{"id":71178,"date":"2017-10-30T04:08:37","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T11:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=71178"},"modified":"2017-10-30T04:08:37","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T11:08:37","slug":"sri-lankas-new-constitution-a-neo-colonial-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/30\/sri-lankas-new-constitution-a-neo-colonial-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka’s New Constitution- a neo-colonial Project."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tamara Kunanayakam<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
\n

A radical overhaul is underway \u2013 of our political, economic, financial, social and cultural system. A new Constitution is being discussed, at the same time a plethora of radical reforms are being rushed through. The fact that many of these reforms are being challenged as unconstitutional indicates that the new Constitution is aimed at making what is un-Constitutional today, Constitutional tomorrow, making legal what is illegal by a simple trick of changing the Law!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The issue is not whether a new Constitution is needed or not. It is the fundamental and inalienable right of the people to determine the economic, social, political and cultural system in which they choose to live. But that choice will be their choice only if it is freely made, not with a gun pointed at their heads. Today, Sri Lanka finds itself practically under a form of tutelage to the US, a global power whose strategic objective is to maintain its global hegemony.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is indeed symbolic that the US Ambassador chose to announce Washington\u2019s decision to assist\u201d Sri Lanka draft its Constitution and implement the Human Rights Council resolution from the amphibious warship USS New Orleans, which is used to land and support ground forces on enemy territory and patrols provocatively close to China. It is also ironic that it is from Temple Trees that the Acting US Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells declared, last week, that the United States is \u2013 and will continue to be \u2013 an Indo-Pacific power.<\/em>\u201d She was the first to announce America\u2019s first ever naval exercise\u201d in Sri Lanka in October, in Trincomalee.<\/span><\/p>\n

You will agree that rewriting the Constitution under such conditions can only advance Washington\u2019s cause, not ours!<\/span><\/p>\n

There are also other guns pointed at us: the 2015 Human Rights Council resolution and the notorious IMF\/World Bank conditionalities, including in particular the political conditionality misleadingly known as \u2018Good Governance,\u201d a neoliberal project inimical to the national interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, \u2018Good Governance\u201d \u2013 or Yahapalana\u201d as we know it here \u2013 was not invented by Ranil, Chandrika, Sirisena or Mangala! The IMF, World Bank and the US Treasury coined the term in the late 1980s as a political conditionality for the enslavement of indebted Third World countries such as ours to make us permanently indebted and dependent, facilitating external interference and domination!<\/span><\/p>\n

Good Governance\u201d takes politics out of government and manages a shift from government to governance. By doing so, it has undermined nation-building wherever it has been implemented, and fuelled identity conflicts especially in multi-ethnic societies. You will find the same buzzwords in the Human Rights Council resolution and in the \u2018good governance\u2019 conditionality: rule of law,\u201d democracy,\u201d devolution,\u201d participation,\u201d etc. These are the same buzz words parroted by the Yahapalana regime. In January 2016 last year, the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe told Parliament that the purpose of the new Constitution was, among other things, to establish a political culture that respects the rule of law and strengthens democracy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The aim of \u2018Good Governance\u2019 is to convert whatever remains of the State into effective and strong state agencies that guarantee the interests of foreign capital in particular. This not only means that the State will no longer serve the public interest; it will actually be turned into a repressive State against the very people it must serve. Even the World Bank admits that good governance is anti-democratic, that it demands measures directed against the expectations of the majority of the people. In a 2002 report, the World Bank was explicit: Good governance requires the power to carry out policies and to develop institutions that may be unpopular among some \u2212 or even a majority \u2212 of the population.<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Behind both these threats \u2013 the Human Rights Council resolution and the IMF\/World Bank conditionality \u2013 is the same face: Washington\u2019s!<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear. The demands contained in the Human Rights Council resolution are not Burundi\u2019s or Cuba\u2019s or Russia\u2019s or China\u2019s. They are Washington\u2019s. It was Yahapalana\u2019s abject servility that made it possible for Washington to turn it into a weapon against the Sri Lankan people and their nation. As for the international financial institutions, they are dominated by Washington, which controls nearly 50% of the IMF vote share compared to Sri Lanka\u2019s 0.19%!<\/span><\/p>\n

The reforms demanded of us are so fundamental that they cannot be implemented without changing the Republican Constitution. A hybrid court is one. Another is the so-called devolution of power, which is a project to dismantle the State. Yet another is the conversion of our armed forces into an auxiliary of the US armed forces against our national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. That will require wide-ranging security sector reforms; demilitarisation of the North and East (which means two-thirds of our coastline); external control over recruitment and vetting of employees and officials; ending military involvement in civilian activities; etc. etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

Underpinning the resolution is the demand for accountability, accountability is the pillar on which the so-called Responsibility to Protect\u201d (or RtoP) stands, and the goal of RtoP is to legitimise US intervention and domination!<\/span><\/p>\n

In the late 19th century, the US and Great Britain justified their savage wars of peace\u201d as the White Man\u2019s Burden<\/em>\u201d to bring civilization and progress<\/em>\u201d to barbaric non-Western, non-Christian, non-white peoples. Today, the justification is Responsibility to Protect,\u201d which is claimed by the US and its junior partners in the West as the right to intervene in other countries under the pretext of protecting citizens of those countries. The moral rhetoric is human rights and humanitarianism. The victims are the same \u2013 non-Western, non-Christian, non-white.<\/span><\/p>\n

