Tuesday, July 31, 2012

25 years of India-Sri Lanka Agreement: Questions & Answers
02-Apr-2012

By Col. R. Hariharan

Extracts of my answers to questions raised by media on the India-Sri Lanka Agreement 1987 in the last two days are given below.

The Rajiv Gandhi-Jayawardane Accord completes 25 years on July 29, 1987. Many now feel it represents a total diplomatic failure of India. As one who was present in Sri Lanka when Indian forces were operating from 1987 to 90, what are your comments?

Not all, but some of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora consider it as India’s diplomatic failure. The Agreement represented a strategic rather than a mere diplomatic initiative. The Agreement was signed after India arm-twisted Sri Lanka President JR Jayawardane to sign it. He had little option but to do so as no external help was forthcoming particularly after India carried out Operation Poomalai when Indian air force planes dropped much needed food supplies to a beleaguered Jaffna. This showed India would not hesitate to use force if Sri Lanka ignored Indian concerns. This action probably kindled Sri Lanka Tamil expectations that India would to re-enact another Bangladesh in Sri Lanka and create independent Tamil Eelam. The Agreement not only underwrote India’s support for united Sri Lanka but also defused the fight for independent Eelam by creating space for Sri Lankan initiative to provide a measure of autonomy for Tamils; so sections of Sri Lanka Tamils were miffed with India.

The Agreement had two parts – one relating to the Cold War environment of that time when the U.S. was trying to make a foray in Sri Lanka at a time when Soviet Union was fighting insurgency war in Afghanistan, an ally of India. The other part related to ensuring Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka get their rights on par with Sinhala majority.

The Agreement did prevent Sri Lanka from providing any foothold for the U.S. However, it failed in finding a permanent solution to the Tamil issue, though it paved the way for the creation of Northeast Province when the 13thamendment to the Sri Lanka Constitution was introduced. There was an element of ambiguity in the Agreement as it required a referendum to be held to ratify the merger of North and East on a permanent basis. And verbal promises were said to have been made by both sides which were not implemented. When political leadership with no faith in the Agreement came to power in both the countries, the Agreement was downgraded to a MoU (memorandum of understanding).

The Agreement was signed between two countries to decide the political future of Tamil minority, whose representatives were not a party to the Agreement. So it lacked ownership of Tamils. Tamil militant groups and Tamil political parties of Sri Lanka depended upon India’s good will to carry forward their struggle. So they had little choice but to accept the Agreement regardless of their own views. Even TULF which had close political connections in India agreed to the Agreement though it had some reservations. Similarly though the three major militant groups –TELO, EPRLF and PLOTE – went along with the Indian government, Prabhakaran had to be persuaded to accept it. He was suspicious of India’s intentions. MGR’s influence with him came in handy in getting him to join others. In the case of Sinhala majority, President Jayawardane simply road-rolled the objections without allowing time for the people to dispassionately to study and understand it.

Looking back at it now, I feel Jayawardane probably expected objections to the Agreement snowballing in Sri Lanka; Sri Lanka army was also said to be unhappy. That is why probably he wanted Indian forces in Sri Lanka to discourage any threat to him. In the bargain he also used them to fight the LTTE relieving his responsibility. It gave him freedom to handle JVP opposition. So Sri Lanka also contributed to the partial failure of the Agreement.

Overall, the Agreement was hastily conceived by leaders on both sides for using it as a means to their own ends rather than a common cause.

If Indian army had assessed the situation on the ground why did it not take any initiative to make a success of the Agreement?

Indian army is an instrument of Indian government. It had only a limited mandate to “guarantee and enforce cessation of hostilities” between Sri Lanka army and Tamil militants so that Sri Lanka can take action to give a degree of autonomy to Tamils as visualized in the Agreement. Prabhakaran’s Suthumalai speech on his return to Sri Lanka gave indications that he was not going to toe the Indian line. When the LTTE made only a token surrender of arms – handing over unserviceable and obsolete weapons – it started sending strong signals of its reluctance to fall in line with other Tamil militant groups giving up their arms. Though initially we did not expect the LTTE to take up arms, later when it started killing other Tamil

militant group cadres and dragged its feet on the interim administration, it was clear that the Agreement could be jeopardized.

