Editorial

The Government’s decision to postpone the implementation of its botched education reforms is a belated but welcome move, and even more salutary as it shows the President and his ministers are receptive to genuine public criticism and agitation and (probably) not, as many fear, sliding towards authoritarianism.

These reforms got into a tangled web of controversy for multiple reasons, not least due to a contentious reference to an adult website in the textbooks for Grade 6 students. The furore took precedence over any policy direction the reforms were taking.

The Prime Minister had to carry the can for the faux pas as Education Minister. The mistake was admitted, but her defence was arguably worse than the apparent offence, as she explained to the high priests in Kandy that though the textbook provided the link to the adult website, students were not directed to it. The enigmatic expression of the venerable monks to that excuse said it all.

That the mistakes were ‘discovered’ only when the textbooks went online and private citizens noticed them is an indictment on the officials. Then the seniors made a further mockery by calling in the CID to investigate what had happened.

Those in the print industry know only too well how mistakes occur when rushed to meet deadlines. But it is easy to track who was responsible. It is easier to find out internally than asking the CID to investigate. Even to date, how these mistakes—if they were indeed mistakes—happened is not being revealed. If they were sabotage by the so-called Deep State acting against the Government, as some quarters say, then exposure of the conspirators seems even more important, at least to the Government.

The common perception, however, is that it was another attempt at testing the waters on slipping in the ruling party’s policy on gender identity and gender non-conformity into the national agenda. Such concepts that have found new life in Western countries have been recognised from time immemorial in Eastern ethno-religious cultures but never promoted or made into an issue as state policy. It all began with the Tourism Promotion Authority branding Lanka as a haven for transgender tourism. The President quickly backtracked, saying it is not Government policy. Then, this same theme appears in education reforms. Was it coincidence or part of a pattern? The JVP-NPP appears to want to project itself as a progressive, cosmopolitan party but is doing it in a ham-handed way.

The education reforms fiasco shows that setting artificial deadlines can have major pushbacks. Likewise, the Government has just tabled a motion for a Parliamentary committee to study electoral reforms prior to Provincial Council elections. It need not be pressured into these elections for the sake of elections and appoint committees as delaying tactics to elections it wants to avoid.

The wiser option is to have a parliamentary committee go into the viability of provincial councils themselves, commonly referred to as ‘white elephants’ draining the public purse and of no real value to the citizen—only benefitting the politicians.

Tamil Nadu ‘kin-pins’ shedding election-time tears

The communal drums are being tuned up in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu as its assembly elections negotiate the bend, probably by March. It is time to tuck up the sarongs and get ready for a mighty battle for seats and power, and playing the ‘Sri Lanka card’ has been a predictable plot for almost all contestants.

This go-to factor in the state has been a regular feature since the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka and the material, political and financial support the state’s politicians gave the separatist movement in this country. Since the days of the two main parties, viz., the DMK of the Karunanidhi family and the AIADMK of M.G. Ramachandran and his co-star Jayalalitha, they have each vied to espouse the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils, stirring the communal pot in Sri Lanka. Others in the political periphery, like Vaiko in the olden days and Joseph Vijay presently, have also not wanted to be left out of the race.

It was, therefore, not unexpected that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin would write this week to the Indian Prime Minister, flagging what he called “grave risks” facing the Sri Lankan Tamils from proposed constitutional reforms by the Colombo Government. Mr Stalin seems privy to reforms even the Government is unaware of. He has urged the Indian PM to ensure Sri Lanka “genuinely addresses” Tamil grievances—and even calls for a federal structure just like in the subcontinent.

In his letter, Mr Stalin has gone back to the 1985 Thimpu Principles, which the then LTTE representatives agreed upon but later discarded and continued fighting for a separate state. He refers also to the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord, which India itself could not keep to by disarming the LTTE. He says the Tamils in Sri Lanka are a “distinct nation”, which must send shivers down those in Delhi, given the state’s separatist tendencies displayed not only in 1962 but also in modern-day India opposing the North’s cultural imposition that has led to sharp disagreements over the dominance of the Hindi language and anti-Brahmin and anti-Hindu agitation.

Come elections in Tamil Nadu, and it is not only the regional parties that look south of South India for votes. They all hitch their electoral wagons to the Sri Lanka Tamils’ star. At the parliamentary elections last year, no less a personality than its foreign minister pulled out archival records to blame the opposition Congress Party for what they called “ceding” the sovereignty of the Katchchativu islet to Sri Lanka.

Chief Minister Stalin has omitted referring to Katchchativu in his latest missive to Delhi seeking its intervention on constitutional matters in Sri Lanka—a bit Donald Trump-like to mess in other countries’ internal affairs. That will surely be left for another day closer to the polls.

For now, however, he is only “profoundly” concerned about the welfare of their “kin” in Sri Lanka. It might be a good idea if he can stop his “kin” in Tamil Nadu from stealing the fish from their “kin” in Sri Lanka in the territorial waters of Sri Lanka around the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar and depriving their “kin” in Sri Lanka of their livelihood.

Rather than shedding crocodile tears to boost his shaky political fortunes in the state’s upcoming elections, stopping the illegal fishing in Sri Lankan waters would be a bona fide and better option to pursue for the wellbeing of their “kin” in Sri Lanka.