Editorial

President Ranil Wickremesinghe is venturing on yet another voyage seeking that elusive reconciliation with Northern political parties. These are not uncharted seas, and his well-meaning albeit unlikely objective is to see that unity prevails among the communities by the time the country celebrates its 75th anniversary of Independence only two months away, in February 2023.

The friction and the North-South divide within the country go back beyond 1948 to a time when the Donoughmore Commission in British colonial times felt Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) with its educated electorate was fit for universal adult franchise. Unfortunately, what ensued was inter-communal and intra-communal divisions. Candidates who ran for election exploited caste, religion and language.

While the winds of freedom were in the air, nationalism gave precedence to tribal factors while patriotism took a secondary role. Even sports and social clubs first founded on anti-British based lines later were on ethnic grounds.

On the eve of Independence, a rising politician in the North, the Cambridge-educated G.G. Ponnambalam mooted a ’50-50′ solution in a 10-hour speech to the State Council on the principle of ‘balance of power’, calling for territorial and communal representation. The Soulbury Commission that gave Independent Ceylon its first Constitution rejected this formula of ‘50 percent Sinhalese and 50 percent other minorities’ representation in Parliament.

The ‘Hindu Organ’, a publication in Jaffna was critical of this approach and in an issue of February 1939 said such a line was what would give rise to a politician like Bandaranaike coming to power in the South.

Like night follows day, the predictions came true. The first recorded Sinhalese-Tamil communal clash occurred in 1940, even before Independence over the boycott of Ceylonese and Indian Tamil goods organised by labour leader A.E. Goonesinghe.

The first Prime Minister of Ceylon, D.S. Senanayake, tried to bring about some unity among the communities. Mr. Ponnambalam gave his support to him on the basis of ‘responsive cooperation with the Sinhalese’, but the moderate elements on both sides were getting overwhelmed by divisive forces.

After the race riots of 1977, the Sansoni Commission that went into what happened had a stinging reference to the speeches of some of these Northern politicians who instigated and encouraged violence among the youth. As the country’s communities drifted along their separate ways fuelled by parochial politics, actors from across the seas saw an opportunity to benefit from this division for their geopolitical agenda that came to manifest itself in a big way by the mid-1970s.

Sporadic ethnic clashes developed into a full-blown separatist movement by then with the 1983 anti-Tamil pogromme being the watershed moment in contemporary history. Among the first victims of this movement were the Tamil democratically elected politicians and an armed conflict ensued.

The ‘war years’ from 1983 to 2009 are years the President is familiar with. In 2002, in office as Prime Minister, he introduced a Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) with the terrorist group, LTTE. He was pilloried by sections who accused him of a ‘sellout’, but others saw in the strategy the disintegration of the LTTE Eastern Command. But the ‘war’ ultimately had to be ended by ‘war’.

It’s now 13 years since that bloody conflict ended, but the LTTE rump abroad will not let the wounds heal. They want the attritional status quo between the communities to prevail. It is, therefore, a wise move to keep them out of the equation in the ‘new beginning’ of talks though they will do their best to undermine it from the comfort of their homes in the West.

In the post-1983 period, there has been no lack of effort to bring these parties together. From the All Party Conference to Thimphu, the CFA, the Mangala Moonesinghe Parliamentary Report and more recently the LLRC (Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee) they have all tried. The latest venture is a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission egged on from abroad.

Non-implementation of LLRC by successive Governments caused post-conflict peace-building issues, especially accountability and reconciliation, to migrate abroad. So, governance and human rights problems on which politicians here sadly failed to reach a common understanding, let alone a consensus, became diplomatic problems. The latest chapter of this sorry tale was the last United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Resolution adding to the economic crisis dimensions.

To overcome this problem, the country needs a credible and independent domestic accountability mechanism. Whatever one calls it, a TRC or other, it needs to be anchored in a domestic consensus, not an international consensus. Without such consensus in the legislature, a mere proposal for a TRC by the Executive branch of a weak Government will not have credibility at home nor traction abroad. The Executive branch of the Government has a good track record of not keeping to its promises abroad on accountability and reconciliation.

The callous waste of LLRC is a case in point. A TRC without a consensus and entailing a greater implementation burden than LLRC may not survive the blood sport called election politics in this country.

So, will the TRC be merely old wine in a new bottle? Will it be like the South African TRC which was robust at the start with powers to summon and prosecute but eventually provided amnesties all around? Is the Government seriously going down that road to hang former security forces commanders and politicians to dry and give them amnesties at the end of it?

The merits of Federalism have come into question, especially in countries that have that system. During the COVID-19 crisis, India and Australia, for instance, had contrasting issues where though the Central Government had control over the international borders, the leaders had no say over what the states and territories did with their own. Each local chief minister or premier either chased non-permanent residents out of their states or closed their borders showing off to the Centre. Trains, trucks, buses and planes were banned from inter-state travel.

One can only hope the President will succeed where his predecessors could not.