Devolution And Sri Lanka’s Global Vulnerability
Dr Dayan Jayatilleka
The debate on devolution between Prof GH Peiris and me (‘Security perspectives of province-based devolution: A reappraisal’ The Island Midweek Review, June 5th, 2012) has reached the point where a statement of what I regard as the fundamentals would be far more useful for the reader and the record, than a contestation of every single point and nuance. I have five such fundamental points which constitute the ‘ground’ as it were, of my perspective.
Firstly, a society or state that demonstrates repeated violent convulsions over a fairly prolonged period such as decades does so because of a deep underlying problem. In the case of Sri Lanka this is the problem of the relations between the Sinhalese, Tamils and the state or to put it another way, the problem between the North and South or centre and periphery. A problem of this sort is usually classified as a Nationalities Question or an ethno-national or ethno-regional question. Insofar as it has a territorial dimension, it cannot but require a solution that is also has a territorial aspect. In order to resolve the issue of the permanent political alienation of the Tamil people of the North of Sri Lanka, an alienation that had been aggravated to one of active armed antagonism, it is necessary to reform the state so as to provide the North with a moderate though irreducible measure of political and economic autonomy, calibrated carefully so that it is of a centripetal rather than centrifugal nature. Provincial devolution and more specifically the 13th amendment is the only bridge across the North-South fault-line.