RtoP is a project of re-colonisation, associated with tutelage. In a report on Responsibility to Protect, the UN Secretary General called for revising the UN Trusteeship System, i.e., the system of tutelage for non-self-governing\u201d colonial territories (2013). The original proposal came from former US Ambassador Edward Marks who was Deputy Chief of Mission in Sri Lanka, in 1987. Marks talked about an international regime of tutelage for multi-ethnic societies, which he said were failed States.\u201d His argument is that the transition from colonial rule to political and economic independence in the nation-state model is proving to be too much for some very fragile multi-ethnic societies.<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The implications of the resolution are far reaching in terms of the ability of foreign powers to intervene in the sovereign affairs of a country, despite domestic opposition. An\u00a0<\/span>OHCHR Report on Rule of law tools for post-conflict States (2006)<\/span><\/a>, is unambiguous. According to it, in case of domestic opposition to international involvement, an international mandate provides international actors with the authority and means to intervene directly in domestic affairs and overrule domestic procedures if necessary.<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

US<\/span> interference in Sri Lanka began long before the resolution was adopted. It was, however, the Yahapalana regime that gave it wings and also international legitimacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Sri Lanka to fix the road map even before a legitimate Government was in place. The two visits to Sri Lanka of Jeffrey Feltman, the UN Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs, are also significant. On his first visit shortly after the 2015 Presidential elections, Feltman declared he was here to assist in the process of accountability and reconciliation.<\/em>\u201d On his second visit last month he revealed that accountability and reconciliation had meant changing the Constitution. He came to monitor progress.<\/span><\/p>\n

Feltman is a former US Assistant Secretary of State, a neoconservative hawk linked to Robert Kagan \u2013 their theoretician, Victoria Nuland and Samantha Powers. Feltman has been involved \u2013 at the highest level \u2013 in regime change, destabilization, the break-up of sovereign States into ethnic enclaves, fomenting violence. I would require more time to give an account of his role in covert operations in the Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Moldova, Georgia, Venezuela, Colombia, El\u00a0Salvador, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other significant visits include that of Samantha Power, also known as the Liberal War Hawk,\u201d and George Soros, US multi-billionaire who believes we don\u2019t have enough constitutional democracy.<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the Council resolution was adopted, things moved into high gear. Three months later, the Prime Minister announced the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly, two months later, along with USAID, he said assistance would be obtained from Washington, the European Union, and the UK through the Foreign Office funded Westminister Foundation for Democracy, which was set up in 1992 to organize political parties in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the socialist bloc. In July 2016, the US Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal visited Sri Lanka and admitted there was a direct link between the Council resolution and a new Constitution. She said the Constitution was part of the work foreshadowed<\/em>\u201d in the Council resolution and that as \u2018co-sponsor,\u2019 the US felt it was a shared responsibility to help this process through.<\/em>\u201d That was just before the US Ambassador\u2019s announcement from USS New Orleans that Washington would assist with the drafting.<\/span><\/p>\n

What began as an agenda to abolish the Executive Presidency was transformed overnight into a full-blown reform of the Constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the new Constitution, as with the resolution, the Yahapalana regime is trying to convert us Sri Lankans into Washington\u2019s little soldiers who will defend a hegemonic vision based on invisible threats.\u201d With the arrival of the Yahapalana regime, there has been a strengthening of military ties between the two countries, as confirmed before the US Congress by Acting US Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells. The recent launch of the US-trained Sri Lanka\u2019s first Navy Marine Force trained for rescue and evacuation of US troops in case of attacks at sea, and the Indian Ocean Conference at Temple Trees, are part of a process that will permanently affect Sri Lanka\u2019s independence and sovereignty.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is significant that the Minister holding the Foreign Affairs portfolio at the recent Indian Ocean Conference in Temple Trees (August-September) had been involved in drafting a military agreement with high-level US military officials in secret meetings in 2002. He was then Minister of Defence. The Prime Minister on both occasions was the same and was believed to have met with the then US President George Bush in Washington to discuss the Agreement that was to be signed in December.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming back to the invisible threats\u201d to Washington that Sri Lanka will be called upon to fight, what are they? Where is the evidence? These are legitimate questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The response to these questions by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shows that Sri Lanka will be dragged into wars and conflicts over which it has no knowledge or control. Rumsfeld was referring to Iraq and so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction, which turned to be a fiction of Washington\u2019s fertile, but sick, imagination, but for which a modern day savage war for peace\u201d was fought, people massacred and a country destroyed. Here\u2019s what he said: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence\u2026.There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don\u2019t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don\u2019t know we don\u2019t know. \u2026 Each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In this regard, I will leave you with a question for further reflection. It was posed by the famous American writer and filmmaker, Errol Morris :<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine someone tells you that there is an elephant in the room. You search the room, opening drawers, checking closets, looking under the bed. No elephant. Absence of evidence or evidence of absence?<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Friends, fellow Patriots, if the Constitution is to be ours, written by a free people, we must first resist this diabolical project!<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This text was a speech given at the launch of the Eliya\u201d movement in\u00a0Boralesgamuwa on September 6<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tamara Kunanayakam A radical overhaul is underway \u2013 of our political, economic, financial, social and cultural system. A new Constitution is being discussed, at the same time a plethora of radical reforms are being rushed through. The fact that many of these reforms are being challenged as unconstitutional indicates that the new Constitution is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71178","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=71178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}