SRI LANKA-POLITICS: Peace Initiative To Be Put to Vote

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Oct 6 1997 (IPS) - With a one-seat majority in Parliament, Sri Lanka’s government is taking its peace package for the war- torn north and east to the people for approval.

A referendum to decide the future of the east, the most contentious issue in the Tamil separatist guerrilla revolt for an independent homeland, is to be held soon after a new constitution is promulgated by Parliament.

People living in the Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts, which form the bulk of the eastern region, will be asked to decide if they would like a merged region with the north or not.

The decision to hold a referendum, part of the government’s devolution package for the north and the east under a new constitution, was unanimously taken at a special cabinet meeting called by President Chandrika Kumaratunga last week.

Constitutional Affairs and Justice Minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris told the press that if the people voted for a merger, the government will hold another referendum in three eastern towns where the majority of residents is non-Tamil to find out whether they want their own council.

The devolution proposals have drawn the ire of a major section of the Buddhist clergy, who have always opposed any attempt to split the country into regions or regional councils.

Their latest outburst is against Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera who criticised a recent report by the Sinhala Commission, an unofficial body, which in a commentary on the island’s ethnic unrest, “urged the people to reject the government’s draft constitution (which is intended to incorporate the peace proposals).”

Last week, Samaraweera said the Sinhala Commission report must be consigned to “the dustbin of history”. The remarks were greeted on Tuesday by a protest rally by about 1,200 Buddhist monks who urged Samaraweera to withdraw his remarks or face further agitation.

The media minister, in a statement issued on Wednesday, said he meant no disrespect to the Maha Sangha (the island’s highest Buddhist council of monks) but repeated his position that the Commission’s report was a document opposed to peace.

At Thursday’s news conference, Prof Peiris, a key player in the government’s peace initiative, told reporters that the decision to hold a referendum was taken after a “full and candid discussion in which each of the 29 ministers expressed his or her views (on the unit of devolution)”.

Opposition parties have been critical of the government’s proposals, first made public last year, saying Kumaratunga’s government was silent on the contentious issue of how the north and east would be administered.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the only armed group fighting government troops in its attempt to carve out a separate state for Tamils in the north and the east, is unwilling to change its stance of a merged region.

Other former Tamil rebel groups, now operating as political parties, and moderate Tamil organisations are keen on any form of devolution that would allow Tamils to manage their own affairs in areas where they are a majority.

But the key to peace lies in the hands of the Tigers, whose unwilling stance and bloody guerrilla campaign, are the stumbling blocks in any Sri Lankan government’s efforts to find peace.

More than 50,000 people, from both sides of the war arena, have died in the rebels’ 14-year campaign. The Sinhalese, mostly Buddhists, form about 75 per cent of the country’s 18 million people followed by the Tamils with 18 per cent, the Muslims with six percent while the rest is shared by some smaller groups.

While the north is dominated by the Tamils, the east — with its equal mix of the three main ethnic groups — is the bone of contention in the peace effort.

The Tigers want the east, particularly Trincomalee because of its natural harbour and economic potential. Sinhalese and Muslim residents in the east are opposed to being run by a Tamil- dominated regional council and are resisting the merger.

Apart from opposition criticism over the government’s peace plan, there have been rumblings in government circles over the issue and some ministers have privately expressed concern over reports that the government may hold a referendum to pass the new constitution, if it is rejected by parliament.

According to current procedure, Parliament must approve, by a two-thirds majority, a new constitution or any amendment to the

old one. Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance of left and rightwing parties has just a one-vote majority in Parliament and relies on the support of smaller groups when it requires a biggest vote in the legislature.

Peiris said the cabinet had decided that the carving out of regional councils would not be on the basis of the ethnic problem alone. But at the same time, he said, the cabinet recognised that there is a ethnic problem and that ethnic considerations were relevant “but not conclusive”.

“To ignore ethnic considerations altogether would be an artificial way of solving the problem,” he said. He said he would be presenting the government’s views on the unit of devolution to a Parliamentary Select Committee, studying proposals to enact a new constitution, at its next meeting on October 8.

“We now have a self-contained and definite set of proposals,” he said, countering opposition claims that the government was delaying its proposals on the unit of devolution in view of anticipated opposition from the Buddhist clergy and other groups.

Peiris did not give a specific date for the presentation of the new constitution to parliament but said he planned to do it before he, also as deputy finance minister, presents the government’s budget on November 5.

Apart from dealing with the northern and eastern issue, the new constitution also proposes to abolish the presidential system of government and revert to the old Westminster style of governance which was in place in the 1970s. It also includes detailed chapters on human rights.