greed for power. When out of power they pick holes in the JRJ Constitution which they pledge to abolish in toto. But, once ensconced in power, they follow Machiavelli’s advice that the promise given was a necessity of the past and the word broken is a necessity of the present. The present-day politicians who have been abusing the Constitution in every conceivable way and strengthening the executive presidency to perpetuate their hold on power were themselves vociferous critics thereof when they were in the political wilderness.

The Opposition’s love for democracy is like the fidelity of some aging males who lack opportunity and ability to indulge in lechery. Hand over the reins of power to those politicians and they will do more of what they accuse their political enemies of doing. This has been the name of the game in politics and the bane of what remains of Sri Lanka’s democracy. Of the corrupting influence of power Shelley has written:

Power, like a desolating pestilence,

Pollutes whate'er it touches ...

Before offering a new Constitution, the UNP leaders should explain why they never so much as made a whimper of protest while the present Constitution was being drafted way back in the late 1970s and unflinchingly voted for its ratification en masse in spite of all its undemocratic features they are currently critical of. They also defended it to the hilt and benefited from its draconian provisions for 17 long years until they lost power in 1994. In 2000, they not only rejected but also literally torched President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s draft Constitution when it was presented to Parliament, in spite of having consented to it during the drafting stages. Yes, it was no act of altruism on her part. Her attempt would have stood a better chance of succeeding if she had made it during her first term, not after her re-election. She obviously essayed to kill several birds with one stone, so to speak. She wanted to create regional councils, abolish the executive presidency and, above all, do away with the constitutionally prescribed presidential term limit to retain her hold on power for many more years in the capacity of Prime Minister. The UNP took exception to some provisions which, it said, she had smuggled into the draft constitution like the powers of the Prime Minister during the transitional period.

However, the fact remains that the UNP and President Kumaratunga could have ironed out their differences and implemented the draft Constitution of 2000 if they had been genuinely desirous of doing so. They, true to form, let their partisan political interests get the better of their sense of duty. So much for their democratic credentials!

If the holier-than-thou political Jumbos really want the people to take their much-publicised attempts at safeguarding the country’s democracy seriously, first of all, they ought to put their own house in order by rendering their party constitution less authoritarian. Charity, as they say, begins at home.