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US urged to find meaningful devolution in an undivided SL

05 Dec 2021

By Pamodi Waravita The US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs has written to US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, urging the State Department to focus on a “durable political solution” which provides “meaningful devolution of power in an undivided Sri Lanka”. “We strongly urge the State Department to refocus its efforts in Sri Lanka to emphasise the importance of a substantive and durable political solution. The US has rightly championed justice and human rights in Sri Lanka. Advancing these values will require solutions to political questions that remain unanswered years after the end of the civil war, including the meaningful devolution of power in an undivided Sri Lanka,” Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory W. Meeks has said in his letter to Blinken. Whilst Meeks has emphasised that it is the Sri Lankan people who should lead the debate on the matter, supported and facilitated by the US, the outcome must meet the “needs of all Sri Lankan citizens, including Tamil and Muslim people”. During their recent visit to the US, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarians M.A. Sumanthiran PC and Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, along with representatives of the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), met with a number of senior US political figures, including members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. “The particular focus of the current engagement was to call for a proactive US Government role in promoting a holistic approach to reconciliation, which would include addressing the root cause of conflict and human rights violations, the denial of political rights to the Tamil people. The delegation emphasised that addressing the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil people for equality, justice, peace, dignity, and meaningful power devolution is critical in guaranteeing non-recurrence of history,” the GTF said in a statement at the time. Speaking in Parliament last Saturday (4), Sumanthiran raised concerns that the Government is promising devolution of power internationally, whilst promoting the concept of “One Country, One Law” domestically. Sumanthiran said: “While to the world you say that you will enhance devolution and settle this matter once and for all, something else is being said domestically. A slogan titled ‘One country, One Law’ is being projected. If ‘One country, One Law’ is to become reality, then there cannot be any legislative power in the provinces. How can provinces exercise legislative powers if there is going to be ‘One country, One Law’? As it is in our Constitution, there is legislative power devolved to the provinces; on some matters exclusively to the provinces, and therefore there cannot be one law for the entire country. “The promise to India and to the world has been that you will enhance that power of devolution. That there will be more devolution. That the 13th Amendment would be implemented in full, but it doesn’t stop there. It says ‘and building upon it, so as to achieve meaningful devolutions, conceding thereby that even the 13th Amendment to the constitution does not confer a meaningful scheme of devolution, that it must go beyond that’.” The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1978 and supported by the Government of India, created the provincial councils election system which led to the establishment of provincial councils in each province in the country, in an attempt at the devolution of power. However, the provincial councils have since garnered many criticisms, with some members of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) recently calling for its repeal. Since 2017, provincial council elections have not been held as the then Government attempted to introduce legislative changes to the Provincial Councils Act to to reform the process. The new system envisioned a hybrid-style system of both first past the post (FPTP) and proportional representation as opposed to the current system of proportional representation. Foreign Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris said last month that a draft of a new Constitution, as formulated by a nine-member expert committee, will be presented in Parliament in early January 2022.


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