The Government’s plans – or promises, to be exact – to fully implement the 13th Amendment to the Constitution do not appear to have received the type of warm welcome that the Government may have expected. While Tamil political parties question the point in promising to implement the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which is part of the Constitution, after decades of disregard regarding the same, activists view this as just another election promise, which is part of the Government’s Local Government (LG) election campaign.

Regardless, one very obvious aspect of the overall situation pertaining to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which also promises to end ethnic rifts and political issues that have hindered the reconciliation process, is the lack of trust. Neither Tamil politicians nor activists have adequate reasons to believe that the current Government, which consists of many members of several past governments that failed to fulfil promises concerning the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, would actually do what they promise. The fact that this promise comes at a time of an election, which is highly likely to be disadvantageous to the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP)-United National Party (UNP) alliance, is another factor that affects the extent to which any citizen could trust the said promise.

Sri Lanka has an abundance of trust-related deficits. There is no trust between the public and public representatives, the public authority and the political authority, employees and employers, consumers and goods and service providers, and most importantly, between people of different ethno-religious groups.

The bitter consequences of such trust deficits could be observed in almost all parts of the society, and among them, politicians take a special place, as their actions eroding the trust that has been assigned to them has become an extremely common sight. The worst aspect of this situation is that many politicians do not appear to care about it, despite the fact that technically, a large part of their career, if not the entire one, is dependent on the extent to which the people trust them. 

One of the main reasons for this is the people not taking into account the factors that help determine the trustworthiness of politicians. Instead of an informed understanding of politicians’ character, motives, or future plans, there is a blind attraction to the politicians’ image, promises, and excuses.

An honest evaluation of this issue would reveal that the existing trust deficit between politicians and the people is in fact the root cause of many long-drawn-out issues that even extend to Sri Lanka’s reputation at the international level. That is why, despite a plethora of attractive promises to end ethno-religious rifts, as well as many related social, economic, and political issues, both Sri Lankans and the international community still demand tangible action and refuse to accept reassuring promises in lieu of concrete plans. In fact, that erosion of the trust that the people held in successive governments is one of the major reasons as to why the people hesitate to support the Government’s reform-related plans, regardless of how many times the Government repeats the necessity of reforms for economic revival.

In this context, the trust deficit in the said spheres, or at least between politicians and the people, is one of the key challenges that the Government has to deal with in its plans to get the country out of the economic abyss it has found itself in. It matters not how urgent and decisive the restoration of that trust is; it will certainly take a long time and several generations. However, the sooner the political authority starts that process, the sooner the country would reach a position where it could actually recover.