Released exclusively on Groundviews, this is a composite document compiled by Yogarajan and Kariapper and made public by them (read the full background to this document in their introduction).
Please note that as Nizam Kariapper pointed out to Groundviews, there is a mistake in the first page of this version of the report – the reference to June 2010 should read as June 2009.
Groundviews received the executive summary of the APRC’s final report today. Download the report here.
Salient features covered in the Executive Summary include:
This interview features Dr. A. C. Visvalingam, President, Citizen’s Movement for Good Governance. I ask him about his advocacy and activism in Sri Lanka, both during war and post-war. Mr. Visvalingam bemoans the fact that a number of articles, despite close ties to Editors and journalists, did not appear in the newspapers, and also speaks of the corporate sector’s risk averse nature especially around content produced that is critical of government and governance. He also speak about the need to introduce civic education in schools to bring about a greater awareness over the role and responsibilities of citizens. He goes on to …
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From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty thousand words of commentary. Tens of thousands more have read …
The present Sri Lankan government has proved that though Sri Lanka is a small country, it has been able to achieve many things that other countries, specially in the West have not been able to. Nowhere in the world has terrorism been crushed and destroyed using only force. “Destroying terrorism is not a crime” the Defense Secretary told Stephen Sackur of the BBC. What was implied is that the means we used cannot be questioned. In other countries a military solution goes hand in hand with a political solution. In Sri Lanka the government believes that there is no political problem and therefore a political solution is not necessary. If that is so what made the LTTE take up arms? …
In Sri Lankan politics, things oftentimes turn topsy-turvy. When people asked for lower prices for basic food items, government lowers prices of luxury cars with absolutely feeble argument that the latter would in turn benefit people. The same thing appears to be unfolding in the sphere of constitutional reforms. In the last Parliamentary Election, one of the key appeals that the United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance made was that the UPFA be given two third seats of the new Parliament so that it can amend the Second Republic Constitution changing the system highly criticized electoral system. People appeared to have accepted the necessity of changing the electoral system that have created intra-party conflict for preferential vote (manapa pore)with heavy campaign expenses …
[Authors note: This was a talk given at the International Conference entitled ‘Taking the Sri Lankan Peace Process Forward’ organised by the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi on May 11, 2010.]
Introduction
For too long, the political processes in Sri Lanka to resolve minority grievances have been preoccupied with the nature of the state (unitary versus federal), unit of devolution of political and administrative power (village, district, or province), language, land, police, and other administrative issues. Very little discussions have taken place regarding the division of financial/fiscal powers between the centre and the peripheries. All the previous political processes have failed on one political and/or administrative issue or the other.
Even the externally imposed provincial council system under the Thirteenth Amendment to the …
Transcript of a presentation made at the session on Forms of Government at the International Conference on Dynamics of Constitution Making in Nepal in a Post-conflict Scenario held in Kathmandu, Nepal in January 2010. The other panelists were the Hon. Bob Rae Q.C. M.P.Canada and Justice Pekka Hallberg, President, Supreme Administrative Court, Finland. The conference was co-hosted by the Nepal Constitution Foundation (NCF), Tribhuvan University Faculty of Law and the Supreme Court Bar Association
Let me begin by thanking you Mr. Chairman and the organizers of the conference for inviting me to speak this morning. We in Sri Lanka watch with very keen interest the constitution making process in Nepal. Those of you who are familiar with the constitutional and …
I must thank Asanga Welikala (‘Publius’) for a reasoned and literate critical engagement with my views. I respond for the twin purposes of clarification where I think my views have been misunderstood, and advancing the discussion, indeed debate.
Asanga chooses to take Colin Irwin’s latest statistics as a one off, ignoring my references to the Marga survey of 2007 and numerous surveys of public opinion in Sri Lanka starting from the Research International Pvt Ltd surveys of 1997 running through the many Peace Confidence index surveys of the last decade. Furthermore, he parleys Colin Irwin’s survey of 2008, which shows a majority in favour of radical decentralisation provided the term federalism is not used, into a real or potential endorsement of …
I had not intended contributing to Groundviews’s commemoration of the first anniversary of the end of the war, for the simple reason that there having been no movement whatsoever on post-war constitutional reform, I did not wish to add another gripe of a general nature to this ‘liberal echo chamber’ of ours. Two publications in the past few weeks however have persuaded me that perhaps there is something worthwhile to discuss about constitutional reform from a liberal perspective. The first was the Peace Poll conducted by Dr. Colin Irwin of the University of Liverpool, which contained some astonishing findings about the state of public opinion with regard to power-sharing, and second, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka’s nuanced conceptualisation of a ‘sustainable peace’ …
Interestingly of the four best pieces I have read on the first anniversary of the war, three are by Indian analyst/commentators, of whom two are military professionals: Gen Ashok K. Mehta’s Manekshaw paper No 22 for the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (New Delhi) on ‘How Eelam war 4 was Won’ (which cannot be read by any patriot or anti-fascist without a lump in one’s throat or mist in one’s eyes), the piece by Col R Hariharan in The Hindu and by PK Balachandran in the Indian Express. The fourth is by a youthful security researcher Sergei de Silva Ranasinghe writing in the respected Australian periodical, The Diplomat.
