Swallowing reports, the govt. way

May 16, 2013, 8:45 pm 

Sri Lanka is famous for fire-swallowers. They thrust flaming torches into their mouths and, hey presto, fire disappears. But, those traditional dancers playing with fire for a living cannot hold a candle to our politicians who have got swallowing things down to a fine art. A beleaguered president once accused one of his detractors on a campaign to impeach him, of having ‘swallowed ships’ while the latter was the minister in charge of shipping. He also claimed that another political enemy of his had ‘chugalugged the entire Mahaweli Ganga in a few gulps’ during the latter’s tenure as the minister of irrigation. Politicians’ ability to swallow public funds is also amazing. Those currently at the levers of power, from top to bottom, have the proclivity for gobbling reports—voluminous ones at that!

Nobody knows what has become of the reports prepared by several presidential commissions. The Opposition claims they have all been swallowed! Ministers have also mastered that art. The government told us the other day that it had received a report from a laboratory in Singapore which tested the samples of some allegedly contaminated milk powder and action would be taken against the importers concerned. But, now it tells us that milk powder samples will have to be sent overseas for testing again. Tests may be repeated to ensure the accuracy of their results, but what does the report from Singapore say? Mum’s the word on the part of the government as regards that document. Someone seems to have swallowed it in one piece!

If there is an iota of suspicion that any consignment of milk powder, imported or otherwise, contains toxic substances its distribution and sale must be suspended immediately pending laboratory testing. But, nothing of the sort has been done where the milk stock at issue is concerned. All signs are that testing will go on till the cows come home and dollars and pounds will jingle in someone’s pocket.

While steps are taken to ensure the quality of milk people consume, it is high time something was done about misinformation campaigns claiming that the cow’s milk is better than mother’s. A team of British scholars has found that reading classics boost one’s brain power and a local minister tells us that balaya fish helps humans with innovative thinking. Besides, it is being drilled into the heads of the gullible public that bovine lac lactis enhances children’s thought process and problem solving as well as mathematical skills. If so, then calves must be more intelligent than children because they drink more cow’s milk than the latter!

Ordinary Sri Lankan’s survival is a miracle, given the amount of toxins found in their food. Time was when farmers used to swallow poison to commit suicide in the North Central province, unable to make ends meet. No longer do they have to spend money on purchasing chemicals to end their lives. They only have to keep drinking water from tanks and wells in that part of the country! Moreover, textile dyes are used as food colouring and plaster of Paris goes into hoppers baked in some wayside eateries to keep them crispy. Dirty sweepings neatly packed and attractively labelled pass for tea. Various chemicals are used to ripen fruits. Fish is ‘embalmed’ with formalin. Urea is mixed with rotgut to boost the kick. Kerosene is sprayed on gram and Malathion mixed with green gram as preservatives. Vegetables are doused with agro chemicals containing heavy metals. Commercial poultry are injected with growth enhancing hormones and fed with antibiotics and prednisolone. It is an open secret that most parents do not allow their little daughters to consume chicken lest they should reach puberty prematurely at a tender age when they are not emotionally ready for it. But, nobody cares!

While the hapless public is gulping down food replete with toxins, government politicians and their bureaucratic lackeys keep swallowing laboratory reports on contaminated food items. The public has a right to information about milk powder or any other food item they consume and they must not be kept in the dark. The contents of the report the Consumer Affairs Authority has received from Singapore on allegedly contaminated milk powder must be made public forthwith. Let no lame excuses be trotted out!

In Sri Lanka, a new divide brings back old fears

MEERA SRINIVASAN-May 17, 2013

A series of incidents has created anxiety among the country’s minority Muslims that they are being targeted by a resurgent Buddhist nationalism

AGAINST HATE: Disquiet has increased as a Buddhist group fanning anti-Muslim sentiments is allowed to get away lightly.

More than a month after Fashion Bug, a popular clothes store in the Sri Lankan capital, was vandalised, business is back to normal. Shoppers cram into the Muslim-owned store as the Buddhist holiday season for Vesak (in India, Buddha Purnima) begins this month-end.

Six weeks ago, a mob had broken into the chain store’s main warehouse in a suburb of Colombo. Television footage showed the mob cheering as a Buddhist monk flung a stone at a window of the warehouse. The attack left many injured and the warehouse’s inventory ravaged.

The March 28 incident shook Colombo. It came soon after a new Sinhala Buddhist organisation, Bodhu Bala Sena (Buddhist power force), began a campaign against halal certification. The campaign forced virtually all markets and stores in the country to stop selling food items labelled for Islamic food guidelines.

Among Sri Lanka’s Muslims — who make up less than 10 per cent of the island’s population — the attack on the store and the anti-halal campaign have sparked fresh anxiety and insecurity, a year after monks attacked a mosque in Dambulla, in Sri Lanka’s Central Province, protesting that it violated a sacred area for Buddhists.

The incidents — unprecedented in recent years for their targeting of the Muslim community and coming four years after the end of the war against the Tigers — have raised a provocative question: are Muslims the new Tamils of Sri Lanka?

