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After the end of the 30-year separatist war the government has repeatedly expressed the intention of creating a united and unitary country in which there is but one people and a single nation.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory speech after the war called for the abolition of the term “minorities” from the country’s political vocabulary. He added that in future there would be only two groups, those who loved the country, and a small and treacherous group who did not.
The president’s speech, widely quoted in the government media, was termed “statesmanlike.” The president could have just as easily decreed the abolition of the term “majority,” however. Indeed, such a statement might have been made to assuage the fears of the ethnic minorities at a time when victorious Sinhalese nationalism was at its height. But as a sagacious politician, mindful of the need to preserve his voter base, the president chose to deal with the ethnic minority label rather than with the ethnic majority one.
The recently concluded Uva and Northern election results have proven the president to be correct in his political assessment. In poverty-stricken Uva province, with its predominantly Sinhalese electorate, the government got an unprecedented 72 percent of the vote. However, in the North, with its predominantly ethnic Tamil electorate, the opposite trend was visible.
The northern elections showed that although the government has successfully reunited the country militarily, geographically and administratively, it has not succeeded in uniting the country under its political banner. Under these circumstances, the government appears to have decided to employ the strategy of legally banning its ethnic opposition.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the present government are not alone in believing that words and bans can perform the difficult task of political transformation. In July 1983, after the anti-Tamil pogrom that shocked the world, President J. R. Jayewardene and his government banned the propagation of “Tamil Eelam” and compelled all persons who held state office to take an oath that disavowed separatism. This law drove away Tamil parliamentarians who had been elected by voters. The democratically elected and non-violent Tamil leadership was replaced by unelected and violent youth who could operate underground.
On the other hand, Rajapaksa and his government are correct in their assessment of the need to forge a Sri Lankan identity and that this is the best possible time to do so. What is needed is a Sri Lankan identity that all sections of the population can take pride in, whether they are in Sri Lanka or abroad, confident that behind them is a state that seeks to empower and protect them to the maximum.
The prerequisite for a Sri Lankan identity is that every citizen, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or economic status, will believe that the government will treat them equally before the law and no ethnic community has special privileges or rights that others do not enjoy.
From the time of Sri Lanka’s independence, and even before it, the question that has troubled the polity is how to share power equitably in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. But this problem has not yet been resolved. Protesting against the proposed law, Jaffna parliamentarian N. Srikantha is quoted in the media as having said that there were no national political parties in Sri Lanka, as the so-called national parties were dominated by members of the ethnic majority with only token posts for minorities.
The trouncing received by the main opposition party, the United National Party, in the recent northern elections, where it got less than 2 percent of the vote, and the relatively poor showing of the government alliance are evidence that this type of thinking has resonance with the minority electorate.
The proposed electoral reform law is now before the Supreme Court, where it has been challenged on a number of grounds by several political parties, including non-ethnic parties such as the UNP and Lanka Sama Samaja Party, and ethnic parties such as the Tamil National Alliance and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress. They have stated that the proposed law would violate a number of internationally recognized fundamental rights, including equal protection of the law, freedom of religion, association and expression, and the right to vote for parties of their choice.
The tradition in Sri Lanka has been to uphold and recognize religious and ethnic identity. The framers of both the post-independence constitutions in 1972 and 1978 gave to the religion of the ethnic majority the foremost place and the protection of the state. The unitary state enshrined in these two constitutions gives the 75-percent Sinhalese majority an unshakeable grip on political power even in those parts of the country where the Sinhalese are not the majority.
At the same time the present Constitution blocks the devolution of power to regional governments that could be controlled by ethnic minorities. In this situation, it is inevitable that political parties should be formed to work for the benefit and advantage of minority communities.
It is to be hoped that the checks and balances of the democratic system will work and the juggernaut of government will not impose its will upon the ethnic and religious parties. If ever a time comes to ban ethnic and religious parties it ought to be only when Sri Lanka has a state that ensures that all sections of the population feel themselves to be treated equally and no community is privileged above others.
There must be consistency in governance, and the government needs to respect the position of political parties with an ethnic or religious label, at least until it fundamentally reforms itself and the Constitution.
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(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.)
