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Rocking the boat

As a Sri Lanka traumatised by LTTE militarism and terrorism and trapped in a trisanku-state of `no-peace-no-war' lurches towards civil war, with the four-year-old ceasefire agreement virtually in tatters, a JVP-led move to get the merger of the northern and eastern provinces undone by the apex court showcases another kind of political danger from the Sinhala chauvinist end. The fundamental rights petition seeking the de-merger of the two provinces was filed in the Supreme Court on July 14 by two Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna MPs from Trincomalee and a government servant from Sammanthurai in the eastern province. The petition, which was admitted by the court on July 21, is scheduled for hearing on September 15. There is nothing at this point to suggest the court will decide to allow the case of the agents provocateurs that their `fundamental rights' have been violated by the merger of the two provinces — a historical gain for the Tamils and for the prospects of enduring peace in the island, which came on September 7, 1988 as a consequence of the India-Sri Lanka Agreement of July 29, 1987. However, the serious political implications of de-merger will be recognised not just by Tamils but by all Sri Lankans of sobriety, moderation, and goodwill who yearn for a negotiated peaceful settlement of the ethnic conflict. From India's standpoint, it will mean that the one enduring gain from the Agreement, which has not been formally abrogated, will be undermined.

The merger of the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation is not a trademark `Eelam' or LTTE demand. It is a longstanding political aspiration of moderate Tamils seeking a federal solution within a united Sri Lanka. State-sponsored demographic change in the eastern province has strengthened the merits of this demand. It took significant political shape when the Federal Party succeeded in getting the proposition, or at least the possibility, of merger incorporated in the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact of 1957, which tragically could not be implemented. But it was the acceptance of the demand, in a qualified way of course, in the India-Sri Lanka Agreement that was the breakthrough development. While in the political parlance of Sri Lankan Tamils the combined north-east was their "homeland," the Agreement crafted a felicitous compromise by terming the northern and eastern provinces "areas of historical habitation of Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking peoples, who have at all times hitherto lived together in this territory with other ethnic groups." The joining of the two contiguous provinces to constitute "one administrative unit," with one elected Provincial Council, for "an interim period," subject to the holding of a referendum in the eastern province to enable its people to decide on their future, was a central feature of the Agreement. All this was supposed to be contingent on two key developments: the surrender of arms by the LTTE and the other militant groups, and creating conditions for people displaced on account of "ethnic violence or other reasons" to return and vote in the referendum. The exercise was to be held on or before December 31, 1988 but it was postponable at presidential discretion. Many things have gone calamitously wrong for Sri Lanka since then but the one eminently sensible rule the country's mainstream politics has followed is — the merger shall continue until conditions permit the holding of the referendum. The Rajapaksa administration and all responsible democratic parties committed to a negotiated political settlement of the ethnic question must work together to see that the clock is not set back by nearly two decades.

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