{"id":50432,"date":"2015-12-23T15:49:04","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T22:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=50432"},"modified":"2015-12-23T15:49:04","modified_gmt":"2015-12-23T22:49:04","slug":"the-coming-constitution-a-system-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/12\/23\/the-coming-constitution-a-system-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"The coming constitution: A \u2018SYSTEM CRIME\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr Dayan Jayatilleka\u00a0Courtesy The Daily Mirror<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Three speeches last week revealed our future. Each concerned an aspect of this island\u2019s fate.Together they show the whole. The Prime Minister announced that the country will have a new political system next year. That change has to be understood within a geopolitical and geo-strategic context signalled in two speeches, by an Indian Minister and a senior US official.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari informed Lokh Sabha yesterday that India will construct a bridge and tunnel linking Rameswaram in India with Sri Lanka\u2026The project was also discussed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his counterpart during the latter\u2019s recent visit, Gadkari said\u201d. (The Hindu, Dec 17, 2015)<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0Senior US official Thomas Shannon revealed in his Kadirgamar Institute lecture, the factor animating Washington\u2019s Lanka policy: To put it simply, stability and prosperity of the entire world is dependent on the stability of these vital energy and trade routes. \u00a0And Sri Lanka is at the centre of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2016 Constitution must be located at this intersection of Indo-US perspectives. It envisages the most drastic disruption of the Sri Lankan State formation arguably since 1833. The rupture would change the very type of State, implanting a new political matrix. We are being constitutionally reshaped to be integrated as a \u2018chip\u2019 into the Indo-US grand strategic matrix.<\/p>\n

The PM\u2019s Sujatha Jayawardena Memorial Oration contains the blueprint:
\n1.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u2026work within the structure of the 13th Amendment to the 1977 Constitution a unitary structure with further devolution of powers\u2026The\u2026task is to identify the additional powers to be devolved to the Provincial Councils\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u2026subjects and functions once devolved to the Provincial Councils should not revert to the Central Government even when Parliament legislates on national policies in regard to devolved subjects\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0the future emphasis on devolution should be on the exercise of executive powers by the Provincial Ministers\u2026enlarged executive power can be devolved to the Provincial Councils\u2026[through] the apportionment of Executive Power between the Cabinet of Ministers and the Provincial Boards of Ministers\u201d.
\n4.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u2026the Austrian system of devolution\u2026would be a useful model\u201d.<\/p>\n

(http:\/\/www.dailymirror.lk\/99287\/ranil-let-s-promote-consensus#sthash.h6AeOlhx.dpuf)<\/p>\n

Having stated that The emerging consensus is to work within the structure of the 13th Amendment the PM admits later in his speech that\u201d the apportionment of Executive Power between the Cabinet of Ministers and the Provincial Boards of Ministers\u201d marks a radical departure from the 13th Amendment\u201d. How can one work within\u201d something (13A) and make a radical departure\u201d from it at the same time?<\/p>\n

There can be further devolution of powers\u201d, i.e. additional powers devolved to the provincial councils\u201d, but this cannot be done within a unitary structure\u201d because the Supreme Court narrowly ruled in 1987 that the 13th amendment barely remained within the unitary structure, and that too because of the Executive Presidency which exercised executive power through the Provincial Governor. Any further devolution of powers\u201d would destroy the unitary structure.
\nDevolution means certain powers are transferred outwards\/downwards by Parliament, which retains the right to retrieve such powers in exceptional situations, without which Parliament would not be sovereign.The PM\u2019s description of the change he hopes to implement as well as the model he explicitly evokes, aren\u2019t unitary. The PM\u2019s model of devolution, Austria, is an explicitly, unambiguously FEDERAL State.<\/p>\n

The 13th Amendment already has a concurrent list of powers shared between the centre and the provinces, in addition to powers which are the exclusive preserve of one or the other. The PM\u2019s plan would make most powers either concurrent (shared) or devolved to the provinces, while powers enjoyed exclusively by the national legislature, representing the people of the country as a whole, will be few. If the powers wielded by the national Parliament are restricted to Defence, Foreign Affairs and Finance, that is a federal model.<\/p>\n

What if the provincial legislature passes laws on subjects which the national Parliament too legislates on, but in the opposite direction from and in contradiction to the national Parliament? In the PM\u2019s vision, the powers of that Provincial assembly will not be repealed.<\/p>\n

