Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

08 April  2019

The Constitutional Council handout to TNA???

Two main unsettled problems in Northern Sri Lanka – at citizens level are (1) Land occupied by the armed forces and (2) missing persons. As a minority community, we need to pool all our Energies first in one and then in the other. Those thinking at policy level, would not need to prioritise between the two. They would be different faces of the same problem. But at the level of the common victim, there needs to be priority. The real solution would  have this as its foundation.

Land is the parallel of the Parliament and Missing persons group is the parallel of the Constitutional Council.  Tamil Guardian has reported that the Hon Rajavarothiam Sampanthan has been nominated to the Constitutional Council:

[The leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), R Sampanthan, has been nominated to Sri Lanka's Constitutional Council, following the resignation of Chamal Rajapaksa….]

It is the duty of Mr Sampanthan to reject any nomination by Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa who used mere majority to takeover the position of Opposition leader with no consideration as to the fundamental requirements of democratic governance which requires clear separations between different faith groups. Without such separation, the group with second highest votes becomes junior to the group that gains majority votes. Separation is essential for the two sides to be Equal before the law. It is this breach that has led to practically no devolution to provinces.

The family is the citizen’s parallel of the Parliament. A family that values education as its highest priority which was the case in my family, would seek answers to ‘why’ a problem happened rather than what happened. Those driven largely by what happened – do not need intellectual skills to know why. It is for this reason that common faith is necessary to form political groupings. Such common faith is an essential criterion to qualify as a family. Hence given that the Opposition is of a different faith – it is entitled to equal status in Parliament. Without that diversity in the form of faith – a minority party is NOT equal to majority party but is junior. As junior, one is NOT entitled to Opposition status.

Where leaders deal at the level of outcomes and quid pro quos – we lose the value of common principles and therefore demote education to money-making level.   In the Tamil system of Thesawalamai – Dowry carries the higher value of the structure of family in which a woman takes the lesser status attributed to home-making activities. Donation does not carry this heritage that the woman developed. A woman claiming money instead of status – is actually demoting the value of her own work. This usually happens when we do not share the returns we get, with those who facilitated the opportunity.

If Tamils accept a Federal solution with our current leadership strongly influenced by militants who have to ‘show’ to get the vote – we would become a unitary provincial structure. Those who blame TNA leadership of collusion with government, need also to assess the governance structure under Mr Wigneswaran’s leadership – with was strongly pro LTTE. This may be true as per Mr Wigneswaran’s mind – it also places a ceiling on political leadership by the likes of Ms Ananthi Sasitharan – representing the LTTE which had little knowledge of why Tamils tolerated unjust discrimination and how that eventually translated as Common ownership power to defeat Sinhala only folks. Whether Sinhalese or Tamils – militants have to ‘show’ outcomes,  to be accepted by those whom they represent.  Since Tamils diluted their commonness through abuse of caste system, we needed secular education to reinstate that commonness. But militancy took it down to primary level which means without total separation, we would become juniors to Sinhalese. To the extent Tamils gave lesser priority to intellectual pathway in life and more to guns and/or its lateral parallel majority rule – Tamils have themselves to blame for loss of land that represents tradition. When militant took-over such lands we lost their higher values and they became mere trading stock. Likewise in the case of Human Values – the loss of bodies that were engaged in work for benefits only – are not owed anything by the rest of their community, leave alone society. Likewise the TNA – the Tamil Opposition leadership to the extent it accepts lesser positions than it has earned due to maintaining diversity despite the risks involved. To earn separation and therefore privacy as an apparent minority, we need to demonstrate depth of investment in the intellectual pathway.

To the eye of the citizen – the Constitutional Council makes juniors of minorities who total  4 relative to  6 Sinhalese. The reported mandate of the Council is reported by Wikipedia  as follows:

[The Constitutional Council (CC) is a 10-member constitutional authority in Sri Lanka tasked with maintaining independent commissions and monitoring its affairs. The Constitutional Council is aimed at depoliticizing the public service.]

The political representation needs to be Equal to balance majority power and raise it to intellectual level.