{"id":62112,"date":"2017-01-06T21:12:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T03:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=62112"},"modified":"2017-01-06T13:59:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T20:59:41","slug":"how-to-solve-the-ethnic-problems-without-a-new-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/01\/06\/how-to-solve-the-ethnic-problems-without-a-new-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Solve the Ethnic Problems without a New Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daya M from Australia<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

As a patriotic Sri Lankan living in Australia, I am writing this with the hope that the President of Sri Lanka and the Members of Parliament will get the chance to read it and think seriously about implementing my proposals given below. If the President implements my proposals, the ethnic and religious problems in our country can be solved while ensuring the unitary status of the country and in doing so, become the most respected statesman of Sri Lanka and not just another selfish and egoistic politician.<\/p>\n

If the President implements my proposals, he will be killing not just 2 birds with one stone, but 3 or more birds with one stone. I will describe them briefly below:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Solve the ethnic problem, especially the Tamil problem, where they claim that the Sinhalese are discriminating against them and treating them as second class citizens.<\/li>\n
  2. Do away with the need to hold Provincial Council elections, which the SLFP will surely lose to those who oppose the Government.<\/li>\n
  3. Prevent the former President and his men from coming to power again by taking away their main arguments and the reasons for their popularity.<\/li>\n
  4. Save an enormous amount of money spent on Provincial Councils and Councillors which can be spent to develop the country at district and village levels.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some Tamil politicians have been clamouring for a Tamil homeland amalgamating the Northern and Eastern Provinces and a federal constitution which would effectively divide the country. Their argument for this is that they are discriminated against, even though they have the same rights as the Sinhalese. Any Tamil can aspire to reach any position in government service or in the private sector as present and historical records show. There have been Tamil Commanders of the three Forces, IGPs, Attorney Generals, Chief Justices, Heads of Departments and Governors of the Central Bank etc. When asked about discrimination, the only thing my Tamil associates could come up with was the standardisation of marks for the University entrance. It applied, not only for students from Jaffna, but for all other students from major cities where the facilities were better than in rural schools and small town schools. Anyway, they overcame the problem by sitting for the exams the second time from rural schools.<\/p>\n

    Since the end of the war and even before, the Tamils have been living among the Sinhalese in harmony without any problems since Premadasa\u2019s time as the President.<\/p>\n

    My proposals are given below:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • The Tamil ethnic problem, as well as the Muslim problem, can be solved easily by enshrining a Bill of Rights<\/u> in the constitution which guarantees equal rights to every citizen of Sri Lanka irrespective of race, religion, caste, gender or sexual orientation. <\/strong><\/li>\n
    • Bring in anti-discrimination legislation criminalising discrimination based on religion, race, caste or gender. Australian anti-discrimination legislation can be an example to be copied. Then the Tamil politicians will have no legs to stand on, but ordinary Tamils, especially the low caste Tamils, will like it.<\/li>\n
    • Appoint an independent and powerful commission to oversee this legislation with offices in provinces with Assistant Commissioners with judicial powers to solve any problems of discrimination.<\/li>\n
    • Get rid of the 13th<\/sup> amendment and abolish the Provincial Council system, which then becomes superfluous. The demands of Tamils for devolution of power to provinces and the colossal waste of<\/strong> money and corruption due to provincial councils can be eliminated.<\/strong><\/li>\n
    • Amend the constitution to change the preferential voting system so that the highest vote getter in each electorate is elected, which will eliminate in-fighting and minimise corruption. If you are keen to have proportional representation, restrict the number of such MPs to about 20%. This is the most important thing to eliminate corruption. This will ensure the election of educated and honest men and women.<\/li>\n
    • It is also important to ensure in the constitution that all laws are applicable equally to every citizen such as land ownership, marriage and divorce laws etc irrespective of race or religion.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      If these proposals are implemented, there is no need for a new constitution which would need a referendum. You will only need a 2\/3rd<\/sup> majority in the parliament to amend the existing constitution.<\/strong> I am sure that the President will be able to convince most MPs, except some Tamil Vellala MPs, to vote for these proposals and at the same time take the wind out of the sails of former President Mahinda Rajapakse and his followers.<\/p>\n

      I have no doubt that our President would love to be remembered as the Statesman who saved the country from foreign influences and unified the country without dividing it on ethnic lines. People, especially the Sinhalese, will hail him as the saviour of our country if he repeals the 13th<\/sup> amendment, which Mahinda Rajapakse could not or did not do. As everyone knows, this is the only country the Sinhalese have and we all want the President, as the Head of the State, to save the unitary status of the country and preserve it for future generations. If the President can do it, I am sure the people will hail him as the new King of Sri Lanka, just as he himself hailed the former President after he won the terrorist war. If he allows a new constitution to devolve power to the provinces or let things to go on as it is now, people will call him the lap dog of Ranil Wickremasinghe and the Western countries or a traitor of Sri Lanka. I hope and pray that our President has the backbone to implement my proposals.<\/p>\n

      Around the 20th<\/sup> of January next year would be the best time to implement my proposals when Donald Trump becomes the President of the USA. \u00a0Ranil can be sent to attend the inauguration ceremony so that he is not there to oppose the new amendments to the constitution.<\/p>\n

      If the President does not implement my proposals and bring in a new constitution granting all the powers to the provinces, he will be considered as the greatest traitor we ever had, worse than Ehelepola Nilame, Chelvanayagam, JR Jayawardena and Prabakaran. I hope and pray that President Sirisena will come to his senses and see to it that it will never happen.<\/p>\n

      May the Gods bless our President and MPs and guide them to do the right thing and not bring in a new constitution to divide the country!<\/p>\n

      Note:<\/strong> A letter containing an extract of this article was sent to the President a few weeks ago, but I am not sure whether he got a chance to read it. Can someone please print this and hand over to him and all the MPs, if you think it is worth doing. I am not at all being critical of our former President who ended the 30 year terrorist war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      By Daya M from Australia As a patriotic Sri Lankan living in Australia, I am writing this with the hope that the President of Sri Lanka and the Members of Parliament will get the chance to read it and think seriously about implementing my proposals given below. If the President implements my proposals, the ethnic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62112","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=62112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}