Opinion - Editorials   

Constructive proposals

All except extremists and opportunists in the Tamil and Sinhala camps will welcome the interim steps recommended by the All Party Representatives Committee (APRC) to move forward the process of earnestly implementing the devolution and official language provisions of the Sri Lankan Constitution. This measured political intervention helps put things in perspective in the post-ceasefire period — by reminding everyone that there can be no military solution to the island nation’s ethnic conflict. India has special reason to welcome the APRC’s proposals: they vindicate the political thinking behind the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of July 1987. The specific devolution steps recommended, which flow from the 13th amendment to the 1978 Constitution, are to hold Provincial Council elections immediately in the Eastern Province; and to establish a credible Interim Council for the Northern Province until elections are held, which cannot be any time soon. The need to finance the devolution exercise robustly is underscored. The APRC had the advantage of not having to deal with the knotty issue of merger of the North and the East since the Supreme Court, in October 2006, ordered de-merger, largely on technical grounds. The other part of the APRC’s package is the enactment of laws to fully implement Chapter IV of the 1978 Constitution, which recognises Tamil as an official and national language and provides for its use — by right — in the legislative, administrative, and judicial arenas and as a medium of instruction.

The mandate given to the APRC, headed by Thissa Vitharana, a non-chauvinist and progressive politician, is to craft a set of proposals that would be “the basis for a solution to the national question.” The promise is that the interim steps proposed in the report submitted to President Mahinda Rajapaksa are a “prelude” to a far-going consensus document that will be available in “the very near future.” Since the report states that the final political package will require a constitutional amendment, that some of its provisions will also need to be approved in a referendum, and that all this will take time “once a favourable climate is established,” the indication is that what is envisaged is a federal or quasi-federal solution. It is another matter that the United National Party and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna — both walked out of the APRC for their own reasons — are not parties to its interim recommendations. Everyone knows that the LTTE under Velupillai Prabakaran is constitutionally incapable of accepting this kind of solution to the Tamil question. The challenge before non-extremist Tamil political parties is to show the courage and wisdom to go for genuine devolution of power rather than attach themselves to the strategy and tactics of the terrorist Tigers.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Constructive proposals
Labour’s continuing woes
Do political murders achieve their objectives?
India, China, and wind energy
Ominous lesson for Iraq from Tet offensive
Justice for Bilkis
On sex education
Fighting corruption
“War against terror is not in Afghanistan, but Pakistan”

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu