For the first time since Sri Lanka’s 30-year-long civil conflict drew to a bloody finish in May 2009, casting an eerie hush over the Northern Province that had grown accustomed to the sounds of war, there is a buzz in the air generated by the prospect of provincial elections that hold the promise of radical change.

Elections for the Northern Provincial Council hardly elicit any excitement among the voters, jaded by years of war and a lagging development process Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Though it is yet to be announced formally, political circles in the capital, Colombo, are fixed on the prospect of an election in September.

The most pressing question is whether or not the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse will allow the devolution of power from the centre and the creation of the country’s first-ever Northern Provincial Council (NPC).

It was exactly this question, and politicians’ inability to resolve it, that tore this South Asian nation of 20 million people apart for three long decades as the island’s two peoples – the Sinhalese and the Tamils – came to blows over national sovereignty.

Based primarily in the northern and eastern provinces, Tamils in Sri Lanka have long demanded some degree of autonomy and independence from the rest of the island, citing economic exclusion and discrimination by leaders who favour the interests of the majority.

An unbroken line of Sinhala-led governments has ignored the demand, insisting on maintaining a single, unified state.

In 1983, demands for political autonomy coalesced around a rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which launched a campaign of armed guerilla warfare against the government.

The group sought to create a separate state for Tamils in the northern and eastern regions of the country in an area covering 7,390 square miles.

In 1987, in an effort to reconcile what was then a four-year-long battle that showed no signs of abating, India brokered a peace accord between the government and the Tigers that provided for the devolution of power to Sri Lanka’s nine provinces and the creation of independent provincial councils endowed with the power to oversee industries like agriculture, manage the police force and collect funds through provincial taxes.

This provision, the 13^th amendment to Sri Lanka’s 1978 constitution, was the country’s first attempt at decentralisation since it gained independence from British rule in 1948.

Despite initial signs of success, the process unraveled within two years when the then Provincial Government declared an independent Eelam, prompting Colombo to reinstate direct rule over the province.

In the next few decades, the region was torn asunder in the war between the LTTE and government forces. Power over the north and its 1.1 million people remained in Colombo’s hands – until now, perhaps.

“We need houses, jobs and transport; we need money in our hands. Then we can think of elections." -- Shanthini Kumar
While there is much excitement over the prospect of an NPC, political parties know that elections will not bring change overnight.

At most, according to Rajavarothayam Sampanthan – leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the largest Tamil party in Sri Lanka and the one most likely to win the NPC – the elections signal a new beginning.

“Elections could provide political parties with the opportunity to have their policies democratically endorsed,” Sampanthan told IPS. How effective that endorsement will be depends on how much power the central government is willing to devolve.

A lot also rests on the provincial governor, a presidential appointee endowed by the constitution with tremendous powers that can override decisions made by the elected provincial council.

Sampanthan admitted that the chances of power being devolved to an opposition-run council are limited. Without the ability to at least control job creation and industrial development, two areas currently controlled by the government in Colombo, the success of a TNA-controlled NPC will be limited, he said.

However, political commentator Jehan Perera, who heads the National Peace Council, sees another role for the NPC: as a regional forum that can represent the province both nationally and internationally.

“The body can better articulate the interests of the people,” Perera told IPS, referring to issues like unemployment, transport and water management that only get addressed in relation to international complaints.

The eight functioning councils are currently all under the control of the government and unable to give voice to their constituencies. An opposition-held council, on the other hand, can be more aggressive should it feel the government is putting curbs on its powers and “has the chance to be a very vibrant forum,” Perera said.

People in the Northern Province, however, are not so sure. Jegan Murthy, a 27-year-old shopkeeper in the northern town of Jaffna, the cultural and political nerve centre of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, said that if the war-battered community is to regain any hope, the NPC has to be more than just a platform for discussion and protest.

Referring to issues like a lack of housing for the 13,000 residents of the north still living in temporary camps, as well as widespread unemployment – especially among the region’s 40,000 war widows – he told IPS, “We have so many problems and we have been discussing about them in so many forums, one more would not make that much of a difference. What we need is someone who can deliver results.”

In the battle-scarred town of Kilinochchi, 330 kilometres north of Colombo, people mention the election only in passing, like something they have to endure, akin to the skin-searing heat that bears down on them all year long.

“Elections? What elections?” 22-year-old Shanthini Kumar asked when IPS sought her opinion on the subject. She is grateful to have made it alive through the six months of the Sri Lankan army’s final surge against the LTTE, between November 2008 and May 2009, a battle which saw heavy civilian casualties and exposed the government’s human rights record to worldwide scrutiny.

Over 460,000 persons have returned to the Northern Province since the end of the war, but found hard times waiting for them.

“We need houses, jobs and transport; we need money in our hands. Then we can think of elections,” Kumar said.

Jobs are hard to come by and donor assistance is largely drying up: the latest U.N.-Sri Lanka joint funding appeal for 147 million dollars in 2012 fell short by 73 percent. The U.N. estimates that there is a need for over 100,000 houses.

Officials from the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, which is constructing the largest number of houses in the former war zone, says over 170,000 homes are needed, but according to U.N. data existing funds will provide no more than 55,000 humble dwellings.

