19 October 2023

Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

 

 

DE FACTO GOVERNMENTS

 

Aa per my understanding, ‘de facto’ means ‘from the fact’.

Fact, as per my understanding is truth with a particular body.  

 

Today, I read the X /  (formerly Twitter) posting by Alan Keenan of International  Crisis Group’s Senior Consultant on Sri Lanka. Keenan’s posting is as follows:

Reading through my Twitter timeline, filled mostly with journalists & activists in Sri Lanka, it’s clear that US policies on Israel & Gaza are doing possibly lasting damage to US govt credibility as an agent of democratic change & proponent of rule of law & a just int’l order.

 

I responded as follows:

 

Rule of law fails with militants who are ready to die for their belief. It is belief v belief sans intellectual frills. Sri Lanka did just that & lost law & order.

 

I learnt about the ‘ownership by belief’ through Sri Lanka’s Prescription Ordinance 22 of 1871. I used this law/pathway, towards evicting an unlawful occupier of my property in Colombo. As I applied the law to my knowledge of what happened. That was my fact at the  level of the opposition who claimed ownership by prescriptive rights. Our claim was dismissed at the Colombo District Court. But I studied the applicable section of the law. With belief and admiration one day I noticed that the address of the opponent in a related matter was not our property but that of the opponent in that matter relating to ‘eviction’ from the said property was one Periyasamy. I cannot read Sinhalese, but my husband can. We won the case in the Court of  Appeal. More importantly, I learnt about the exponential value of belief.

This belief of mine led me to note that the Prescription (Special Provisions) Act, No. 5 of 2016, incluts ded the term terrorists as follows:

AN ACT TO ENABLE SPECIAL LEGAL PROVISIONS TO BE MADE IN RESPECT OF PERSONS WHO WERE UNABLE TO PURSUE THEIR RIGHTS IN COURT FOR THE RECOVERY OF ANY IMMOVABLE PROPERTY INCLUDING LAND DUE TO THE ACTIVITIES OF ANY MILITANT TERRORIST GROUP WHICH PREVAILED IN SRI LANKA AND FOR MATTERSCONNECTED THEREWITH OR INCIDENTAL THERETO WHEREAS certain persons have been disadvantaged and therefore unable to pursue their rights in court for the recovery of any immovable property including land due to the activities of any militant terrorist group during the period commencing on May 1st, 1983 and ending on May 18th, 2009: AND WHEREAS it has now become necessary to enact special legal provisions to enable such persons to pursue their rights in court. BE it enacted by the Parliament of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka as follows…..

In terms of the current conflict in the Middle East, a Tamil Sri Lankan shared as follows:

the Palestinians , the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, will never ever give up fighting for their homeland: even though they are aware that the Zionist racists , backed by the US , may not be defeated: the will to freedom cannot be suppressed by force of arms. Therefore there’ll be the ‘massacre of the innocents’ on both sides. The West would always label the freedom fighters as “terrorists” .

 

To my mind, if in a Nation that accepts de facto partnerships as legal, a group declares that it presents itself as the de facto government and it is NOT opposed by majority from within the community, the government & wider world would be wiser to accept such  declaration as a fact, than call them terrorists. In turn, such groups have the responsibility to be bound by the same laws as the official government – including by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which  is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

 

If de facto relationships are workable at family level, they would be workable at National level also. This I believe, would prevent official governments from reacting at the same level as rebels and exponentially spreading lawlessness.