Back to the 13th Amendment 

President Ranil Wickremesinghe this week assured the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution as well as the establishment of the Social Justice Commission ensuring all sections of the population can live in harmony.

During his speech at the National Thai Pongal Festival held in Jaffna Durga, President Wickremesinghe said that the Social Justice Commission will be established in order to build a country where everyone can live in harmony, by solving the problems of the people belonging to all sections of the population and that the Government expects to fully implement the 13th Amendment. He further said that a statement on the Government’s steps toward reconciliation will be made public in February and that a meeting of party leaders will be convened next week to discuss the matter. President Wickremesinghe also stated that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work will be accelerated in order to provide relief to the families of the disappeared.

It is natural to be sceptical of these statements which are familiar to the minority communities and have been elusive to materialise into action for the last eight decades. However, for whatever motive or agenda if the President is willing to spend the little political capital he has on resolving the protracted ethnic problem, then even with a degree of scepticism, it is commendable.

At the very outset that a president has to commit to the “full implementation” of what is already enshrined in the constitution by itself is demonstrative of the lack of progress in addressing the national question. When the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was introduced in 1987, it was done so as a fulfilment of the bilateral, Indo-Lanka Accord. It was considered as a minimum standard of devolution that was expected to quell the calls for separation.

Soon after independence, the principal demand for the decentralisation of power came in the form of the desire of the Tamil people for territorial autonomy in the northern and eastern areas of the island within the framework of a federal Sri Lankan constitution. Throughout the post-independence years this issue dominated politics in Sri Lanka, and by the 1970s, in the absence of any success in securing federal autonomy, Tamil nationalism had taken to the espousal of a separate Tamil state in the north and east. By the 1980s, the unresolved claims to power-sharing reached a situation of serious armed conflict between the State and Tamil militant groups. The 13th Amendment attempted to address some of these grievances including the elevation of the Tamil language as an official language of the State, a measure that should have been done either in 1948 or 1956, when Sinhala was made the sole official language of the country.

Since 1987 all provincial councils other than in the north and the east have functioned continuously. If at all, these years have demonstrated the limited scope of devolution rather than the excess of the same in providing a reasonable service to the people at a provincial level. The two main outstanding areas regarding police powers and responsibility concerning land registration have been addressed through numerous constitutional proposals brought forward since 1999. Neither of these practical measures are in any way a threat to the unity or territorial integrity of the State. They have not been implemented thus far purely due to the lack of political will and more importantly political courage to stand up to the malicious racism that prevents any form or degree of concession being granted to the ethnic minorities in the country.

For years leaders have not only promised the full implementation of the 13th Amendment, but the likes of Mahinda Rajapaksa had at one point professed a “13 plus” solution going beyond the minimum levels of devolution granted in the current Constitution. The full implementation of provisions which are already enshrined in the Constitution is not a favour granted to anyone but a basic duty of the State. President Wickremesinghe can start his endeavour to bring a lasting solution to the ethnic conflict by ensuring the implementation of the constitution as demanded by law.