Speaking to The Hindu a few weeks ago, Azath Salley, former deputy Mayor of the Colombo Municipal Corporation and leader of the Muslim Tamil National Alliance (MTNA), said that the police stood by as onlookers during the attack on Fashion Bug. Mr. Salley was recently arrested by the CID on charges of “anti-government activities” under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and later released. “If the police had wished, the attack could have easily been prevented. Instead,” he told The Hindu days before his detention, “they remained silent spectators”.

The incident fuelled suspicions, which Mr. Salley voiced, that powerful forces are backing those fanning anti-Muslim sentiments. After the attack, 17 suspects, including three Buddhist monks held on charges of attacking the store, were released without charges being pressed against them after the store-owner said he was, in the interests of maintaining peace, dropping the complaint as it could erode national harmony.

A couple of weeks later, a group of youngsters banded together as ‘Buddhists Questioning Bodhu Bala Sena’ held a candlelight vigil outside the offices of the BBS in Colombo, only to be chased away by the police minutes after they gathered there. Four participants were taken to the police station and some were reportedly interrogated later on why they participated in the vigil.

Drivers of Ceylon’s growth

Through the decades of Tamil militancy, terrorism, and the call for a separate Tamil state, the Muslims stayed out of the conflict and its leaders focused on sewing up political alliances with the ruling party.

Despite being native Tamil speakers, Muslims have — at least since their en masse expulsion from Jaffna peninsula in 1990 by the LTTE — sought recognition as a separate ethnic group. Mainly in trade, they have driven a good part of Sri Lanka’s economic growth over the years.

As with Fashion Bug dropping its complaint, the halal controversy earlier this year also ended with All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama, the Islamic body that provided the certification, agreeing to withdraw the labelling system in the interests of peace and harmony.

The BBS says it is well within the organisation’s rights to appeal to “true Buddhists” to “boycott” halal-certified meat. “We were misunderstood as having called for a ban. We only appealed to members of our community to boycott such meat and that is within our religious rights,” said Dilantha Withanage, Executive committee member and spokesperson of the BBS.

Another campaign in the works

Confirming fears that Muslim worries have not ended, Mr. Withange said the BBS was now planning to take up another campaign, this time against the niqab, a head-and-face veil used by some Muslim women that leaves only a slit for the eyes.

He said: “We have nothing against any other religion. It is purely in the interest of security. If France can ban [the niqab], why can’t we?”

In March, Gotabaya Rajapakse, the powerful defence secretary and the brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, inaugurated the Buddhist Leadership Academy run by the BBS.

Mr. Withanage, however, dismissed suggestions that the BBS had supporters in government as untrue. He described BBS as “completely apolitical”, a “philosophical organisation” interested in preserving Buddhism in its purest form to handover to subsequent generations.

But the disquiet in the Muslim community about the campaigns of the BBS, and how it is seeping into everyday life, is palpable.

Intimidation in public spaces

Sona Barnes, who works as sub-editor in a newspaper, said she senses intimidation in public spaces. “I was at the market recently. One of the security persons was asking the other if they should ask me to remove my headscarf. They spoke in Sinhalese. The moment I turned and looked at them, they knew I had heard them and they immediately stopped.”

A senior professional employed in the private sector said the hatred or the discrimination is not explicit but one could sense the fear prevalent among Muslims. “I have not felt threatened in any public spaces so far, but the series of incidents have made me very anxious,” he said.

Religious leaders at the mosques have been appealing to the Muslims to remain patient and not react adversely. “At our prayers every Friday, we are told to be calm and not be provoked by anything the Sinhala fundamentalists say or do,” he said.

In solidarity with the Muslim community and to give voice to their anxiety over what seems like a nascent communal divide in Sri Lanka, over 500 persons gathered at Green Path in central Colombo recently to participate in a rally for unity titled ‘Hate has no place in Sri Lanka’.

There were students, young professionals and a few parliamentarians — from the United National Party, the main opposition party, and the Tamil National Alliance, the umbrella organisation for Tamil parties — holding banners with messages of peace.

“We are hearing about such attacks more often these days. They [fundamentalist groups] should not be allowed to get away with such hatred for others,” said a university lecturer present at the rally who did not wish to be named.

The Sri Lankan government has condemned the attacks. But it has seemed reluctant to acknowledge the insecurity that has gripped the Muslim community.

Earlier this month, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa met Colombo-based envoys of Muslim countries and assured them that there was no threat to communal peace in the country.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, who recently spoke on social integration at a public forum, observed that all communities — the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims — lived in harmony, sharing their joys and sorrows.

Sri Lanka’s Muslim community, however, seems far from feeling assured.

(meera.srinivasan@thehindu.co.in)

A Partial Reversal On Electricity Tariffs, CHOGAM, The NPC & Azath Sally

By Harim Peiris -May 17, 2013 

Harim Peiris

President Mahinda Rajapakse used his speech to the ruling UPFA’s May Day rally to announce a partial revocation of the massive electricity price hike that was announced a couple of weeks earlier. The details of the presidential largess and indeed the revised tariff structure itself will only be clear once consumers receive their April electricity bills in May.