However, badly the Northern or Eastern Province behaves (e.g. towards the Sinhala minority in Trincomalee and Ampara) its powers cannot be revoked by the national government under the new constitution. Our North is 19 miles from a huge landmass with 70-80 million co-ethnics, whose Chief Minister Jayalalitha handed an official note to Prime Minister Modi calling for support for Tamil Eelam. Soon it would be connected by a bridge, road and tunnel to Tamil Nadu, allegedly with our PM\u2019s concurrence.<\/p>\n

With the island constitutionally carved like a cake into self-governing segments, Sinhala national consciousness will atomize and disintegrate. Simultaneously the Constitution will facilitate and empower Tamil consciousness which is not merely provincial but sub-regional (Tamil Nadu) and global (South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore Diaspora). The new model would aggregate the North and East and pan-Tamilianism, while disaggregating the South and the Sinhalese.
\nEconomic independence for provinces,shrinkage of the role of central government and neo-liberal privatization will impoverish some and enrich others,under-developing the largely rural Sinhala majority provinces. While they will be unable to compete, Western and Indian patronage and Tamil Nadu and Diaspora capital will flood the North and East.<\/p>\n

The coming Constitution\u2019s underlying logic is not national reconciliation,since deliberately deepened provincialism\/regionalism will surely doom any Lankan consciousness.The real logic is (I) rewire and reprogram Sinhala consciousness so we can never win another war (II) \u2018divide and rule\u2019 the majority through hardcore provincialism (III) weaken the national state through multi-polarity. This will dismantle state barriers to Western and Indian politico-economic penetration, ownership and control.<\/p>\n

Just as the Portuguese invaders\u2019 fortress in Kotte was about to be overrun by Sitawaka Rajasinghe\u2019s men when the rivalry between the Kotte and Kandyan kingdoms put paid to the siege, the new self-ruling provinces will be manipulable and pitted against each other by external powers, preventing unified national action.<\/p>\n

Converting to the perennially pro-Western, pro-Indian doctrine of the Federal Party, the regime has crucified the island on the Indo-US axis. Tamil nationalism is logically pro-Western and pro-Indian because the Tamil Diaspora and Tamil Nadu are stakeholders in those societies — just as the West and India tilt to the Tamils for that reason.The national majority, including the national bourgeoisie,enjoys no such leverage. This regime strategically de-linked from China\u2019s counter-power which enabled us to win the war and rebuild as a modern country. It is the agenda of the Tamil bourgeoisie including the Diaspora capitalists, reflecting its interests, which pilots or guides the new regime. The regime serves the interests not of the organic national majority but of the minority elites with dense cross-border, transnational affiliations, networks and loyalties.<\/p>\n

Under-secretary Shannon\u2019s statement shows that the West wants us for where we are. It wants the regime to midwife a Tamil Kurdistan to serve as permanent proxy. The client regime aims to deliver that by changing who we are, destroying the memory of who we were and robbing us of what we won. Suckered by Western flattery, the client regime would produce a client Constitution to create a client State and citizenry.<\/p>\n

The Wickremesinghe-Kumaratunga Constitution would murder the unitary State. The \u2018national\u2019 would be reduced to the mere arithmetical aggregate of self-ruling provinces. The Constitution will bear closest resemblance to the ideas and programme of SJV Chelvanayakam, founder-leader of the Federal Party. When the Austrian-model constitution and the Special Courts for war crimes\u201d are unveiled in 2016, it is he, the father of federalism, Tamil national self-determination and Tamil Eelam, who will have proved the ultimate victor. It is his \u2018virtual\u2019 statue that would stand in front of the new constitutional, political and legal order erected upon the rubble of the monuments of our national leaders. It is this coming Constitution that is a system crime\u201d. – See more at: http:\/\/www.dailymirror.lk\/100563\/the-coming-constitution-a-system-crime#sthash.lWrHykOl.dpuf<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Dayan Jayatilleka\u00a0Courtesy The Daily Mirror Three speeches last week revealed our future. Each concerned an aspect of this island\u2019s fate.Together they show the whole. The Prime Minister announced that the country will have a new political system next year. That change has to be understood within a geopolitical and geo-strategic context signalled in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}