However, Indian intelligence agencies – not military intelligence – providing interface with militants were probably confident that they could persuade Prabhakaran to accept the Agreement. And they could have advised the government to give some concession to LTTE and save Prabhakaran’s face to make it easy for him to come to terms with reality.They had clearly underestimated Prabhakaran's obduracy. This is only my conjecture.

But one thing is clear – no one had factored LTTE turning out to be a major obstruction for the success of the Agreement. This is where everyone including the Indian government, intelligence agencies and the army failed to understand Prabhakaran’s singular fixation on leading the militant pack to create Tamil Eelam and make no compromises. (Of course, later he had no qualms about colluding with Sri Lanka President Premadasa to send Indian army out, Eelam or no Eelam.

Is there a possibility of reviving the Agreement? Is there any life left in the Agreement?

The Agreement is very much in vogue but not very active. Thanks to the Agreement, 13th amendment to the Constitution came about and that led to the creation of provincial councils providing some level of autonomy for the people. Though not fully implemented, the 13th amendment is probably the only instrument available to Tamils to continue their five-decade long political struggle particularly after LTTE armed struggle was put to an end in May 2009.

However, it is for India to decide on activating the Agreement and if necessary amend it in scope and content so that both India and Sri Lanka achieve a win-win situation and end the Tamil question once and for all by providing a solution acceptable to all parties. But can India do it?

Despite three years of peace, Tamils in Sri Lanka have unattended problems and Sri Lanka needs our help to speed up the rehabilitation and reconstruction of war ravaged Northern Province. That can come through only if there is greater political understanding between India and Sri Lanka to provide a fair deal to Tamils. Mrs Indira Gandhi was there for Bangladesh initiative in 1971 and Rajiv took the plunge in Sri Lanka in 1987. But now

I see no national leader in India with enough dynamism to take up this challenge. That is pity as the Agreement way well be making its way to the archives.

(Col. R. Hariharan a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence. E-mail: colhari@yahoo.com)

Over 50% of LLRC recommendations implemented-

President tells the media

July 30, 2012

President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday said that 50 per cent of the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) had been implemented in line with the government’s post-war national reconciliation policy.

Commenting on the National Action Plan to implement LLRC recommendations as regards international humanitarian law issues, President Rajapaksa emphasized that the implementation of LLRC recommendations had not been prompted by the passage of a UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka in March.

The President made the observations while meeting editors of national newspapers and senior representatives of the electronic media at Temple Trees.

He was joined by External Affairs Minister, Prof. G. L. Peiris, Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella and Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake.

The US sponsored Resolution Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka was approved at the 19th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva last March.

When it was pointed out that Sri Lanka had been under pressure since the passage of the resolution, the President reminded the gathering that it was he who had appointed the LLRC and wanted its recommendations implemented. He stressed that the government had done a lot of ground work befrore the UNHRC summit. "Unfortunately what we have done is not conveyed to the world," the President lamented.

Asked why the government couldn’t hold the first election to the Northern Provincial Council along with elections to the Eastern PC, Minister Basil Rajapaksa said that the ongoing efforts by the government and the international community to resettle and rehabilitate those displaced during the conflict had to be completed.

Minister Rajapaksa said that the international community had divided the IDPs into two broad categories––the old and new. They assisted the government resettle the new IDPs meaning those affected during eelam war IV and they did not help others.

The minister said that the elections could be held once the resettlement was over.

The President said elections to the Northern PC would be held in September 2013.

No separate National Day as mooted

LLRC ACTION PLAN: What,shy of ‘investigations?’

By Namini Wijedasa- Sunday 29 July 2012

The government made it clear last week that there will be no separate event on National Day to express solidarity and empathy will all victims of the war, as recommended by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.
What would be observed instead is the present practice of continuing to “express solidarity as one nation and one people,” said the National Plan of Action to Implement the Recommendations of the LLRC.
The plan contains a range of commitments along with time frames for implementation. It was approved by cabinet last week and released to the public after a press conference in Colombo by External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris and Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga.
The government also pointedly avoided committing itself to the enactment of legislation to ensure the right to information. While the action plan said cabinet would decide a suitable time frame for drafting such a law, it stopped short of specifying a time frame for this step; it said this would be “TBC,” or “to be considered.”
This was the only recommendation in the action plan for which no time frame was set in the relevant column. Apart from the proposal for a separate commemorative event on National Day (which was rejected outright), the others had time frames ranging from two years to 12, six and three months. The implementation of some proposals is “ongoing” while several were listed as “completed.”
Interestingly, the section pertaining to alleged war crimes carefully avoids the use of the word “investigation.” The recommendation made by the LLRC was to “ascertain more fully the circumstances under which specific instances of death or injury to civilians could have occurred, and if such investigations disclose wrongful conduct, prosecute and punish the wrongdoers.”
The action plan seems to rule out any new investigations in the specific instances that the LLRC report contains. There will also be no inquiry external of the military. The commission itself referred to less than five such cases. The action plan undertakes the completion of “ongoing disciplinary process being conducted in terms of Armed Forces statutes.” Upon conclusion, there will be “follow up action to prosecute, where relevant.” The existing system as provided for in the Criminal Procedure Code will be used to originate a complaint and the mechanism will be given sufficient publicity.
Disciplinary inquiries are to be concluded within 12 months, while time frames of 24 months have been given for offenders to be prosecuted and the cases to be filed in Court. Where the LLRC recommends full investigations into allegations of disappearances after surrender or arrest, the same steps – completion of ongoing disciplinary process – will be followed to the same time frames.

Govt’s unwavering position Full Story>>>

Monday, July 30, 2012

'Military dominates every aspect of public life' - Lal Wijenayake

30 JULY 2012

Lal Wijenayake joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in 1963, which was considered to be 'the most influential professedly Trotskyist party anywhere in the world' as Robert J. Alexander has written. In 1972 he was elected to the Central Committee of the LSSP and soon he was appointed to the politburo. After contesting the first ever Provincial Council election in 1988 and becoming the opposition leader of the Central Provincial Council, he served as a LSSP Provincial Councillor for almost fifteen years, continuously.
Read more

18 JULY 2012

'Reconciliation' is a facade used to coverup crimes'

In January 2010, a Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka was conducted in Ireland by Milan based Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT), an independent international body, which derives its legacy from Russell - Satre Tribunal on Vietnam. The international hearing....

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Ajith C. Herath

25 JUNE 2012

'Five habours under military occupation' - Herman Kumara

Few months back Herman Kumara was living virtually in hiding. He was a target of a state orchestrated smear campaign that portrayed him as the ‘prime culprit’ behind the massive protests staged by angry fishermen. Unidentified men visited his house to query his....

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Interviewed by Athula Vithanage

17 JUNE 2012

'13th Amendment is irredeemable' - Constitutional expert

Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne is a President's Counsel who served as a Consultant to the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs from 1996 to 2001. In 2004, he was made a Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs and also functioned as a member...

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Interviewed by Kithsiri Wijesinghe

03 JULY 2012

'Political deadlock caused by Sinhala supremacist thinking'

In March, when the UN Human Rights Council session was in progress, the Sri Lankan State media launched a scathing attack on the rights activists who were attending Geneva sessions. They were accused of 'orchestrating a plot to destroy Sri Lanka’s reputation’....

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Interviewed by Kithsiri Wijesinghe

Another Gandhi statue vandalised in Sri Lanka

Gandhi statue damged at Ariyalai Jaffna

Group of unidentified person have damaged the statue of Mahatma

Gandhi located at Ariyalai area in the Jaffna district.

[ Sunday, 29 July 2012, 03:14.41 PM GMT +05:30 ]

None of the arrest made on this alleged attack, IGP of the Jaffna district Gunasekara stated police holds further investigations this regard.

Another Gandhi statue vandalised in Sri Lanka

R. K. RADHAKRISHNAN-COLOMBO, July 31, 2012

A second statue of Mahatma Gandhi was vandalised in Sri Lanka, this time in the Army-controlled Northern Province headquarter town of Jaffna.

The incident happened past midnight on Saturday, and two persons were taken into custody on suspicion a day later, officials said.

The statue was unveiled by the Indian Consul General in Jaffna, V.Mahalingam on Martyrs Day in January, 2011. “The statue is a reinforced concrete structure. It cannot be vandalised easily,” Mr.Mahalingam said, when asked about the incident. He has sent reports of the incident to the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Ashok K.Kantha, and also met the Government Agent for Jaffna, along with the Mayor, to lodge a complaint.

The Indian High Commissioner spoke to the Foreign Secretary on the desecration and urged him to take immediate action to restore the statue and bring the culprits to book.

It appears that the statue has been pulled by the hand with a mechanical device using force. The statue is bent at its feet, and the arm holding the ‘dhandi’ has been damaged.

The most intriguing aspect of the whole episode is that the Army watches the whole Province with hawk eyes. There is huge presence of military on the ground, and it is baffling that such an incident of vandalism – which takes sometime to accomplish – was not detected by the Army.

A few months ago, a statue of Gandhi was ‘beheaded’ in the Eastern Province town of Batticaloa. Though the government reacted quickly and restored the statue, the police are yet to nail the suspects.

In an unrelated but significant development, Sri Lankan Editors who met President Mahinda Rajapaksa, over breakfast on Monday morning, reportedly asked him what he was doing about the “huge Indian interference” in the country. “India was trying to destabilise Sri Lanka, and the President should tell India not to do so”, they advised him.

In conversation with M.A. Sumanthiran, TNA National List MP

M.A.Sumanthiran, is a National List Member of Parliament from the Tamil National Alliance(TNA). Groundviews has carried in the past the Minister’s submissions to Parliament against the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, for which he faced the most outrageous heckling and insults within the legislature itself, and from fellow MPs from Government. With this and other media reports in mind, we begin the conversation on the obvious question – whether he thought it was worth it, in hindsight, to become a Member of Parliament instead of just sticking to his law practice. He noted that while the heckling and verbal violence is something he expected, the irrelevant nature of most debates came as a surprise.

We then talk about the elections for the Northern Province, promised by the President to be held in September 2013. The TNA dismissed government concerns about the election being conducted sooner. As noted in the media, TNA spokesman and Jaffna District MP Suresh Premachandran asked,

“What is the problem in the government having an election in the Northern Province at this stage now, when it had a Presidential election, a Parliamentary election and a Local government election in the North”

Sumanthiran clarifies the position of the TNA further, and says that the only reason to postpone the elections is political. He goes on to note that the results of the 2011 elections prove that the Government would lose the elections quite badly, noting that only between 2010 and 2011, the TNA had doubled and in some placed trebled its vote base. Another reason he mentions is that a defeat at the elections would show to the world the government had failed to win over the Tamil people three years after the end of the war.

Referring to the general media reportage of TNA – government relations, the MP is asked as to whether the antagonism that usually defines the relationship is useful and helpful moving into the future. Sumanthiran stresses the relationship they wanted with the government sought cooperation and engagement, not antagonism, but that despite an open call to government, it had not been accommodated in this respect.

We then talk about the TNA’s rather damning critique of the LLRC’s Final Report, and in particular, the monitoring of certain key issues related to land, demilitarisation and the freedom of expression, for example. Given the TNA’s monitoring, the MP is asked whether there is any cause for optimism over the implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations.

We then talk about the Parliamentary Select Committee set up to look into a negotiated political settlement, which the TNA has consistently dismissed. As Sumanasiri Liyanage writing to theColombo Telegraph avers (and referring to an interview published in The Hindu with the President),

‘Mr. Rajapaksa made it clear that the creation of a Senate and the fleshing out of a solution needed to come from Parliament. “This is [where] the Parliamentary Select Committee is important,” he said.’ The implication is that the Northern PC election will not be held until the PSC comes up with a solution that is acceptable to the members of the PSC and the majority in the Parliament.

The MP is asked as to how he sees the TNA can best navigate this political impasse. His response goes into the history of the PSC, and the sequence of events that he submits comprehensively debunks the submission by government that it is the TNA which is holding up progress.

