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Sunday, Sep 25, 2005

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EPDP for reviving North-East provincial administration

Special Correspondent

A functioning administration could restore some form of governance to the region: Devananda

Douglas Devananda

CHENNAI: With the peace process between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam stalled for more than two years, a Sri Lankan Tamil party is seeking the revival of the provincial government in the country's conflict-torn North-East as an alternative interim solution.

The Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), which is staunchly opposed to the LTTE, says an elected North-East Provincial Council with a functioning administration could restore some form of governance to the region, including carrying out post-tsunami rehabilitation work.

``As the provincial council is a system on which there is a consensus among the Sinhalese, this is the most practical approach,'' said EPDP leader Douglas Devananda, on a recent visit to the city.

Sri Lanka's provincial council system came in with the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, giving a measure of self-government to the country's eight provinces within a unitary state. The system was specifically designed to meet Tamil demands of devolution in the North-East but was extended to the rest of the country. As things turned out, it is now operational everywhere else in Sri Lanka except the North-East province, where it was suspended in 1990. The LTTE, which opposed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord as inadequate and ensured that the NEPC would never take off, proposed in 2003 an Interim Self-Governing Authority for the North-East with powers the Sri Lankan Government said it could not grant. Though the Government expressed a readiness to discuss the proposals, the two sides could not come together for talks.

For the November presidential elections, the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party candidate, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, has entered into a campaign alliance with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. Mr. Rajapakse's agreement with the anti-federalism JVP includes a commitment not to disturb the country's unitary status.

``But no party, not even the JVP or the Hela Urumaya [a party representing extreme Sinhalese-Buddhist majoritarian views] is opposed to the provincial council system, and this is the reason we hope that the next President will set up the North-East provincial administration,'' said Mr. Devananda.

The EPDP has decided to back Mr. Rajapkse for President in the belief that he will adopt this approach to resolving the conflict, said Mr. Devananda.

United National Party candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe had made clear when he was the Prime Minister that his approach to the conflict excluded other stakeholders in a permanent peace in North-Eastern Sri Lanka aside from the LTTE.

Three-step approach

A minister in the present Cabinet, Mr. Devananda shrugged off the certain opposition of the LTTE to the revival of the nearly two-decade-old provincial government system in the North-East, saying it would function only in the Government-controlled areas of the North-East, and not in the parts under LTTE control. But Mr. Devananda also said setting up the North-East provincial government was only the first of a three-step approach to finding a permanent solution to the conflict.

The second step would be to strengthen devolution in the existing Constitution, and the third, to bring in a new Constitution to change the unitary character.

He expressed the confidence that this could be done through negotiations with all parties, and that even the JVP — whose anti-federalism he characterised as temporary political posturing — would eventually agree to a federal Constitution.

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