by Dimuthu Attanayake in SCMP, Feb 24, 2023
Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s plan to “fully” implement a long outstanding constitutional amendment, transferring more power to provincial authorities, has left critics sceptical amid widespread instability.
While some politicians and analysts said the move could benefit the country, they have questioned Wickremesinghe’s motive in raising the issue as Sri Lanka’s political and economic turmoil continues, with millions living in dire straits amid soaring living costs.
Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda, a Sri Lanka-based political scientist, said the implementation had to be done carefully “as it might provoke [an] extremist backlash”.
Wickremesinghe has not taken any measures to prevent such backlashes, he said, “so I am not sure about the sincerity of this move”. He added that the president’s true motive may be to create “confusion” and “division”.
The 13th amendment prescribes creating provincial councils and devolving powers to them on land, police, health, education, agrarian and financial matters.
MA Sumanthiran, an MP representing the nation’s Northern Province, said that by making implementation “a talking point, [the president] created an unnecessary furore”. This “dissension” might now be used to halt full implementation yet again, he said.
The amendment was actually passed in 1987, part of the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord aimed at easing clashes between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority, including militant separatist groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who demanded a separate homeland in the north.
Many Tamils feel power-sharing problems are extremely deep-rooted and require far more in terms of power devolution and greater autonomy, well beyond what is currently offered by the 13th amendment.
Its framework does not allow for a “meaningful” sharing of power, Sumanthiran said, and does not solve the question of recognising a Tamil homeland.
Provinces must instead be given total control over devolved power, without the central government interfering or taking back powers, he said.
Other MPs feel differently, though. Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera, representing the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, feared full implementation of the amendment would give too much power to provinces and may lead to federalism (power shared between central and local governments).
Most Sinhalese see federalism as a precursor to dividing the country up, but most Tamils see it as a way to achieve autonomy.
Sri Lanka was geographically “too small” for a federal system, said Weerasekera, adding that land and police powers were, so far, withheld provincially because there was concern granting them could lead to separation. “We cannot allow that because the division of the country to nine independent provinces can create other issues,” he said.
For instance, with rivers flowing across different regions, problems might arise if one state stopped the water supply, he noted.
But Sumanthiran argued that under the current framework devolved powers could still be taken back if necessary. “[An actual] federal system would ensure meaningful power sharing. It is nothing to be feared,” he said.
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives think tank, said that even if land powers were devolved, handing over police powers is far more “unlikely”.
“The majority Sinhalese community has always been rather wary of giving police powers to the north and east in particular,” he said.
President Wickremesinghe may very well be just attempting to “win back” minority votes, he added.
As well as Sri Lankans being deeply divided along ethnic lines on the amendment’s “full” implementation, many Sinhalese still see India’s 1987 intervention – at a crucial juncture when Sri Lankan forces were gaining against separatist factions – as a threat to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty.
Because of Muslim-majority settlements in the east of the country, Muslims opposed the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, and they now remain separate.
While provincial councils have been established with powers over education and health, successive Sri Lankan governments stalled the full implementation of the 13th amendment, especially the devolution of land and police powers, in fear of starting on the road to separatism.
For instance, in 1990, the then chief minister of the North-Eastern provincial council attempted to draft a new constitution for an “Eelam Democratic Republic”, which the government considered to be a declaration of independence.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3211331/will-sri-lankas-bid-devolve-power-provinces-provoke-extremist-backlash?module=lead_hero_story&pgtype=homepage