It was however a reasonably satisfying political week or two for the government.

CHOGAM confirmed while USAID announces budget cuts to Sri Lanka

They secured an important victory, when India decided that having CHOGM in Colombo was something they would through their weight behind and the Canadian efforts to revisit the issue of the CHOGAM venue was unsuccessful at the recently concluded CMAG meeting in London. One up for the rather embattled Foreign Minister, the good Professor GL Peiris, often the butt end of harsh criticism for the increasing international opprobrium that Sri Lanka faces for a worsening human rights track record and the absence of a credible post war reconciliation process, baring a high visibility, slow paced and non consultative and non inclusive public works program in the former conflict areas of the North.

The quid pro quo of course, was that President Rajapakse and the regime solemnly promised and undertook to conduct the Northern Provincial Council elections in September this year. This undertaking was not only given again to India and the Commonwealth Secretariat but also to the Japanese in return for the State visit invitation to Japan, just when the UNHRC was progressing, the NPC being the major concession that Mr.Akashi believes he wrested from the regime.

On reflection though, President Rajapakse has been extremely astute in promoting his own vision of barely conceding anything to the ethnic minorities and promoting anything that seems even remotely like a political solution to minority alienation from the Sri Lankan State. By holding out on the Northern Provincial Council elections, a measure which many Tamil politicians had rejected as inadequate, he now gets away with holding the NPC election, a basic constitutional requirement and a promise in the Chinthanya (Way Forward 2010) as a major concession.

However on a negative note though, Buckingham Palace was quick to announce that her Majesty the Queen, would not for the first time in over two decades attend the CHOGM, but would be represented by the Prince of Wales, the only down grading of Royal participation that was possible. The signal was unmistakable. Further the US State Department also recently announced a 20% reduction in USAID funding to Sri Lanka for the next fiscal year, while also a USAID project with the Justice Ministry came a cropper when the US Embassy refused to have Mohan Peiris, whose appointment by the Executive through military muscle in violation of Supreme Court and Appeal Court judgments. While the dollar amounts of such grants are small, the signals these send to investors and the business community are much greater than the dollar value of the grants.

Rajapakse regime not immune to domestic pressure   

The government’s partial reversal of the electricity tariff hike, at least to the low end / lowest income consumers was a clear indication that for all its belligerent rhetoric, the regime does remain responsive to public pressure and the public mood, but this only from its core constituency of the majority Sinhala public. Media reports indicated that the national intelligence agencies, who keep a finger on the pulse of popular opinion in the country, had advised the regime of growing unhappiness and the resonance of the public to opposition criticism of it governance, especially based on the electricity tariff hike. Having very unhappy ethnic or religious minorities, whether Muslims or Tamils, does not seem to bother the regime, which in a hardnosed attitude of real politick rightly realizes that it does not draw much support from those quarters. The medium term economic picture is not all rosy for the government. Economic growth forecasts are down, while fiscal slippage creates a widening deficit situation.

The Azath Sally drama

Meanwhile the regime using its politicized law enforcement agencies invoked the prevention of terrorism powers to take into custody Muslim leader and former deputy mayor of Colombo Azath Salley, who had recently become a fierce critic of the Regime in general and the President in particular. Mr.Salley had been public that he intended to bring a private plaint and file action against an extremist Buddhist organization for its rhetoric which he believed was in gross disrespect and blasphemous of the Holy Koran, disrespect to any religion being a violation of Sri Lanka’s penal code.

It is a peculiar feature of the PTA, that opposing and criticizing the government is a crime, an almost essential feature of an even a badly functioning democracy. The PTA bequeathed to the country by the JR Jayewardeneregime. Mr.Salley was detained under a detention order, while a public statement or interview of his was being investigated. He was subsequently released when it was easily established that the said statements had been denied and corrected by him. One wonders why if a violation of law was suspected, why the CID could not convince any Colombo District magistrate of this fact, to remand him in civil custody and also why investigating a public statement requires custodial detention at all.  Mr.Salley is hardly a flight risk from justice. Further the charge was inciting communal disharmony. One might advise the CID to watch Youtube, the last time anyone checked the images, it was not of Muslim’s attacking anyone in Sri Lanka, but rather they, their mosques, their businesses and their women in religious attire who were being attacked. Generally by groups who at best certainly do not seem to have any state constraints on their violence or hate peddling, happily published by elements in the mainstream media, happy to fan the flames of communal hate, thinly disguised as religious fervor. One can be ardently pro your own belief and faith, while providing the space for others to have their own, the absolute essence of a pluralistic and tolerant society. When that very pluralism and tolerance is in itself attacked publicly and not refuted, the very foundation of our society, diverse from pre-colonial times is not only challenged but under serious threat.

Harim Peiris‘s writings may be accessed online http://harimpeiris.com

Boats should not stop a CHOGM boycott

BRUCE HAIGH-16 MAY 2013

Canada says it will boycott this year’s CHOGM in Sri Lanka due to the government’s human rights failures, but Bob Carr has adopted a serendipitous attitude to Sri Lanka. The reason, writes Bruce Haigh, is boats.

