An Evening In Jaffna With Hon. Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne, MP
By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –June 22, 2016
Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
It was a treat to hear Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne at the Jaffna Managers’ Forum on 12 June, 2016. He was there with his LSSP Cohorts (the majority group of the LSSP, he carefully stated several times) to explain where things are with the constitution.
Mr. S. Krishnanathan (Rtd. Director, North-East Provincial Council) chaired the meeting effectively with a short introduction to the legal process to come, and at one point when he gave article numbers that Wickramaratne was not sure of, was congratulated by the latter for knowing the constitution better. Mr. C.V.K. Sivagnanam (Chairman NPC) in his welcome address gave the Tamil nationalist expectation – not asking for confederation or separation but for power sharing with the North-East through restoring the lost rights of the Tamils which they exercised through the Kingdom of Jaffna (the largest in the island when the Portuguese arrived, he said, quoting K.M. de Silva), the state as the unit of power sharing, and a minimal role for the governor as the representative of the centre. He expressed confidence based on Wickramaratne’s leftist credentials with the reservation that it was a leftist who robbed minorities of their protection afforded under Article 29 of the colonial constitution.
Mr. Janahan Muttukumar (Jaffna University Law) gave a brief biographical sketch of the speaker with his impressive credentials following which Wickramaratne took the floor. In his preamble, he said the 1972 constitution was a creature of the right wing of the SLFP. That is a little difficult to swallow given Colvin R de Silva’s authorship and the left parties’ full participation. Professor S. Mahalingam of Peradeniya told me of how Colvin would write in English and the Professor of Sinhalese would go every weekend to Colvin’s Colombo house to translate that week’s work. And then, the constitution declared that the original Sinhalese version shall prevail in case of doubt! I hope that English as the international language we all need will receive its rightful place in the constitution.
Doing a brief historical sketch, Wickramaratne equivocated on the legitimacy of the 1972 constitution. First he said that in 1972 all Tamil MPs attended the initial meeting of the Constitutional Assembly. Then he said that they contributed to the lack of legitimacy by being absent at the final vote.
