{"id":95658,"date":"2019-11-26T00:34:37","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T06:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=95658"},"modified":"2019-11-25T17:32:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T00:32:24","slug":"gotabhayas-visit-to-delhi-and-the-nations-environmental-and-constitutional-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/11\/26\/gotabhayas-visit-to-delhi-and-the-nations-environmental-and-constitutional-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Gotabhaya’s Visit to Delhi and the Nation’s Environmental and Constitutional concerns."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharmawardana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The Indian government, by acting with strategic alacrity\u00a0 managed a diplomatic advance in inviting the New President of Sri Lanka to Delhi, within the first breath of the new presidency. The new president, in accepting the invitation equally rapidly has shown his friendliness and openness for dialogue, at a time when Tamil Nadu leaders remained mute, judging the election purely in terms of a hostile historical narrative. The central government in India has always had its doctrine of dominance\u00a0 in the south Asian theater.\u00a0\u00a0 However, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa\u00a0 has already stated very clearly that the Sri Lankan government hopes to follow a neutral or non-aligned foreign policy.\u00a0 A natural consequence of such a policy is that the internal matters of the small nation should be\u00a0 its own concern, and\u00a0 the attempts of strong nations to interfere and intervene have to be repelled by balancing the\u00a0 international forces to counter each other. Instead, we have had five years of abject bent knees towards certain big powers, when some foreign diplomats behaved like Viceroys of yester\u00a0 year, even writing constitutions for Sri Lanka, with no compensating\u00a0 gains what so ever to the country, but of course some individuals gained priivately.

The first step\u00a0 to ensure that the Indian government does not interfere in Sri Lankan matters is to address its presumed concerns squarely and fairly, while calling upon India to respect and address those of Sri Lanka.

What are the main concerns of Sri Lanka? In my view,\u00a0 these are: mainly environmental and constitutional.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS.

1)\u00a0 Strong environmental concerns arise from the presence of some 50 coal-burning power stations along the southern shores of Tamil\u00a0 Nadu. In fact, the pollution levels even in Colombo correlate with those in the Indian subcontinent when the prevailing winds carry them south.

2) Lack of even observer status and agreed upon joint safety\u00a0 procedures regarding the Kundankulam Nuclear Reactor\u00a0 just across the Palk straits
\u00a0
3) Indian fishermen using sea-floor dredging and other methods extremely harmful to marine ecology and destined to rapidly diminish and destroy available fish stocks. They also constantly encroach on Sri Lankan territorial waters and deprive Northern Fishermen of their legitimate catch.

4) Illegal traffic in goods,\u00a0 people and narcotics across the Palk straits, posing health concerns as well as other concerns to national security and integrity as well.

CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS.
These are all too well known to most Sri Lankans.

1. The 13th Amendment to the constitution, where a system of provincial councils was imposed on Sri Lanka by India using strong-arm tactics, during the hay day of the TULF separatist bid for Eelam. It\u00a0 was hijacked\u00a0 by the LTTE after assassinating the TULF leaders. The terms of the Gandhi-Jayawardena agreement (which included the disarming of the LTTE by Indian forces) were\u00a0 not fulfilled by India, and the agreement is legally caduc. Nevertheless, Sri Lanka implemented the Provincial councils creating nine unnecessary administrative hubs that generate red tape, corruption and great expense. The main reason\u201d for the provincial councils was power devolution\u201d to the\u00a0 majority Tamil\u201d areas which the TULF claimed were their exclusive traditional Tamil homelands\u201d.\u00a0 The wish to merge the North with the East, where the East does not even have a Tamil majority is simply an anti-democratic Tamil hegemonist move. It has been amply proved, both by 30 years of failed negotiations, and then by a failed separatist military bid\u00a0 brutally pushed forward by the LTTE, that the concept of an exclusive traditional homeland of the Tamils will not be accepted by the majority community, or the international neighbours of Sri Lanka extending from Pakistan through India to Malaysia. Even G. G. Ponnambalam rejected it, saying that the whole of Ceylon is the homeland of the Tamils.\u00a0 The jingoist sections of Tamil Nadu politicians view Tamil Nationalism favourably only because they believe that\u00a0 a weakly integrated Northern Sri Lanka will merge into its fold, recreating\u00a0 a historic Chola kingdom.