In the face of a great deal of evidence to the contrary, Bob Carr has declared Sri Lanka an ideal democracy.

He has declared their institutions sound, and scoffed at the idea of corruption within the ranks of the Rajapaksa government.

He has declared the police, army and navy to be clear of charges of detaining and torturing members of the Tamil minority. He believes that the Sinhalese majority are free of triumphalism and ethnic abuse of Tamils, amounting to state sponsored genocide, following a bloody civil war that occurred because of the very attitudes and practices being deployed against Tamils today.

And why has Carr adopted such a serendipitous attitude to Sri Lanka? It’s called boats, where the curtailment of asylum seekers arriving off Australian shores overrides human rights and all other considerations of compassion and common sense. In order that the bipartisan policy of turning back, preventing or in some other way stopping the boats from sullying our shores, Carr must declare that everything is hunky dory in Sri Lanka and that anyone getting in a boat, risking their lives and spending money they don’t have must be economic refugees; and a range of acolytes seeking government preferment puppet his response.

It is not as if advice is lacking as to the real state of affairs in Sri Lanka and to the treatment of Tamils. Yasmin Sooka, a member of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s panel of experts into allegations of war crimes committed at the end of the civil war in 2009, told the ABC’s Fran Kelly on April 29, that targeted attacks against Tamils were still being committed by Sinhalese authorities.

She noted that whilst both sides had committed war crimes at the end of the war, the UN expert panel had concluded that government forces were responsible for the bulk of murders through the indiscriminate killing of civilians, which left an estimated 40,000 men, women and children dead.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, told ABC Radio National, on May 4 the same thing, emphasising the ongoing nature of persecution of Tamils. He also noted Carr’s poor commitment to human rights. Human Rights Watch delivered a similar report in February and Amnesty International in a report, Sri Lanka’s assault on Dissent, has said that Tamils continue to be persecuted by government forces and notes that Rajapaksa is consolidating his hold on power by repression of critics often resorting to unauthorised detention and violence.

As a result of the Sri Lankan government’s failure to investigate war crimes and because of its participation in ongoing repression of Tamils, the Canadian government has said it will boycott this year’s CHOGM to be held in Sri Lanka. Should this meeting go ahead Sri Lanka will head the Commonwealth for the next two years. This is despite the fact that the Rajapaska regime undermines, on a daily basis, the values and principles of the Commonwealth.

Carr has rubbished the stand taken by Canada. The Queen has advised that she will not be attending; no doubt seeking to avoid the controversy that will inevitably surround the meeting should it go ahead. By accepting the mantle as head of the Commonwealth, Sri Lanka could well bring about its demise. Sri Lanka has a human rights record as bad as South Africa under Apartheid. It would have been unthinkable for South Africa to have hosted a CHOGM, so why is Sri Lanka being shoe horned into the job? In fact, so gravely were South Africa’s human rights abuses viewed that the Commonwealth instituted sanctions, followed not long after by the UN.

In February of this year Britain’s High Court ordered the Border Agency to stop the removal of Tamils refused asylum until an assessment was completed about the risk they faced if returned to Sri Lanka.

Which of course begs the question, if the High Court had concerns about levels of risk, why were Tamils asylum seekers being returned?

As part of the same serendipitous equation, ASIO has made decisions on a number of Tamils granted refugee status by Australian reviewers that they pose a security threat and should not be released from detention.

ASIO does not have an independent capacity to gather information on the ground about persons of interest. They must rely on a friendly or cooperative government to provide them with police clearances and checks. We could not do that with Apartheid South Africa, although ASIO did maintain unofficial contact with the ruthless South African Bureau of State Security, and contact with countries behind The Iron Curtin, during the Cold War, for purposes of obtaining security clearances, did not happen.

For ASIO to continue its campaign against persons linked to the LTTE it must go along with the fiction that Sri Lanka is a neat and tidy democracy and is not conducting a post war vendetta against the Tamils and the military wing in that dispute, the LTTE.

In all conscience Australia must also boycott CHOGM.

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator, former diplomat and member of the RRT. View his full profile here.

Four Years Ago The Sinhalam Robbed Our Dignity, Denied Our Right To Life

By Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran -May 17, 2013 

PM - TGTE - Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran

Vanakkam,

Distinguished guests, fellow members of the Transnational Government, brothers and sisters, holding the sacred memory of our martyrs in my heart, I greet you on behalf of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam. 

Four years ago on this day we witnessed the climax of a genocide of our people in our own land. Four years ago the Sri Lankan government denied our right to life; four years ago the Sinhalam robbed our dignity. Four years ago the Sinhala politico military establishment imposed untold suffering on our people in violation of humanitarian law and civilized norms in an attempt to destroy our political aspirations. The pain and humiliation of those days are still raw in the heart of the Tamil nation. Mullivaikal has etched a permanent place in the collective memory of the Tamil nation just as the word holocaust in the collective memory of the Jewish people. This week’s memorial events are being undertaken centered around the Tamil National Mourning Day.