We then move on to a statement made by the MP in an interview conducted with a senior journalist Namini Wijedasa recently, where he noted,

So, if Sri Lanka should remain as one country, and we think it should remain as one country, then to preserve it as one country you must grant that right to self-determination and have it exercised in an arrangement within one country. That must be given, that must be recognised. It’s not at the wish of the majority that it’s given. That is as a matter of right in international law that our people are entitled to… to have a measure of autonomy.

I ask the MP to clarify what exactly he meant, noting that his statement had raised serious concern in some quarters that what he and by extension the TNA were recommending, even post-war, was in fact the right to secede. After responding to this question, he is asked whether – if it is perceived that the right to internal self-determination isn’t met – calls for secession will increase. He answers in the affirmative, though insisting that it won’t be the TNA who will make such a demand and that it will come from outside the country. The MP is then asked whether this in fact means a descent back into war.

Noting what Sumanthiran says in response to these questions, we talk about the relationship TNA shares with the Tamil diaspora – for example, with bodies like the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). Noting that diaspora groups campaigned against the TNA initially, the MP notes that after the party’s election victory, they had changed their stance, and that the TNA was now in contact with groups like the Global Tamil Forum (GTF). The MP also notes that the TNA has made it clear that if the party were to accept a solution proposed by and negotiated with government, though not all, a large number of the Tamil diaspora would also be with them.

We end our conversation with the MP noting how important it is for the TNA to engage with the Sinhalese in the South and what their key messages are to the Southern constituency.

It is time to abrogate the 13th Amendment

Written by Malinda Seneviratne -

Sunday, 29 July 2012

What are the landmark political moments of post-Independence Sri Lanka? We could mention Independence Day, the 22nd of May 1972 when we became a republic, the shift to the ‘open economy’ in 1977, the scripting of the 1978 Constitution, July 1983, the 1988-89 bheeshanay, the passing of the ill-fated 17th Amendment in 2001 and the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009. And yes, the 29th day of July, 1987. The last is the least mentioned by those who are asked to respond to the question posed. And yet, just like the 1977 Constitution, the 13th Amendment and the Indo-Lanka Accord that birthed it have had lasting and devastating impacts on Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans.
It is 25 years after the fact. Col. R. Hariharan, a retired Indian military intelligence who served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence and who is a regular commentator on military and political affairs in South Asia has offered a recap of sorts. He has compared two Indian interventions, in East Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

India-lovers have bent over backwards to tell Sri Lankans that India is a friend and was here to help us. They have and they will. Hariharan puts it bluntly. He admits that it was not a love-affair, but one informed by strategic goals. Nothing wrong in that. Countries must do what’s best for countries. That ‘doing’ should be read just like that and not sugar-coated with silly terms like ‘friendship’ and ‘concern’. In short, India was not doing Sri Lanka any favours. We have it now from the mouth of the top intelligence officer.
Hariharan laments that the Accord failed in Sri Lanka: ‘The devolution of powers to the Tamil minority promised in the Accord remains unfulfilled despite the 13th Amendment. But the Accord retains the potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the region.’

The second part of this lament should be flagged. So let us flag: ‘Potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the region’. So, for all the shop-talk about ‘redressing Tamil grievances’ the Accord (and also the 13th Amendment) was about ‘Indian influence in the region’, Messers R. Sampanthan and M. Sumanthiran please note.
Hariharan has to defend frill of course and we are sympathetic to this need. He says, ‘The most significant achievement of the Accord was the introduction of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution which provided a degree of autonomy to the newly created provinces and it still exists as the only constitutional tool available to redress Tamil grievances’.

He does not outline ‘Tamil Grievances’ (note, not ‘aspirations’) and therefore does not have to link the territory-based ‘solution’ to a problem that can be articulated in territorial terms. He doesn’t have to deal with the fact that there is no history that Tamil nationalists can come up with to give beef to the whine about ‘traditional homelands’. He doesn’t have to deal with the demographic reality of the majority of Tamils living outside the Northern and Eastern provinces. He doesn’t have to talk about ethnic cleansing by the LTTE and can be silent about identity-related population densities in the Eastern Province.