Within Sri Lanka and among Sri Lankans, the debate on the war may …
My focus in this essay is not what happened in the past but what can be envisioned in the near future particularly with regard to the national question in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan security forces comprehensively defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) one year ago. However, the transformation of peace writ small that was achieved in May 2009 to peace writ large has yet to be achieved and the steps taken in that direction are, in my opinion, inadequate. Although the simultaneous operation of so many variables in complex situations makes predictions almost impossible in social science, it is possible to identify possible future scenarios through the analysis of key drivers that undergird future changes. Here I …
Great Expectations
The greatest challenge facing Sri Lanka is the quest for a just reconciliation to the ethnic issue through a democratic process coupled with a well planned economic strategy which will promote rapid development and equitably shared prosperity. The nation has stagnated in all respects as a consequence of the thirty year old ethnic conflict and now we need to fast track development. However, the negative trend of governance and increasingly adverse international reaction to it leaves little room for optimism in overcoming the numerous obstacles and challenges faced. Despite this, we need to keep hope alive to fulfill our dreams for a better Sri Lanka.
Loss of International Credibility
Can the victory over the LTTE be considered a genuine triumph? Certainly …
INTRODUCTION
On May 17, 2009 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, (LTTE), the major Tamil resistant movement, admitted defeat in the war that was waged without any witness and vowed to silence guns against the Sinhala-Buddhist state. In May 18, Sri Lanka security forces announced that the LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed by “Sri Lanka’s military in a firefight that signaled the effective end to one of Asia’s longest-running military conflicts.”[i] There was and is a strong perception in the Southern Sri Lanka that Sri Lanka would embrace peace because the LTTE has been militarily defeated. This short article would attempt to discuss some issues surrounding the symbols and also would focus on how ethnic symbols are powerful and …
As the dust settles on victory parades and politician speeches, a sense of déjà vu is difficult to shake. The new May Heroes’ Day speeches bear uncanny resemblance to what used to be the November Heroes’ Day speeches – another part of the country and a man with a differently styled moustache but we all recognize that this is not about wars passed but wars in our future, not a lament for dead victims but a war cry that will make future victims; even as victory is declared it is said that there are new enemies that need to be crushed.
The sense of repetition has other resonances too. A new commission on the ethnic conflict is inaugurated with lofty mandates …
Dust is finally settling on the euphoria generated by last year’s military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Old concerns naturally give way to the new and a year later, people have different realities to grapple with including how to keep their home fires burning.
For President Mahinda Rajapakse and the government elected on an overwhelming ‘gratitude vote’ for providing political leadership to crush the Liberation Tigers militarily, the post war call is to rebuild the lives of 22 million people-beyonds the rubble of yesteryear.
If winning the war was no mean task, leading this country post war to new heights and to achieve its true potential will prove a bigger challenge. This requires a collective and concerted effort …
It may be useful to begin by going back over 80 years to the time when , in the mid – nineteen twenties, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, newly returned from Oxford University, vigorously promoted Federalism in Public lectures as well as in a series of newspaper articles. Curiously, the reported responses to his lecture in July 1926 in Jaffna on Federalism were not very positive. That lecture was on the invitation of the Jaffna Students Congress, later re-constituted as the Jaffna Youth Congress. It was the Kandyans who backed Federalism at that time. If the Tamils too had backed Federalism then, we would surely have had a Federal Constitution in1946. Those interested in the subject may consult the monumental publication of C.P.A. …
Editor’s note: An edited version of this article appeared in the Daily Mirror today. A section of the last sentence of the article had been omitted. The original article appears below.
The first anniversary of the end of the war approaches and we are into a celebratory heroes’ week. Whilst the regime will not fail to remind us ad infinitum of the great service it did us in defeating the fascist and ferocious LTTE and continue to accrue political capital on account of it, there is no denying the widespread relief felt over the defeat of the LTTE and the end of the war. There is no denying either, that this was achieved through military victory by the armed forces …
A year after the defeat of the LTTE the Sri Lankan government announced that it will be relaxing some of the Emergency Regulations (ER) that have been in place during the conflict. This is a welcome move by the government. However, there are signals from the government that the ER and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) will continue in some form or the other. There is little doubt that both the PTA and ER have significantly improved the physical security of Sri Lankans in the past and continue to be a mechanism where law enforcement agencies help reduce the threat level. There is also evidence that there is a threat posed by LTTE elements here and abroad to the …
There has been speculation this week that the government is planning to present a Vote on Account rather than a full and proper budget. The DNA/JVP has already announced its opposition to this, and perhaps more importantly, the IMF has indicated that the next tranche of the loan granted last year in order to avert the balance of payments crisis may be affected if there is no proper budget in which the deficit is brought down to the agreed 7% of GDP from the current 9.7%, fiscal reforms are introduced, and public spending is cut to a more sustainable level. Traditionally, the Sri Lankan electorate is not only uninterested in the way governments manage their money, but positively rewards fiscal …
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