We are all here with such heavy hearts. We are here not just to pool our collective wisdom and knowledge, but to share among us that knowledge and the refine thoughts of the recent years to strategize for a noble cause. Even though our cause was always a just one, we were overwhelmed in the battlefield due to duplicitous diplomacy. We are here to find ways and means as to how truthful diplomacy can be employed to secure justice that has been denied for us and our departed brothers and sisters. We are here, taking into account the evolving international jurisprudence and the politics surrounding of that jurisprudence to find ways and means to secure justice for our people.

Even though our brethren exhibited immeasurable valor and sacrifices to the utmost kind, we were overwhelmed in the battlefield. Might, however, is not right. We are here keeping in mind the maxim often stated by our National Leader that the world does not revolve on the axis of “tharmam”, but on the axis of interests. We are here to find ways and means how we can coalesce, how we can converge that Tamil political interest and the status quo powers’ geo-political interests. Even though the Tamil nation is now deprived of our hard power – our military power – we are here in the knowledge that power does not necessarily always mean hard power. The question is how we can exercise our soft power of augmented by Mullivaikal ? How we can exploit our soft power in a smart way? We are here to find ways and means as to how we can change the existing ‘Sino-, Indo-, Sri Lanka- Triangular Paradigm’ in which the Tamil nation is an object to a new ‘quadrilateral paradigm’ having four vantage points, namely China, India, Sri Lanka and global Tamils. When we convert our status from object to being a remarkable subject, we will be in a position to influence the course of events.

Distinguished guests who are gathered here are not just intellectuals, professionals and academics, but also activists in their own rights. We will work with unity of purpose amongst ourselves and with others who share our ideals to move our cause forward. With our knowledge and commitment we have in this august assembly can contribute to the birth of a free Tamil nation With dedication and unwavering determination, as an honor to the cries of Mullivaikal, I inaugurate this Conference.
Thirst of the Tamils is Tamil Eelam

*TGTE Prime Minister’s inauguration speech May 15th conference – Tamil Week

India's investments in Sri Lanka topped $1 billion since 2003

With investment inflows of USD 160 million in 2012, nearly USD 2 billion worth of FDI had been committed by Indian companies for the next five years or so.

By PTI | 17 May, 2013

COLOMBO: Indian companies have invested nearly USD 1 billion in Sri Lanka since 2003 and this figure could rise above USD 2 billion in the next five years, Indian envoy to Colombo Ashok K Kantha has said.


With investment inflows of USD 160 million in 2012, nearly USD 2 billion worth of FDI had been committed by Indian companies for the next five years or so, he added. 

Addressing a trade gathering here yesterday, Kantha highlighted that in 2011-12, India's imports from Sri Lanka went up by almost 45 per cent to cross USD 720 million, making Sri Lanka the largest source of merchandise from the South Asian region for India. 

This was a big jump from the USD 45 million imports in 2000-01, when Sri Lanka occupied 4th rank as an import source for India in the region. 

Also Sri Lanka's exports to India had multiplied by over 16 times in this period, while India's exports to Sri Lanka had gone up by less than 7 times. 

"There was thus no doubt that the FTA had brought significant benefits to both sides, but more to Sri Lanka. A number of top Indian companies had displayed high interest in Sri Lanka, investing in the country across sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing, services, and construction," the envoy said. 

Air connectivity had gone up manifold and there were about 120 flights a week between Colombo and eight destinations in India; almost one-fifth of tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka was from India.

Sri Lanka: The Destruction Of The Bureaucracy

By R.M.B Senanayake -May 17, 2013 

R.M.B. Senanayake

It was the Chinese who first realized the importance of a corps of learned men with technical knowledge to run the machinery of the State. They selected a cadre of learned persons on merit to man the State machinery. Such a corps of officials was called a bureaucracy by Max Weber. Plato has stated the case for a learned and wise ruler who he thought should be a philosopher. But Athens which was the first democracy where the people ran the affairs of the State- government by the people elected representatives to run the machinery of the State.  Even in a small City State like Athens it was not possible for the Assembly of the people to run the State. A set of officials was found necessary and the Athenians elected persons to run the state. They realized the danger of a permanent set of officials exercising power and introduced a system of rotation of officials who held office for a limited period only. But such a body of officials who rotated meant that they could not use their experience for the benefit of the State for with each rotation new persons were appointed as the officials who had to learn on the job but could not pass down their experience to the next set of officials. But if the set of elected persons appointed as officials were to serve permanently then they could not held accountable to the people. The Athenians realized that their people could be easily misled about the wisdom of decisions through mob orators who could mobilize people. So they exiled demagogues by sending them away to the islands and debarred them from returning. Our country is a paradise for mob orators today.

Freedom requires a buffer against the elected politician

The Romans too were conscious of the need for an efficient system of governance but they realized the threat of giving power to a Consul for a long time for to they would become dictators. Then in Britain the barons rose against the arbitrary rule of the king and in 1215 the barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta by which the King undertook to rule according to the law and to respect the freedom of the people. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 established the primacy of Parliament over the King.

