Sri Lanka must honor its social contract

By Jehan Perera
Column: Pursuit of Peace

Published: August 20, 2008

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Colombo, Sri Lanka — The Sri Lankan government has been constantly setting new deadlines for the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the northern part of the country. The passing of every deadline is accompanied by the setting of a new one a few months later.

In reality, LTTE-controlled territory that has been recaptured by the government in the north is still considerably less than northern territory under LTTE control. The theoretical and practical indications are also that the battles to come will be harder and more costly.

Despite the grievous costs of war, public support for the war continues to be high. A recent visit to the rural hinterland of the Southern Province revealed that most people appear to have accepted the government’s logic that the ongoing military offensive in the north is the only way to deal with the LTTE and to bring peace to the country.

This is only partly due to the government propaganda about the prospects of a quick military victory. It is also due to the general loss of faith in the possibility of a negotiated settlement in the face of the LTTEʼs track record of foiling efforts at peacemaking.

The history of repeated failure in peace processes and ceasefires to end the war is widely known. So is the LTTEʼs track record of violently removing itself from such processes, for fear of getting caught in a peace trap that weakens its capacity to wage war while giving nothing politically substantial in terms of power sharing.

As the opposition has been finding out to its cost, the government’s bid for a military solution is difficult to counter in the public debate with a political alternative on account of the past failure of peace processes.

The government’s success in militarily retaking control over the whole of the east, in conducting the eastern provincial council elections, and in making a former LTTE cadre the chief minister of the Eastern Province is regularly referred to by government spokespersons. This was also one of the statements made powerfully by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Summit held in Colombo earlier this month.

The president is also reported to have assured the visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the government would indeed implement the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which was passed subsequent to the Indo Lanka Peace Accord of 1987.

The Indo Lanka Peace Accord envisaged the substantial devolution of powers to the contested northern and eastern provinces, the conducting of provincial elections to give democratic legitimacy to the new arrangement and the disarming of all militant organizations.

The accord was an expression of India’s vision as to the basic parameters of how the protracted ethnic conflict could be brought to an end. It was based on the substantial Indian experience in tackling its own separatist insurgencies. It is important that the parameters set by this peace accord be kept in mind if Indian support, such as a guarantee of a future political solution, is deemed desirable.

By conducting the eastern provincial council election shortly after militarily retaking the east from the LTTE, the government has sought to implement the 13th Amendment in regard to the Eastern Province. But formidable problems continue to obstruct the restoration of a satisfactory degree of normalcy in the east following the elections.

A factor that impacts most severely on the people’s sense of normalcy in the east would be the continuing high level of militarization and impunity in which unaccountable armed groups are part of the landscape together with a strong presence of the Sri Lankan military.

The holding of provincial elections in the east was only a first step in the restoration of the government’s social contract with the people in that province. Integrating the local government and provincial administration with the people would require the devolving of financial power to the local authorities.

Unfortunately it appears that financial decisions with regard to large development projects are continuing to be made in Colombo and by central government officials based in the east. The government needs to do more to both politically and financially empower the locally elected politicians of the Eastern Provincial Council to take over governance and economic development from their central counterparts.

The other problem that the people of the east continue to face is the insecurity that comes from armed groups that act with impunity. This also affects the sense of security of Tamil citizens in other parts of the country. In accordance with democratic theory, the Sri Lankan Constitution holds that sovereignty lies in the people. The people temporarily transfer their sovereign power to those whom they elect to form the government. This power transfer takes place on condition that the government provides the people with their basic security and protects their human rights at a minimum.

Unfortunately, this theory of the social contract is being violated in both the north and east, and in places like Colombo, where it concerns Tamil citizens in particular. Due to the ongoing military confrontations between the government and the LTTE, they live subject to the ever present reality of violence and human rights violations that take the form of displacement, abduction and arrest.

By way of contrast, my visit to the rural hinterlands of the south showed a society where the government is delivering on security and positive engagement with the people. There is no breakdown of law and order. The local police and government administration are well integrated into the wider society. People generally feel they have access to their local officials from the government, and they are satisfied with the implementation of their social contract with the government. The government nurtures the culture and society of the people of the south.

This is what the government needs to ensure for the people in the north and east of the country, where the situation is completely different. At the present time the dominant feature they encounter as the government is the military. Due to the conflict with the LTTE, even the government’s civil administration in those parts of the country is headed by retired military personnel who, presumably, will continue to retain their military way of doing things.

As the basic step in peace building for the future, the government needs to show its Tamil citizens that it honors its social contract with them in the same way it does with the Sinhalese people of the south.

(Dr. Jehan Perera is executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, an independent advocacy organization. He studied economics at Harvard College and holds a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. ©Copyright Jehan Perera.)