As the much hard-sold elections to the Eastern Provincial Council came to an unseemly and acrimonious conclusion last week, it was already becoming abundantly clear that its political and constitutional ramifications may well turn out to be anything other than what the government’s triumphalist claims would have us believe.

Perhaps the most disturbing political upshot of these elections was the sharp and violent polarisation of ethnic and religious communities in this most pluralistic of provinces. Electoral politics was conducted unashamedly as a form of antagonistic communal competition and outbidding, paralleling without much overstatement that nonpareil of political disintegration, the general elections of 1956. In the years before the watershed of 1956, the gross ineptitude of Sir John Kotelawala’s UNP with regard …

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The constitutional reform debate in Sri Lanka is in a particularly enervated state as we approach the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, with a government in power that displays that bizarre concoction of procrustean infantilism that so characterised the Jayewardene and Premadasa attitudes to constitutional government and democracy: its thinking juvenile, its methods menacing. This has, in turn, lent a degree of respectability to secessionism it would not otherwise enjoy in world opinion. In fact, the supremacist ethno-nationalism which is at the ideological core of this government, and the simple-minded and unreflective obstinacy with which its dictates are pursued, raises a question that is at the heart of the liberal theory on self-determination and secession, but which Sri Lankan liberals, …

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As the major military onslaught against the LTTE gathers pace to the accompaniment of increasingly jingoistic rhetoric of ruling party politicians, bureaucrats and military top brass, Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka finds itself at a critical crossroads. What may or may not happen in the battlefield this year is still a matter of conjecture, in spite of the bellicose rhetoric of both parties. Faced with the military resolve of the State and the seeming apathy of the international community in respect of any form of intervention, what is also clear, however, is that Tamil nationalism appears to be running out of ideas at the political level. The paucity of political ideas and their articulation in constitutional and legal claims to …

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The year 2007 in Sri Lanka began with little hope for a revival of the peace process, and therefore also for constitutional reform, and it ends with similar prospects on either of these issues in 2008. The military conflict has intensified between the government and the LTTE, with either side now seemingly committed to, for the want of a better phrase, a fight unto the death.

For the government, this means an exclusively military policy aimed at the total defeat of the LTTE, including the elimination of its leadership. There is little sign that this policy also involves a political settlement addressing the core political causes of the conflict, entailing fundamental reforms to the constitutional order so as to remove the …

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When John Stuart Mill wrote his seminal essay of the same title as this column, he set out, elegantly and persuasively, the foundation for much of the political liberalism of the next two centuries all over the world. He was, however, the member of a society and citizen of a country that gave the world the Magna Carta and parliamentary government, and continues to extol, celebrate, and practice the ideal of human liberty as its central and inalienable value. Last week, the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, decided to tackle his recent trough in the polls by making a major speech at the University of Westminster on the subject of liberty. In it, he promised a new Bill of Rights …

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Much has been said and written about the UNP’s supposed abandonment of federalism during the past week. Much of it completely misses the point. Whatever are the politics and motivations behind the UNP’s statement, in terms of the substantive contours of a possible constitutional settlement it delineates, there is nothing to suggest that the party has abandoned the federal idea as a method of power-sharing in a negotiated peace.

The statement sets out the objectives of conflict resolution and constitutional reform as addressing the grievances of the Tamils, meeting the concerns of the Muslims of the North East, and assuaging the fears among some sections of the Sinhalese that devolution would lead to separation. The fundamental principles of such a negotiated …

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This columnist has been associated for the past several years with that much-maligned minority that can be broadly labelled ‘liberal federalists’ on the question of peace and constitutional reform in Sri Lanka. Allowing for individual nuances of emphasis and premise, Sri Lankan liberal federalists are those who have advocated (a) a negotiated resolution to the ethnic conflict (b) along the lines of a federal-type constitutional settlement that accommodates the secessionist ethno-territorial Tamil minority in the North and East (c) within a united Sri Lanka through regional autonomy and power-sharing at the centre. The key assumptions of this worldview are that a politically liberal conception of a unified Sri Lankan citizenship is both possible and desirable, that this notion of citizenship …

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Unveiling his political vision for a ‘new Sri Lankan order’ this week, Mangala Samaraweera challenged Sri Lankans to envision a better future. Dare, he said, to dream which, as a rallying cry in these miasmic times, has an even more piquant ring to it in the Sinhalese ‘Sihinaye Abhiyogaya’.

The SLFP-Mahajana Wing’s discussion document is remarkable, both for its length, breadth and depth, and the fact that it has been produced by a Sri Lankan political party. Ideological conviction, articulacy, ideas, and policy debate – in short the pith and substance of democratic political leadership – are not things usually associated with the Sri Lankan political culture, and certainly not with its political parties. Yet this is …

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On 27th June 2007, Tony Blair leaves office after a little over a decade as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He leaves office a reviled figure, largely due to the widespread unpopularity of his decision to support the United States in the invasion of Iraq, and its continuing disastrous consequences. Nothing could be further from the aura of almost angelic invincibility that he exuded in May 1997 when he swept into office on a historic landslide and the worst post-war electoral reversal for the Tory party. It is ironic that Iraq should be Blair’s nemesis, given that it was in fact an extension of an interventionist foreign policy, a willingness to use armed force against gross human rights …

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News from Sri Lanka had been disquieting for the last several months with the escalation of conflict, the collapse of the rule of law and the protection of fundamental human rights. It was also becoming clear that the government was rapidly taking leave of its senses and losing sight of any moral compass that it may have possessed.

That, however, did not prevent widespread double-takes and sheer incredulity that greeted the Neanderthal antics reported today, of the expulsion of Tamil people of North-eastern origin from Colombo, enforced, SS-style, by the police. It is possible to cite chapter and verse the violation of international human rights and humanitarian law as well as Sri Lanka’s own constitutional rights that this kind of executive …

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