But the King continued to appoint the officials who ran the State machinery. But the Parliament invoked a power to impeach officials who were acting against the interests of the people because of their loyalty to the King who appointed them. This uneasy situation continued into the 18^th century. There was no democracy in the sense of government by the elected representatives of the people. But the British enjoyed the Rule of Law and personal freedoms. Democracy came after the freedom of the people and the Rule of Law were well established. The women were not given the franchise until the 19^th century. This distinction between the Rule of Law and freedom on the one hand and the government by the elected representatives of the people on the other, evolved over two centuries. The ancient Athenians had seen the problem of having elected officials who governed the City State but who would disregard the freedom of the people. Their solution was the rotation of the personnel running the government.

The democratic governance model

A solution to this problem developed with the establishment of a permanent set of officials on merit who were expected to implement the laws of the country and provide a buffer to the politicians exercising power.  Britain was the first to establish a bureaucracy which governed according to law. To ensure accountability of these officials to the people they were made subject to the executive- firstly the King and later with the development of the constitutional monarchy the Prime Minister and the Ministers. The Ministers were to be confined to policy making while the implementation of policy was to be vested with the bureaucracy.  In Britain these relationships were left to conventions. Even up to the First World War this relationship had not come into force in USA where officials were appointed not on merit but on what came to be designated as the spoils system.   But two Presidents were assassinated by disappointed place seekers who had been overlooked. President Wilson realized the need for a competent body of officials to run the modern state which was complex unlike the State a few centuries earlier. There was the dire need for competent officials. A decision is technical if it has to be taken on the basis of modern scientific knowledge. Most decisions in government are of this mature. So President Wilson realized that the spoils system would not produce a competent bureaucracy in an age of modern technology.

Distinction between Policy and Administration

So he and theorists of Public Administration divided government into politics and administration. The elected politicians were to confine themselves to policy making while the detailed execution of policy was to be left to the bureaucracy. It was however realized that some in society would resort to political influence to obtain appointments in the public service and some of those already appointed would use political influence to further their careers. But this would militate against the development of a technically competent body of officials with the necessary expertise.  If such a competent bureaucracy was to be established then the principle of a meritocracy had to be established. The appointments, promotions and transfers in the public service had to be ring fenced from the interference by politicians. The mechanism was to be the independent Commission to carry out the function of appointments, promotions and transfers in the public service.

But what then should be the role of the elected representatives? The convention developed that they should confine themselves to policy making leaving the running of the departments to the Secretary or Permanent Secretary who was to be an experienced career official well versed in administration and management. He was also expected to be equipped with the knowledge of the work of the departments although it was difficult to get a combination of an expert in the subject who was also a competent manager. So the British colonial government had a senior administrative service called the Ceylon Civil Service.

These relationships between the top officials and the President and Ministers of the Executive branch were largely the result of experience. They are contained in Conventions rather than in laws or regulations. But Canada and New Zealand have enacted some written rules on the subject.

Here are the written rules from the Cabinet of New Zealand

Roles and responsibilities

3.5 Ministers decide both the direction and the priorities for their departments. They should not be involved in their departments’ day-to-day operations. In general terms, Ministers are responsible for determining and promoting policy, defending policy decisions, and answering in the House on both policy and operational matters. Officials are responsible for:

1. supporting Ministers in carrying out their ministerial functions;
2. serving the aims and objectives of Ministers by developing and implementing policy and strategy; and
3. implementing the decisions of the government of the day.

Ministers’ relationships with chief executives

3.6 The formal relationship between Ministers and the public service is governed primarily by the State Sector Act 1988 and the Public Finance Act 1989. The relationship is also governed by convention, key aspects of which are set out in this chapter”

The decline and fall of the Public Service.

After 1956 our country was saddled with a set of elected representatives who were backwoodsmen. They were not sufficiently educated but wanted to exercise power – executive power quite outside their role as legislators. They wanted to exercise power at the district level. They could hardly contribute to the legislative process given their lack of education and sophistication. So they began dictating to the officials and when such officials did not oblige them they moved the Prime Minister to have them transferred. Soon there was chaos in the district administration. The SLFP under Sirimavo thought of regularizing this exercise of power without responsibility and instituted the office of District Political Authority. The Sirimavo government instead of realizing the need for decentralization of authority sought to sanction the MPs exercise of power. The Leftists realized the trend and wanted to hasten the process so that the administration would collapse of its own weight and they could take over power without a bloody revolution. So in the 1972 Constitution they threw out the institution of an independent Public Service Commission. The PSC was made subject to the Cabinet of Ministers- a collective body good for decision making but bad for executive actions. When President J.R. Jayawardene took office he continued with this subordination of the PSC to the elected Ministers and the President. He tried to ring fence the Police from the elected MPs but without an independent PSC which was then the appointing authority for the Police as well, he failed to do so.

Public spirited persons and the Organization of Professional Associations sought to restore the independence of the Public Service Commission, the Judicial Service Commission, the Elections Commission and the Police Commission. They succeeded because of the division of the political parties in the Parliament. They succeeded but their success was short lived. The present regime has done away with the Independent Commissions and today we have a politically affiliated public service lacking in competence  and a  Judicial Service servile to the authorities. This situation is not conducive to the maintenance of freedom, the Rule of Law or good governance. Further in the modern age this system based not on a meritocracy but on political affiliation and loyalty cannot produce efficient and competent government either. So the system will sooner or later produce a failed state along with the loss of freedom and the Rule of Law.