Hariharan confesses that Indian had no clue about ground realities. He passes the buck to ‘civil intelligence’ of course, but the bottom line is ignorance. It is clear that realization is yet to dawn. There’s nothing wrong in Indians being patriotic, after all Arundathi Roy (activist) and Harsha Bhogle (cricket columnist) have become very defensive when India seems at risk of break-up or India is critiqued, respectively. Hariharan, moreover, is a military man and not an academic.

What has the Accord done, though, quite apart from trying to satisfy Indian strategic interests? Here, in Sri Lanka, that day in late July twenty five years ago was marked by the burning of buses. It gave an impetus to the JVP which quickly donned a nationalist garb and fed on general public dismay. Close to 60,000 people died in two bloody years. The 13th Amendment helped legitimize Eelam mythmaking, turning randomly drawn provincial boundaries into borders of a fictional homeland. That boundary line has kept feeding narrow Tamil communalist politicians and politics. And we are not even talking about the other unsaid benefits that accrued to India courtesy the Accord.
The debate should not be about 13 Plus or 13 Minus, but when (and not if) the 13th will be abrogated. India is welcome to its strategic interests. Sri Lanka must be about Sri Lankans and their collective present and future. Fiction doesn’t help. Applauding and legitimating fiction leads to tragedy. The 13th Amendment caused blood to flow. Our children need not bleed too to keep alive that discredited document and certainly not to satisfy India’s strategic interests.

Items similar to stolen from museum found - CCD

July 30, 2012

The Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) says a suspect has been arrested with a large number of gold items, similar to the gold items stolen from the Colombo National Museum in March.

Presenting a report when the museum robbery case was taken up at the Colombo Magistrate’s Court today (30), the CCD revealed that no other suspect has been arrested in connection to the incident and that so far none of the stolen items have been recovered.

Chief magistrate Rashmi Singappuli instructed the CCD to inform the court after they ascertain that the arrested suspect connectedto the incident or if the gold items are infact the items stolen from the museum.

The case was subsequently postponed to August 13.

The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) are conducting separate investigations into the incident.

The CID had also informed court on a previous occasion that no arrests have been made in connection to the robbery.

LLRC Action Plan And Taking LLRC Report Seriously

By Jehan Perera -July 30, 2012

Jehan Perera

The detailed action plan prepared by the government with regard to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and released last week has been done in a highly professional manner, and would be the envy of many a dysfunctional previous commission of inquiry. On the face of it, the government appears to have taken the LLRC commission report seriously as the Commissioners would have wished and the international community has already called for. There are 91 recommendations that the action plan takes cognizance of. Each of these recommendations is looked at in terms of specific activities they entail. The action plan also identifies the government agencies that will be responsible for implementing each of these activities within a specified time frame, most of them ranging from 6 to 24 months.

By making its response to the LLRC known in the form of an action plan, the government can be said to have finally clarified its position on the issue. Previously different members of the government spoke with different voices regarding the government’s attitude towards the LLRC. The government now can also be credited with coming up with an action plan that spells out in summary fashion what it intends to do and how to measure that progress. This opens the possibility of monitoring the government’s progress. On the other hand, the contents of the action plan still remain beyond the reach of the masses of the people as the 388 page LLRC report is still not translated into the Sinhala and Tamil languages despite the passage of over 8 months since the report was released in the English language. Neither has the LLRC action plan itself been prepared in a manner that is easily comprehensible by the general public.

In the version that has been put out at this time, the action plan does not have a narrative that explains its background and purpose and would make it more accessible to the popular understanding. It therefore comes across as a technical document in the form of a table with terminology that will not be familiar to most people. Terms such as “key performance indicators”, which forms a central feature of the action plan, are not in common usage within the generality of the Sri Lankan population. These are terms that are used especially by members of the international donor community who wish to assess the impact of the projects that they fund and also by those who seek to obtain their goodwill. This suggests that the action plan needs further evolution if it is to become a people-friendly document and one that is accessible to the people in both the Sinhala and Tamil languages.

