Four years after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, Hindu temples are being destroyed in the North, Muslim retail stores are being attacked in the South and Sinhala Buddhist extremism has become organized into its own brand. In other words, ethnic-religious tension within the nation is still very much alive. The Round Table conference convened in 1984 by J. R. Jayewardene, the All Party Conference convened by President Premadasa in August 1989 and the draft constitution titled ‘The Government’s Proposal for Constitutional Reform’ fashioned under President Chandrika Kumaratunga are all initiatives by Sri Lankan Presidencies to deal with the ethnic conflict through constitutional reform. They are key not only because they paved the way for future reforms but also because they were the basis for change, the result of significant positive political will and because they promised the re-evaluation of past failures in constructing new strategies of dealing with an ethnic conflict that has blighted Sri Lanka for decades. Similarly, the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) was instituted by the Rajapaksa administration to resolve the nation question. The APRC’s recommendations imagined a more pluralistic, accommodative and inclusive state within the constraints of a unitary framework. The expectations and hype fabricated around it led to an anticlimactic conclusion unworthy of its grand conception, steady evolution, and notable final products. This paper explores not why the highly commended APRC was so hastily dismissed, but what is actually was and why it is still important.
What is the APRC?