India asks Lanka not to take any step regarding provincial powers

FRIDAY, 17 MAY 2013 

Concerned over reports of Sri Lankan government considering removal of land and police powers from the provinces prior to the elections in the Northern Province, India today asked it not to take any step against their own commitments relating to the 13th Amendment.

External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid telephoned his Sri Lankan counterpart G L Peiris and also raised the issue of 26 Indian fishermen who are in detention in his country while seeking their early release.

According to official sources, the conversation also focused on the elections that are to be held in the Northern Province with Khurshid expressing his concerns regarding media reports referring to some consideration being given to removal of land and police powers from the provinces prior to the polls.

"In this context, he urged the Sri Lankan Government not to take any step in the light of its own commitments relating to the 13th Amendment and their expressed intention to build upon it," the sources said.

According to reports, a key nationalist ally of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is planning legislative action for the abolition of the country's provincial councils while opposing local elections in the Tamil-dominated north.

Udaya Gammanpila, the deputy secretary of JHU (Heritage Party), said his party's policy making central committee last night decided to move parliament within the next two weeks to abolish the thirteenth amendment (13A) to the Sri Lankan constitution.

"We shall move parliament within the next two weeks to abolish the thirteenth amendment," Gammanpila said.

The 13A and the provincial councils entered Sri Lanka's statutes in 1987 as part of the India-Sri Lanka Peace Accord which envisaged devolution of powers to the island's provinces in an effort to end the civil war there involving LTTE and government forces.

Khurshid also referred to some reports about the Lankan army acquiring private land in the Northern Province for high security zones.

"He emphasised that this would not be in accordance with the LLRC recommendations and such a move would not be helpful," official sources said.

Khurshid raised the issue of 26 Indian fishermen who remain in detention in Sri Lanka under the alleged offences of transgression and sought their early release.

The minister also requested for the release of 5 Indian fishermen who are in detention in Sri Lanka since November 2012 under alleged drug trafficking offences, the sources said. He also emphasised on the need for reviewing their cases and releasing them at an early date, they added.

On his part, Peiris suggested that it would be useful to have a meeting of the two fishermen' associations to try and resolve issues among the primary stakeholders in the matter.

However, Tamil Nadu government has not responded positively to repeated requests from the Centre to hold such meetings. (PTI)

Provincial Devolution Or Ethnic Unilateralism?

By Dayan Jayatilleka -May 17, 2013

Dr Dayan Jayatilleka

My thanks to Prof GH (‘Gerry’) Peiris, a scholar for whom I have considerable respect, for his critical engagement (‘Should Sri Lanka persist with Province-based Devolution’, The Island Midweek Review, May 15^th 2013) with my extended remarks on devolution and the provincial councils made at a seminar of the Liberal party (‘Northern Provincial Council: The Devolution Debate’). This is perhaps the most serious political topic and issue for public –policy debate and decision-making in the current stage of Sri Lanka’s history; a debate that will sharpen over the next few months.

Prof Peiris summarily dismisses two of the points I have critiqued, as non-existent and therefore pretty much misleading and irrelevant. Let me address that opening argument before I deal with the substance of his critique.

If Prof Peiris were to read the papers more often he would find, even recently in the pages of this one, arguments against the 13^th amendment and often against provincial devolution as such, and counterproposals for alternative structures and systems to replace it, based entirely on the grounds of economic development, administrative efficacy and empowerment of people irrespective of ethnicity. The case for reversion to district level devolution or the identification of the ‘pradesheeya sabha’ as the optimal unit of devolution rests on this ostensibly non-ethnic perspective. It is such a perspective that I identified and rejected as failing to grasp the nettle.

As for the second point, namely that the 13^th amendment and provincial devolution were superfluous since they had arisen as a response to the LTTE insurgency which had now been decisively put down, such views were encountered by me with some degree of consternation, in statements made sporadically by officialdom at the highest levels in the post war years; statements which were also a source of embarrassment when raised by senior officials, diplomats and scholars in the locations in which I spent the past several years. The fact that this dismissal of the need to persist in provincial level devolution has since been replaced, often in the discourse of the same officials, by a warning about the persistence of the LTTE, has to be taken up with them, not me.

This brings us to Prof Peiris’ main contention. Sadly, to make it, he has followed up an accurate quotation of what I said with a convenient avoidance of my main points.

Contrary to those who claim that provincial devolution was exclusively the product of coercive Indian intervention and reject it on that basis, the points I made and continue to make are the following:

(1) The case for, or issue of, provincial level devolution long antedated such intervention or even the eruption of the Indian factor

(2) That case derives from the need for political coexistence and cohabitation between the Sinhalese and Tamils on this island, given domestic geopolitics and those of the external environment

(3) Had existing proposals for and promises of provincial devolution been implemented, there would not have been a coercive Indian intervention in 1987 and

(4) The Indian factor should not be an argument against provincial devolution because it continues to have salience, is enhanced due to the US-Indian strategic condominium and will in fact loom larger still, in the run-up to and the aftermath of next year’s Indian election due to the militant mood in Tamil Nadu.