NEW MECHANISMS

The LLRC has won local and international acclaim for its efforts to look at the totality of Sri Lanka’s experience that led to terrorism and war. It came up with a total of 285 recommendations of which 135 may be called main recommendations as they have several sub-recommendations. It can be believed that the LLRC labored to bring forth a document that could serve as a blueprint for Sri Lanka’s renewal as a success story of post-war development, democracy and reconciliation. The question to answer is whether the action plan prepared by the government meets this same objective. More serious study is also required to ascertain whether the 91 recommendations taken up for commentary in the action plan leave out important substance contained in the 135 main recommendations to be found in the LLRC report.

A preliminary assessment of the action plan would indicate that the government intends to seamlessly harmonise the LLRC recommendations into the government’s ongoing programme and activities. By that same token there is no indication that the government seeks to make the LLRC report a point of departure with past and present political practices. There are many instances of the LLRC recommending the setting up of a new mechanism to deal with a specific set of problems. This might be due to its recognition that existing governmental mechanisms are inadequate to resolve those problems. But with the exception of appointing a Land Commission, the government has, by and large, not taken on the LLRC recommendation to set up new mechanisms.

An example where the LLRC recommendations have been circumvented by the action plan, is the matter of the appointment of a Special Commissioner of Investigations to look into alleged disappearances. Another example is the Independent Institution with a strong investigative arm to address the grievances of citizens. The government’s position in the action plan is that existing mechanisms will be used to take care of the problems. In the case of disappearances the government has proposed invoking the present procedures in the Code of Criminal Procedure. It was in recognition of the past failures that the LLRC presumably recommended the appointment of a Special Commissioner. The problem with the government’s approach is that this proper utilization of the Criminal Code has not happened in the past and this is unlikely to change in the future unless there is a radical departure from past practices.

AVOIDING IMPLEMENTATION

The government has also used another method of avoiding implementation of the LLRC recommendations with regard to new mechanisms. This is by casting responsibility for deciding on them to the still-to-be-established Parliamentary Select Committee to look into constitutional issues. This strategy has been used to deal with the reforms proposed by the LLRC that would affect the government’s highly centralized hold on power. There are two recommendations made by the LLRC that are of critical importance to improving the checks and balances in governance. These are to establish a constitutional provision for judicial review of legislation. Another is the recommendation to de-link the Police department from the Ministry of Defence. Both of these are given to the still non-existent Parliamentary Select Committee to decide on. When the PSC will be established and whether the main opposition parties will be part of it is still anybody’s guess.

Those who look upon the LLRC report as a landmark document meant to transform the political culture of the country are likely to be disappointed by what they will find within the action plan of the government. Not only is there a repeated insistence that existing institutions are good enough for the job, there is no willingness to accept the need for improved institutional design of institutions. In particular the action plan dismisses the LLRC’s recommendations that independent commissions for the Police and Public Service need to be established. The action plan states that these independent commissions have indeed been established. Hardly anyone, except for the most partisan supporters of the government would say that any of the institutions appointed under the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution are independently constituted ones, as they emanate solely from Presidential fiat.

What this preliminary assessment of the action plan reveals is that the government is less interested in meeting the challenges of political transformation within Sri Lanka than in meeting the challenge of the international community in Geneva. At the March 2012 session of the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, the majority of countries passed a resolution calling on Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its LLRC. Armed with the action plan, the government may feel more confident that it can overcome its detractors from the international community at the forthcoming sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in November. The government is no doubt concerned that a reversal like the one that took place in Geneva in March of this year does not repeat itself.

A quotidian response: Letter to President regarding religious extremism

Groundviews

On 4th July 2012, along with printed and bound copies of the over 1,400 comments in Tamil, Sinhala and English generated by Not In Our Name (coming to over 300 pages), a letter was penned and delivered to the Presidential Secretariat, with copies to relevant Government Departments and the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu Chapter, Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala Thero.

Precisely three weeks later, on 25th July 2012, we received this intimation from the Presidential Secretariat that the letter was received.

However, to date, there has not been any public statement of regret, an apology or unequivocal condemnation of the tragic violence in Dambulla by government, the President or the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu Chapter, Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala Thero.

Into this damning silence and unwillingness to condemn even that which is so blatantly captured on video and other media, one can read a chilling message – this government will not just condone religious violence, it will protect leading monks and others who in the name of Buddhism, ferment intolerance and racism.