Democratic constitution, a dire need - Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratne

As one would expect the British government wants Sri Lanka to fully implement UN Human Rights Council Resolution 34/1, according to the answer of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Minister, Mark Field.
Answering three written questions submitted by a Labour MP he indicated that he stressed to Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Tilak Marapana, and the importance of implementing the Resolution.
"The UK is committed to the full implementation of Resolution 34/1 and will continue to support the government of Sri Lanka in its efforts to promote reconciliation and human rights", he noted. This may influence other counties in Europe and America to take up the same position.
Resolution 30/1 recognized the importance of a credible accountability process for those most responsible for violations and abuses. It also called for the participation in Lankan judicial accountability process of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers, and authorized prosecutors and investigators. Lankan government has not accepted latter as a necessity. However the commitments include the return of all military-held private land, the activisation of the Office of Missing Persons and the development of new counter-terrorism legislation instead of PTA in line with international human rights standards.
 
However the release of another 29 acres of land under military control in Jaffna to civilian owners is a signal that the government remains committed to the reconciliation process it embarked upon in January 2015 when it came to power. The high point of the government’s commitment came nine months later in October of that year when it went beyond expectations in co-signing the UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka. In the past Mahinda regime had considered previous UN resolutions on the subject to be Imperialists interventions in Lanka and to be necessarily opposed and rejected. In the modern world human rights are implement by world authorities due to the power of the proletariat and the conscious middle classes in the developed world. One could see the power of active masses in US against the policies of President Donald Trump. As such the yahapalana government turned this negative approach around. The problem, however, has been that the government’s implementation of its commitment has subsequently been slow. This has given rise to doubts about the government’s commitment to the reconciliation process.
 
With the holding of local government elections looming on the horizon, the present circumstances are not the best for the government to disturb the peace process. Though it is local government election the results of these elections will be seen as a vote of confidence in the performance of the government midway in its tenure. The clearing of the path to conducting the long delayed local government election is almost complete. The delay is not due to intervention of leaders of Yahapalanaya government.  This delay in elections was due to a combination of factors.   The need to re -demarcate local authority areas and boundaries has given rise to extended work for several departments.  The fascistic interventions by the previous government which sought to manipulate electoral areas by altering their boundaries to gain an unfair political advantage at elections have created many problems. To the restless political activists, it was also evident that the government was delaying for reasons of its own, which included reluctance to face the electorate in the midst of the many controversies among the leaders.
One set of controversies that the government would wish to settle before any election is based on solutions to the Tamil national problem. These go to the heart of racism and its attendant high emotions. The fascistic opposition has denounced the proposed new constitution as paving the way for the division of the country and denounced war crime investigations as being an insidious means to punish war heroes. According to them Gotabaya and others suspected of criminal activities are above the law as war heroes!
 
In former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his colleagues in the Joint Opposition, the country has the most potent demagogies with ringing voices to arouse Sinhala Buddhist racism with lethal effect. Obviously Ranil do not want to raise constitutional reform and war crime issues in the run up to local government elections. However the opposition will devastate the country with vile racist campaigns. On the other hand at the present time all attention is being focused on the forthcoming local government elections, the constitutional reform process is likely to come to a halt. at this time a government victory will give it the confidence it can prevail to take the new constitution forward and face the referendum which will need to be called sooner rather than later. Clearly a breakdown of the constitutional reform process will be a political defeat for the government whether or not it wins at the local government elections. It will also be a big blow to the Tamil and Muslim parties, Sama Samaja parties and voters, whose support was decisive in bringing the yahapalana government to power.
 
Clearly, it is constitutional change that will ensure the national and religious minorities are not dependent on the goodwill of government or oppositional politicians and their temporary opportunist policies, but on guarantees that come from more permanent law; the constitution. Both public opinion polls and prevalent public opinion on the street clearly indicate that most of the population believes constitutional reform is important, not least because the present constitution is defective and needs to be changed in a comprehensive manner. In 1978 Feb 4th when this dictatorial constitution came in to affect Nava Sama Samaja party opposed it publicly hoisting black flags through out the country. Several months later NM joined them creating a broad opposition. From that time, when the present constitution’s executive presidential system was subject to abuse, academic and civil society opinion formers have critiqued the constitution and called for its replacement. Therefore, the popular movement to change the present constitution has a much longer history than the government’s present bid to formulate a new constitution.
 
The three day parliamentary debate on a report on constitutional reform by a select committee of parliament was extended by a further two days reflecting the interest of parliamentarians in the subject. On the positive side there was a broad consensus among all the parties that the matters that were being debated were important to the country, and needed to be discussed at length. The general thinking in the country is that the coalition of the two biggest parties in the government provides the best opportunity to address the unresolved problems of the past, particularly the nationality conflict. They have a stable 2/3 majority in parliament on their own. There is agreement that this is the time to address problems that cannot be neglected any longer. However, there was no consensus on the positions taken by the different political parties on the substance of the options for constitutional reform during the debate. This includes the issues of federal power sharing, the units of devolution, executive presidency and the incorporation of some aspects of international legal standards. There is a serious struggle in the coming period to establish a democratic constitution.
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