The gathering rain clouds in the Sri Lankan skies are a source of trepidation for many. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, May 28 2013 (IPS)

The monsoon in Sri Lanka is always a much-awaited event. There is something about the sight of the gathered clouds, the washed trees and the drenched landscape that stirs romance even in the most hardened of souls.

The monsoon rain now comes to Sri Lanka mostly in short bursts, lasting some 15 minutes, accompanied by thunder. One minute it could be calm and sunny, the very next, winds could pick up, the delicate coconut palms sway dangerously and the heavens descend.

The short bursts of rain are a common scenario in the western plains. It is only when the rains decide to stay longer that their beauty recedes and the beast takes over.

Cities and villages get flooded, roads are jammed and thousands are left stranded, sometimes for days.

The island nation has had a brush with this scenario already this year, when Cyclone Mahasen swept past its eastern cost, leaving eight people dead, over 100,000 stranded and over 2,000 structures damaged.

There are also few who can erase the memory of the Dec. 2004 tsunami that left 35,000 people dead and close to a million displaced.

That disaster struck Sri Lanka hard, because there was no warning system in place.

The tragedy left the nation wiser, and one of the first things it did in the aftermath was to spruce up its early warning system and disaster mitigation effort.

“We are used to the monsoon and cyclones now and, more importantly, we are better prepared than ever before,” Sarath Lal Kumara, deputy director at the Disaster Management Centre (DMC), told IPS.

The DMC came into being in August 2005 as the nodal agency for disaster risk management in the country under the National Council for Disaster Management (NCDM), which later became the ministry of disaster management and human rights.

Each of Sri Lanka’s over 300 divisional secretariats further has a regional disaster management committee, the lowest administrative body in the government’s disaster management system. Every unit has a separate budget allocation for emergencies; funds are also allocated on a case-by-case basis by capital Colombo.

The DMC too has its own disaster management units in each of Sri Lanka’s 25 districts that make up the country’s nine provinces. Colombo once again coordinates their activities, but every unit has a senior manager of its own as head.

“They are stationed in the regions so that we can take quick decisions without having to go back and forth,” said Kumara. The units have also been provided with the resources to disseminate early warnings and coordinate initial rescue and relief work, he added.

Other non-governmental organisations too have upgraded their disaster monitoring and assistance capacities. The Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, for instance, has district-level disaster management units and routinely mobilises thousands of its volunteers in early warning and relief work.

Staffers and volunteers also go through regular refresher courses on disaster preparedness. All of which came in handy, most recently when Cyclone Mahasen struck Sri Lanka.

“I think we are in a better position than we ever were to meet natural disasters,” Bob McKerrow, head of a delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told IPS.

It is just as well that Sri Lanka is investing some resources in early warning and preparedness, say experts. South Asia, they warn, will be subjected to a barrage of extreme weather events, and will have to deal with them on a long-term priority basis.

Over 25 million people have been displaced in the region between 2011 and 2012 due to natural disasters, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva.

Millions are at risk in South Asia due to extreme weather events, Bart Édes, director of the poverty reduction, gender and social development division in the Asian Development Bank (ADB), told IPS.

“All around South Asia,” he said, “in addition to the current vulnerability to cyclones, flooding and drought, those living along South Asian coastlines confront the slowly rising seas.”

With millions affected by disasters, already stretched resources like water, healthcare, schools and other infrastructure can collapse under renewed pressure, Édes added.

“Environmental migration is exacerbating the urbanisation trend being witnessed across South Asia,” the ADB official told IPS. “The physical and social infrastructure of many cities is already stretched to capacity.” As a result, climate-related migration was becoming a serious issue in the region, he added.

A recent study by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Sri Lankan ministries of disaster management and economic development on the impact of the December 2012-January 2013 flooding offered a glimpse into the scale of damage that natural disasters can inflict.

Titled the ‘Rapid Flood Assessment Report’, it noted that over half a million people in Sri Lanka’s northern, north central, eastern, southern and northwestern regions were affected in early January by the flooding.

They have, in fact, been hit by a double whammy, as 67 per cent of the flood victims surveyed said they were also impacted by the 10-month drought preceding the floods.

An earlier assessment by the IFRC in November 2012 had put the number of drought-affected in Sri Lanka at over 1.2 million.

The WFP report also found 37 per cent of the households surveyed were severely ‘food insecure’ and 44 per cent were ‘borderline food insecure’. And the bulk of those who bore the brunt of the twin disasters were employed either in agriculture or in casual jobs.

“Loss of livelihoods, extreme poverty and losses to cultivation are the key drivers of food insecurity, among the flood-affected households,” the report noted. It also pointed to the fact that over 67 per cent of the flood-affected lived below the poverty line.

DMC’s Kumara cited anecdotal evidence to suggest that these victims of disasters were moving into cities, especially when harvests failed, looking for an income.

“We cannot stop natural events, we cannot alter them,” Kumara said. “What we can do is to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. God willing, we are on that track.”

Ask Kusumlatha Tammitta, who lives in the remote village of Mamaduwa in the Vavuniya district of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, if this is enough, and she tells you that what they really need is better, accurate forecasting that will indicate how the monsoon will be.

Till that is available, people like her are condemned to live at the very edge of existence.