A Northern Provincial Council (NPC) under the TNA\u00a0 existed from 2013 to 2018. It\u00a0 proved beyond doubt that the concept is a failure. It failed to do the minimum for the people. It did not even succeed in spending the budgets allocated to it, and showed how provincial administrations get bogged down in parochial animosities, irregularities, and\u00a0\u00a0 fail to even rise above local caste\u201d prejudices.

Furthermore, NPC spent its time promoting hate against the majority community,\u00a0 building memorials for suicide bombers, and passing resolutions claiming that all Sri Lankan governments since 1948 have committed genocide against the Tamils. However, the Tamil population has increased\u00a0 by a factor larger than that of the Sinhalese since 1948.\u00a0 The Tamil separatist movement helped to spawn similar separatist movements among the Muslims. The initial Mulsim leaders of those movements have also been displaced\u00a0 by more radical\u00a0 leaders, just as the TULF was displaced. Such radials\u00a0 had no hesitation in getting financial support from extremist Islamic groups, and became a law unto themselves under the weak Maithree-Ranil government. Sinhala-Buddhist extremist groups also reacted and added to the unrest. The Easter bombings and the rise of sectarian violence have strong causative links\u00a0 with\u00a0 the devolution of power into the hands of provincial\u00a0 political thugs and war lords.

So, the provincial councils have failed. The political conditions that existed in the country in the 1970s do\u00a0 not exist any more. Sinhala and Tamil are official languages of the country. If adequate implementation of bilingualism is wanting, I find it no different from what has been achieved in Canada which has spent billions on bilingualims since the late 1960s, and yet many civil servants cannot muster anything beyond Bon Jour\u201d. \u00a0

Unlike the separatist Tamils of the TNA, the Indian Tamils who opted to cooperate with the Sinhalese instead of joining in the separatist struggle have won their citizenship and now play an important role in the legislatures of the nation.\u00a0 Tamil politicians representing a mere 12% of the population have played a major determining\u00a0 role in Lankan administrations, but the polarization caused\u00a0 by the mishandling of the official languages act\u00a0 became\u00a0 a cancer in the body politic. Consequently we have communities that totally distrust each other, even to the extent of manipulating semantics with Aekeeya and Orumitta\u201d while claiming them to be the\u00a0 same as\u00a0 Unitary\u201d.

The constitutional message that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa must take to the Indians is as follows.\u00a0 The security of the nation, its economic growth,\u00a0 mercantile efficiency and ethnic harmony all require a well integrated and centralized constitution which respects the multi-ethnic character of the Nation.\u00a0 Lanka has,\u00a0 in the Greater Colombo metropolis a vibrant example of a multi-ethnic multi-religious community where Tamil culture and Hindu devotional practice are thriving, even with greater vigor than in Jaffna with its closed cajan fences and enracinated caste prejudices.

Technology has advanced well beyond what it was\u00a0 during the days of Banda and Chelva\u201d. There is no difficulty for ANYONE to work in ANY language, in any court or government office. This is\u00a0 not just for Tamil or Sinhala, but even for Malay or Urdu,\u00a0 because cell-phone browsers can adequately translate from any language to another. Voice Apps\u00a0 can be made\u00a0 to render the Sinhala or Tamil\u00a0 message into vocalized Tamil or Sinhala.\u00a0 A fast bullet train connecting Jaffna to Colombo moving at 250 kmph will convert Jaffna into a Colombo suburb. Colombo and Jaffna already have the same cellular-phone area code!

The solutions to the politically vexed language question or the ethnic question are technological, and we already have them.

The 13the Amendment to the constitution must be repealed. That is the bottom line where the New President must begin his discussions about constitutional matters. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharmawardana The Indian government, by acting with strategic alacrity\u00a0 managed a diplomatic advance in inviting the New President of Sri Lanka to Delhi, within the first breath of the new presidency. The new president, in accepting the invitation equally rapidly has shown his friendliness and openness for dialogue, at a time when Tamil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95658","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=95658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}