Current Constitutional Reform Process: Periodic Replay; Or New Beginnings?
By Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe –April 13, 2016
Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe
The present constitutional reform is of interest since it comes after the end of a bitter protracted war that bled us all morally and spiritually. Instead of the values of love, peace, coexistence and solidarity, based on a way of life of sharing and caring, we were led to slaughter each other for territory, geography, power, dominance and supremacy. Each side promoted forms of chauvinism where the other was demonized, and the whole social order became permeated and infused with the ideology and politics of chauvinism- on all sides of the barricades. Innocent civilians and whole communities paid the price for indiscriminate shelling and bombing, being played and preyed upon, and by the widespread devastation and irreparable loss of life and livelihood. This war, gruesome, at times barbaric, was a result of a violent fault-line fracture in the very foundations of our State and political order, flowing from the dominant values and the way of life that it imposes and demands.
The people of Lanka have paid the ultimate price for a Constitution and a Political Order that have led them to an unceasing spiral of multiplying crises, indebtedness, poverty and insecurity. Most importantly, this process of State and constitutional building has robbed them of their sovereignty. It has left them without the power to enforce their will and determination, their decisions and aspirations, upon their political representatives, and upon the laws, policies, rules and practices of the State that fatally affect their lives and future. They only have the power to vote for the best candidate who can delude them most and promise them heaven and lead them to hell, repeatedly, while accumulating their own power, privilege and fortunes. This has been the bitter reality. But, after repeated betrayals and false promises, the people are awakening to the reality that for them to be free, they would have to take effective collective control and command of their State and society and so guide the ship towards the shores of universal peace, solidarity, prosperity and happiness. The current constitutional reform process will be most crucial. It is like a laboratory for educating and illuminating the people as to the path of ignorance and illusion and a scientific path of achieving democratic freedom, independence and liberation, with truth and justice for all.
The Constitutional reforms so far have served to centralize political power in the hands of a ruling class elite that takes turns in operating this highly centralized and monopolized hegemonic State, as opposed to empowering, advancing and consolidating the democratic power and will of the people to exercise effective and collective control over their Land, their society, their community, their lives and their future. This sovereign and supreme principle and most fundamental right of the people to be the conscious architects of their life and future, has been effectively robbed by accumulated violations of human rights and democratic freedoms, and gross abuse of power. The Sri Lankan State is on trial internationally and internally for its failure to honour human and democratic rights and basic civilized norms of decency. It is in this context that the current constitutional reform process is unfolding.
