The 13th Amendment and its 

MISPERCEPTIONS 

By Neville Ladduwahetty-May 1, 2014, 12:00 pm

President Rajapakse and NP Chief Minister Wigneswaran

The message in comments such as "to show concrete movement towards a meaningful devolution of power" and "to ensure that Provincial Councils are able to operate effectively", with the most recent being the need to "expeditiously implement the 13th Amendment", is that power has NOT been devolved from the Center to the Provinces. This is factually not correct. This misperception is due to the inability to appreciate that while power has constitutionally been devolved from the center to the periphery, how these powers work in practice depends on the structural context in which they operate. This inability to separate the constitutionally legal from the operational has led to the distorted perception that power has not been devolved.

The 13th Amendment and Its by Thavam Ratna