(5) While there is a danger of implementing the 13^th amendment (my critique of Mr Sampathan’s speech at the ITAK convention last year and my debate with Mr Sumanthiran on internal self determination demonstrate that I am hardly unaware of this danger), the far greater danger on balance, i.e. the danger of external coercion/intervention which can roll-back our military victory and yield a Tamil Eelam or greater Tamil Nadu, is posed by the unilateral rollback/non-implementation/gutting of provincial devolution.

Prof Peiris addresses none of these. Instead he traces the role of India in the post July ’83 years, in pushing Provincial devolution. Prof Peiris’ recounting not only does nothing to contradict my arguments; it evades some of them and underscores others.

His perspective would be accurate if the issue of provincial devolution had been limited to the post-July 1983 years of Sri Lankan history, or to put it more unkindly, the ethno-nationalities issue (the Tamil issue) had been restricted to the post-July ’83 years.

Far from this being the case, as I have pointed out, it was young SWRD Bandaranaike who lucidly argued in 1926 (perhaps influenced by the debate on Ireland when he was a student in Britain), that he knows of no country which is as non-homogenous as was Ceylon, to have achieved success under a centralised form of rule.

At least one famous progressive observer and perceptive well wisher of Ceylon had also made the point, with an eye to the problems of coexistence between Sinhalese and Tamils in an independent Ceylon. In his memorandum ‘on the demands for reform of the Ceylon Constitution, presented to the Labour party, in November 1938, Leonard Woolf wrote that “Consideration should also be given to the possibility of ensuring a large measure of devolution or even of introducing a federal system on the Swiss model”.

SWRD’s and Leonard Woolf’s were no eccentric assertions within or about Ceylonese politics. Prof Michael Roberts’ excellent anthologies as well as subsequent research by Prof Kumari Jayawardana have brought into focus the strong case for regional autonomy or federalism made by the country’s communist movement ( the Ceylon Communist Party and its trade union confederation the CTUF), at its conclaves from 1944-1947 and in its representations to the Soulbury Commission.

Most crucially, we have the case of the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayagam Pact of 1957, which with its provision for the amalgamation of the regional councils (a unit closer the district and smaller than the province), made for large unit devolution; actually provincial devolution. Thus it is clear that the project of provincial level devolution far antedated and was therefore hardly derivative of Indian intervention. Prof Peiris has evaded that argument.

My additional point was – and it is hardly original—that if the B-C Pact had been implemented, the Indian intervention 30 years later is exceedingly unlikely to have occurred.

This is also my point with regard to the Political Parties Conference of mid-1986, which Prof Peiris helpfully embeds in the matrix of India’s robust Sri Lanka diplomacy of the post-July ’83 years, most specifically from the Parthasarathy facilitation/mediation and annexure C of 1984. Prof Peiris’ attribution of causation is slightly tendentious however. It is difficult to dismiss that conference as a mere fig-leaf or rubber stamp of the agreement arrived at in Delhi in December 1985 on the province as unit of devolution when those who called for and participated in it, namely the moderate or pluralist democratic Left as led by Vijaya Kumaratunga, belonged to a progressive political tradition in which such devolution had long – if not always consistently—been advocated.

Though Vijaya was of a different generation, his explicit advocacy of provincial devolution in the form of the Bandaranaike – Chelvanayakam Pact, including in the pages of this paper, antedated the December ’85 agreements between HW Jayewardene and the Indian officials. Since the proceedings of the PPC were transparent, recorded and published at the time – with televised interviews of the participants conducted on Rupavahini by Prof Tilak Ratnakara– the evidence of deliberation hardly supports a version of a rubber stamping by puppets, of documents produced by or in India.

Prof Peiris conveniently evades my more central argument, namely, that had the agreements announced at the PPC of mid-1986 or at the APC of 1984, which were primarily domestic processes, been implemented, there would have been no opening for Indian intervention in mid 1987. Put more sharply, had Operation Liberation of 1987 been preceded by the 13th amendment, it would have been far less likely that Indian intervention would have taken place to abort it, and that amendment would not have had to be shoved down our throat as an outcome of a humiliating intervention. The presence of the 13^th amendment and the promise to implement it was a crucial factor in securing Indian support for, at least in neutralising Indian objections to—our final thrust against the Tigers in 2009. The abolition or terminal weakening of provincial devolution, which would be an ethnically unilateral process, risks the return of India, this time in strategic alliance with a USA  that is increasingly critical and a global civil society increasingly hostile  to Sri Lanka, to its dangerously adversarial/interventionist stance of the latter half of the 1980s. If there is external intervention this time around, it may prove ineradicable. To my mind it is hardly a risk worth taking.

For a Realist, the only circumstances in which the unilateral abolition of provincial level devolution would be conceivable would be if the Sinhalese had been alone on this island or this island had been alone on the planet. Neither is the case.