MINISTERS MAY COME AND GO
It is said that Sri Lanka has the world's largest cabinet. This may or may not be true, and it is not necessary to consult sources and resources to find out whether it is correct or not. In any event it cannot be denied that Sri Lanka has a cabinet too large for a country whether big or small. We may see more UNP members becoming ministers in the near future and some ministers even leaving the cabinet. These motions of ministers to and from the cabinet could be termed loose motions as the movements are not bonded by strong convictions. What is important as far as the country is concerned is whether it would remain a sovereign state, and specifically a unitary sovereign state, after these movements of the ministers.
The ministers represent various political forces, and now we have a cabinet that represents almost the entire spectrum in respect of so called devolution of power, with the exception of separatism represented by the LTTE. In that sense nobody could complain of pan Sinhala or pan unitary, and if this is not power sharing at the centre by different ethnic communities, religious groups, political ideologues etc. In that sense nobody could complain of a dictatorship, and we may even boast of being the most democratic country in the world. One could ask the Tamil political parties whether a parallel situation would ever arise in the Northern Province provincial council, or even the Eastern Province Provincial council.
However, the most important problem that the government has to solve is the Tamil problem. It is not due to any discrimination of the Tamils (or the Muslims for that matter) by the Sinhalas, for the Tamils enjoy more privileges in Sri Lanka than in any other country including India, and Muslims enjoy more privileges in this country than in any other non Muslim country (and certainly they enjoy much more privileges than those enjoyed by Buddhists, not necessarily Sinhala Buddhists, in any Muslim country). As we have said number of times in these columns, Tamils, especially their leaders, under the British were more privileged than the Sinhalas and their leaders in general, and when the Tamil leaders began to lose those privileges with the introduction of universal franchise in 1931, the latter opposed not only universal franchise but majority democracy, and interpreted the loss of privileges by the Tamil elite as discrimination against the Tamils in general. The opposition to majoritarism stems from this reluctance to give up the privileges enjoyed by the Tamil elite with the patronage of the British.
There may be people such as G. L. Peiris who think that words such as unitary and federal are not relevant or cannot be defined or even meaningless, and we should get on with the job of finding a solution to the Tamil problem without getting mislead by the words. Then there may be "intellectuals" who would tell us in their or somebody else's wisdom that there was no unitary state even in ancient Sri Lanka, the writ of the kings being confined to twenty five or fifty square miles from the capital. Even if someone had calculated the area in Sinhala units and converted it into British units what is the evidence for this outrageous claim? When there is evidence from inscriptions, edicts etc. to the contrary why these sociologists and historians hell bent on denying the existence of an eksesath rajya in ancient Sinhale could be explained as a result of the colonial mentality that would support British concepts and attitudes.
Though unitary is not the same as eksesath due to the presence of epas, mapas and others for administrative purposes, legislatively eksesath rajya was not different from unitary state. The solution to the problem is to go back to the eksesath rajya or unitary state with decentralized administration, and of course incorporating the Tamils and other ethnic groups into the already existing nation without losing their ethnic identities. The nation building exercise from scratch as preached by the western intellectuals and their local golays who cannot think but who are trained to make presentations of the ideas of their masters and mistresses, can be easily overlooked.
APRC which is supposed to come out with a so called solution may have to wait till the SLFP finishes its deliberations on proposing alternative to the Tissa Vitharana proposals. The MEP has already rejected these proposals while the JVP is of the view that it is not necessary even to discuss the proposals. It is very likely that the SLFP will come out with a proposal that would different from the proposals of the LSSP leader. However, what is important is the Mahinda Chinthana which speaks of a unitary state, even if words may not mean anything to G. L. Peiris and to other like minded people. Now the hundred million rupee question is whether the new entrants to the government would follow the Mahinda Chinthana . It is well known that political parties such as the LSSP, CP, do not agree with Mahinda Chinthana though they continue to hold portfolios under the President. Would at least some of the UNP ministers follow the Marxist twins in the cabinet to federalism?
It is not difficult to define words such as federal and unitary. India has a unitary constitution though it may appear to be federal in some aspects. Indian constitution is sometimes called pseudo federal because of the apparent federal characteristics and it is never called pseudo unitary as it is unitary. The ultimate criterion that would decide whether a state is federal or unitary is whether the central government has the power to take into its hands the powers that have been devolved to the periphery. The power of the central government to dissolve the peripheral "governments" is also one such power that the centre in a unitary government possesses. Within unitary states and federal states there may be differences as to the powers that have been devolved, and in certain federal states the peripheries would have more powers that cannot be taken back under any circumstances than the peripheries in some other federal states. Confederation is the extreme case where two states come together to form a single state, without any one of them losing any power to the other. In a confederation there could be a pseudo centre but the two states remain independent for all purposes. Confederation is a union of two states and not a union of peripheries as in the case of a federal state. These definitions could be refined and one does not have to hide behind slogans such as federal and unitary are mere words.
The Mahinda Chinthana is very clear about the unitary character of the constitution, and no matter what the new ministers think about devolving power the unitary character has to remain. The ministers from parties such as the LSSP and CP enjoy all the privileges and luxuries associated with portfolios not because of federalism that they have been agitating but due to the unitary state that is clearly stated in the Mahinda Chinthana. These parties were unable to have a single MP elected by the people, and having been appointed on the national list of the sandhanaya they cannot even attempt to impose their views on the government. Their very existence as ministers is due to the unitary state that Mahinda Chinthana promised to retain. The UNP ministers in the government may have canvassed for a federal state at the election campaign as UNP candidates, but the people have given a mandate against the wish of the UNP. Thus in the government they may function as UNP ministers, but they cannot impose a proposal rejected by the people on the very same people. The ministers may come and go but the unitary character of the constitution shall remain. If the ministers whether new or old try to be funny with their federalism all that the President has to do is to dissolve the Parliament and challenge such ministers to win a mandate for their pet ideas at an election. As at present the mandate that has been given to the government is clear and the ministers who failed to convince the electorate of the marvels of a federal state have no option but to bow down to the verdict of the people.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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