Sri Lanka: What to do about the Thirteenth Amendment?
Paper No. 5291 Dated 12-Nov-2012
Guest Column by Dr Kumar David
The national question has dragged on unresolved for 65 years since independence. The country has lived through a brutal civil war where thousands perished; Tamils have suffered pogroms which saw arson, rape and murder; political distrust between communities never ceased and Tamils have fled Sri Lanka in hundreds of thousands never to return. The national question festers on like an open wound.
The nation has lived with the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (13A) for 35 years and as far as Northern Tamils are concerned, devolution, the right to manage their own affairs and build their lives, is still an empty dream. The intention of 13A was to devolve a certain amount of power on the Tamils. What mockery! Every other province enjoys an elected provincial council, except the Northern Province which has never had one. Some power has been devolved elsewhere; the North suffers under the heel of military occupation.
It is this long history of getting nowhere that motivates rethinking. This essay does not present finished ideas; it simply thinks aloud. After the civil war and the end of the LTTE, Lanka is in new territory. The international scenario is also different and livelier; think of India, the USA and the UN Human Rights bodies. It is time to be productive, not be imprisoned by fixed positions or to ignore openings. This is where the difficulty begins; not abandon principles for opportunist reasons, but be flexible; that’s tricky! Wisdom is the art of taking the next step correctly, not the endless repetition of articles of faith, which any fool can do.
Navigating between basic truths and the correct next step is a challenge. Opportunists who have sold themselves (Douglas, Pilleyan, KP) will achieve nothing. At the same time, the obstinacy and stupidity of the LTTE in prioritising a military approach over an all-sided political strategy sealed its fate and ensured its defeat. Ask: “When and what mistake sealed the fate of the LTTE?” The answer is unambiguous: “Right at the beginning, when it put war at the apex of its agenda and rejected the primacy of the political. Subsequent errors, they were many and grievous, all flow from this one cardinal blunder”.
Principles and compromises
