2014 Can Be Year Of New Departure
By Jehan Perera -December 30, 2013 |
Jehan Perera
This New Year will be a year of change as the government faces a make or break situation internationally. The next session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March is positioned to deliver a resolution that calls for an international probe into Sri Lanka’s conduct of its war. The weeks and months to come are therefore going to be crucial. The international community is watching whatever steps Sri Lanka takes in the direction of greater human rights, national reconciliation and accountability. Unless change happens, the government and the country too will be at the receiving end of UN-sanctioned scrutiny that will leave it little room to manoeuver. International sanctions of one kind or another will be a step away.
In this context, the government will necessarily have to change course in the New Year. It can no longer go down the old path that lay down a policy of centralization and uniformity, in which the government’s top leaders sought to control society and make it uniform. It may be recalled that shortly after the war’s end, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that henceforth there will be no majority or minority but only patriots and traitors. The government’s vision of centralization and uniformity was encapsulated in its post-war slogan of “one country, one people.” It also meant singing the national anthem in only one language, and not two, unlike the national anthem of South Africa which is sung in five languages and from whence the government hopes to get support to counter the international demands being placed on it.
The essential feature of the government’s post-war policy has been the centralization and concentration of power, which even its cabinet ministers do not like as it marginalizes them too. Belying the general expectation that the end of the war would lead to a reduction in the role of the military there has been a continuing spurt in the growth of the military budget and the role of the military in civil society. This has been accompanied by a concurrent undermining of the institutional autonomy that might have protected pluralism and diversity in society. The independence of the public service and judiciary amongst others has been laid low. The 18th Amendment concentrated the powers of appointment of all top state bodies in the hands of the President.
