Apprehending a repeal of the 13 th. Amendment (13A) of the Sri Lankan constitution as part of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s plan to give Sri Lanka a new constitution, an overwhelming majority of parties representing the Tamil-speaking people of the island have come together to save the amendment.
On Tuesday, leaders of these parties met at a Colombo Hotel to discuss the issue and send a letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his good offices to persuade President Gotabaya to desist from repealing or further diluting the 13A. India comes in because the13A was passed in 1988 consequent to the India–Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987, a government–to–government agreement.
Among the parties represented at Tuesday’smeeting were R Sampanthan, Leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA); Mano Ganeshan, Leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA); Mavai Senathiraja Leader of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK); C.V. Wigneswaran President of the Tamil MakkalKootani (TMK); Selvam Adaikalanathan, President Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO); Tharmalingam Siththadthan, President, Democratic Peoples’ Liberation Front (DPLF); Rauf Hakeem, Leader Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC); Rishad Bathiudeen,LeaderAll Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC)); V.Radhakrishnan President Upcountry Peoples Front (UPF); Palani Digambaram, President National Union of Workers (NUW); Suresh Premachandran President Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF); and N. Srikantha President Tamil National Liberation Alliance (TNLA).
These parties represent the Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian Origin Tamils, and Muslims, all Tamil-speaking, and all minorities in Sri Lanka
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam President Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF) refused to attend the meeting as he believes that the 13A is so inadequate that it cannot even be a starting point for achieving the goal of getting a fullyfederal system.
The 13A gives the provinces a modicum of autonomy within a centralized unitary Sri Lankan constitution. The Tamils and also the Muslims fear that if the President has his way, he would further centralize Sri Lanka and make Sri Lanka an explicitly Buddhist State on the plea that Sri Lanka needs a strong center with no room for ethno-religious entities which could be a potential springboard for separatism.
The Tamils and Muslims fear that entities like the Northern Province (for Tamils) will go and there would be no scope for a South Eastern Province for the Muslims (which was demanded by the SLMC under the Late M.H.M.Ashraff in the 1990s).
The Tamils complain, with good reason, that successive Sri Lankan governments, irrespective of the party in power, have not been implementing the provisions of the 13A. Power over Land and the Police have not been handed over to the Provincial Councils. The financial condition of the provinces is poor because their taxation power are very limited. They depend on the Center for allocations. The Center can execute projects of its liking and need not go by the advice of the Provincial Council or the Chief Minister. And this had been one of the main complaints of the former Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran.
Wigneswaran has also pointed out another major flaw in the working of the 13A. The Provincial bureaucracy is under the Governor, a centrally appointed and controlled Chief Executive in the province. Provincial officers listen to the Governor and not the Chief Minister.
The point that the Tamil parties are making is that the 13A created Provincial Councils and the Board of Ministers are but empty shells with little or nothing substantive inside. Therefore, the 13A has to be fully implemented and also improved upon.
After the end of Eelam War 1V in May 2009, Mahinda Rajapaksa as Sri Lankan President, had promised to India, to fully implement the 13A but also improve it. He promised “13A-Plus”. But he backtracked quickly, to the disappointment of the Tamils and India.
However, in subsequent statements on the issue, Mahinda Rajapaksa had said that ways could be found to accommodate the Provinces in the exercise of powers over land, but he totally ruled out the grant of police powers in the interest of national security in the face of threats from Tamil secessionism. After the Easter Sunday blasts in August 2019, Islamic terrorism has been added to the list of threats to the nation.
The Tamil parties have been requesting India to pressurize Sri Lanka to implement the 13A and India has been trying to gently push their case. But successive Sri Lankan governments have dodged the issue, always promising to deliver but always failing to do so. Fear of dangers from ethno-religious based territorial entities has been constant from the earliest times to the present day.
Though India is a regional power, it has found by experience, that it cannot force any issue in Sri Lanka. It failed to get the LTTE to bend on the issue of 13A and had to go to war and withdraw without finishing the task. It could not even get the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) to fight in the first North Eastern Provincial Council elections in 1988 under the 13A. It has not been able to persuade even friendly Sri Lankan governments to implement the 13A in full, leave alone go for 13A-Plus.
Despite India’s failure, the Tamil parties have been constrained to look to India for help on the issue of 13A because the Western nations have been interested only in the ‘war crimes” issue. It is only recently that the US has been taking an interest in the issue of devolution of power and the 13A. Recently, the State Department entertained a three-person Tamil delegation to understand the legal intricacies of the issue. M.A.Sumanthiran, Nirmala Chandrahasan and Kanag Eawaran, all lawyers, met officials of the State Department in Washington.
But the intervention of the US would not be to India’s liking, as India considers Sri Lanka its backyard and the Tamils in Sri Lanka to be it constituency. New Delhi would keenly watchWashington’s moves in this regard and also the Tamil leaders liaising with the US. New Delhi may also want to take a greater interest in the 13A to keep other powers form fishing in troubled waters. This might help the Tamil cause.
The most recent worrying development is the entry of the Chinese in the Northern Province. The Chinese Ambassador Qi Zhenhong’s recent high profile and extended visit to the Northern Province, China’s interest in the troubled fishing community in that province and its keenness to invest in development projects in the North have the potential to weaken India’s influence there.
But the saving grace for India is that China will not support the political demands of the Tamils because China is committed to supporting the Sri Lankan government in Colombo politically to the hilt. The Tamil parties have themselves said that China’s influence in the North could be detrimental to the Tamils’ political interest. They see China as an arm of the Sri Lankan State. This is one of the reasons why the Tamil parties are mounting pressure on India as a matter of urgency now.
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