The National Joint Committee (NJC), on Thursday, wrote to President Ranil Wickremesinghe cautioning him against the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.The letter, signed by Lt Col (Ret.) Anil Amarasekera, Co-President of NJC, said the full implementation of the 13th Amendment would amount to opening a Pandora’s Box.
Given below are excerpts of the letter: “The Indo-Lanka accord, signed on 27th July, 1987, that was forced on Sri Lanka by India, through gunboat diplomacy, is illegal, according to articles 51 and 52 of the Vienna Convention on the law of Treaties. India also failed to implement some of the provisions therein, such as disarming the terrorists, and, as such, the Indo-Lanka Accord can be considered as repudiated. Therefore, do you consider the 13th Amendment, enacted on 14th November, 1987, in accordance with the Indo-Lanka Accord, to have any validity?
“The English meaning of decentralization and devolution of power seem very similar when looked at superficially. However, the important fact that needs to be realized, when it comes to the governing power of a country, is that decentralization amounts to the transfer of that power, from the central government, to a local authorit, be it a region, a province or a district, while devolution is, on the other hand, the removal of central government power and handing that power over to a region, a province or a district. Therefore, decentralized power, if misused by a region, a province or a district, could be recalled by the central government, while devolved power cannot be recalled by the central government, if misused by a region, a province or a district. Taking into consideration the difficulty, or virtual impossibility, for a central government to recall devolved power to a region, a province, or a district, let us consider the possible repercussions of such an eventuality in this country, with several simple examples.
“Firstly, let us consider irrigation, which is the life blood of the farming community in the northern and eastern provinces. Once this subject is devolved to a province, if the provincial administration fails to maintain the reservoirs (Wewas), and irrigation canals, in the Sinhala villages, there is nothing the central government can do to help the Sinhala cultivators in distress. The only alternative left for them would be to leave those villages, in the northern and eastern provinces, and migrate to some other province.
“Secondly, let us consider the subject of health. Once this subject is devolved to a province, if the provincial administration fails to provide adequate funds to maintain the rural hospital buildings, serving the Sinhala community, or fails to provide adequate doctors, nurses and other staff, or even medical supplies, to rural hospitals in their area, the Sinhala villagers will have no other alternative left other than to leave the province and to migrate to some other province where these facilities are available.
“Thirdly, let us consider the subject of education. Once this subject is devolved to a province, if the provincial administration fails to appoint the teachers needed to schools in Sinhala villages and also does not allocate adequate funds to maintain and repair school buildings in the Sinhala villages, there is nothing that the central government can do in this regard. The Sinhala population will therefore leave the province and migrate to some other province where good education facilities are available for their children.
“These are only three simple examples that I have provided to bring to your attention the danger of devolving power to the provinces. However, the situation would be the same with regard to distribution of electricity, repair of roads, purchase of agricultural produce and many other such subjects, if there is devolution of power to a province, where the Sinhala population is a minority. Therefore, while devolution will only hasten the division of the country by creating administrative avenues to encourage the migration of the Sinhala population, from the northern and eastern provinces of the country, to other provinces, decentralization of power will not encourage such action as these powers can be withdrawn by the central government, if found to be misused by any provincial council.
“C.V. Wigneswaran, MP, said recently that the full implementation of the 13th Amendment is good but that he will not look back until a federal constitution is promulgated. He is trying to apply Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam’s policy of ‘little now more later’ with an intention to first federate a unitary state, through the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. The federated state will subsequently be divided to establish Eelam, which is the final objective of the separatists. If Wigneswaran, and likeminded separatists, succeed to achieve during peace what they failed to achieve through three decades of war, all the sweat, blood, tears and toil expended by the security forces, sometimes even by sacrificing their very life and limb to defeat the separatists, would have been in vain.
“This ‘little now later’ policy has been applied with great success by racist Tamil politicians since independence. They first succeeded in making Tamil, a language of the minority community, an official language, in par with Sinhala, which is the language of the majority community in this country. Tamil, incidentally, is not an official language, even in India, where the majority of the Tamil population live in this world. Through the enactment of the controversial 13th Amendment, the racist Tamil politicians succeeded in devolving much of political and administrative power to the northern and eastern provinces that can be utilised to create an exodus of the minority Sinhala population, from these two provinces, as pointed out previously in this letter.
“Through the enactment of the 16th Amendment, these racist Tamil politicians succeeded in making Tamil the language of administration in the northern and eastern provinces, for the maintenance of public records and transactions of all business by public institutions. The majority Sinhala population, not being racists, had little or no objection while such discriminatory legislation was enacted for political expediency, but can the Sinhala majority continue to allow this ‘little now more later’ policy to continue?
Therefore, in the interest of the Sinhala minority that is living in the northern and eastern provinces, the NJC kindly request you to promulgate a new Constitution for which the majority of the people in this country gave a mandate both at the last presidential and general elections so that the people living in any part of this country are not discriminated, based on their ethnic, caste or religious identity.”