LLRC & the Lessons on Devolution: Sri Lanka’s LLRC Revisited
Learning lessons is a humbling experience. It takes place with the admission that one has made mistakes. Having made them, one feels the adverse consequences; having felt them, one realizes the importance of learning from those mistakes, learning not to repeat them, learning the required lessons. In the realm of politics, then, this process, this matter of learning lessons, is an extremely humbling and bold exercise.
Viewed from this perspective, the establishment of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was a necessary, but ironic, exercise. Necessary, because the situation was ideal for a more honest and forthright discussion of what needs to be learned to prevent conflict in the future; ironic, because the process was to be initiated soon after a conclusive defeat of an opponent, by a clear victor who now stood firm and proud on the battlefield, by a government which had claimed to have made no mistakes. The challenge was immediately evident.
It is within this overarching context that a brief examination of one aspect of the LLRC’s recommendations – devolution of powers – needs to take place; bearing in mind, however, that the problem sometimes lies, not only with the protagonists who are supposed to learn lessons, but also with the nature of the very lessons they are supposed to learn. And sometimes, like in the present case, one ends up learning a different lesson, unintended.
