Thursday, 16 January 2014

Sri Lanka Perspectives – December 2013


Col R Hariharan

Highlights

Growing authoritarianism: A number of actions of Sri Lanka government show growing authoritarianism in the name of patriotism and hyper sensitivity to any allegations of war crimes and human rights violations without doggedly refusing to take internationally acceptable action to clear its record and to attend to aberrations of governance.

TNA on collision course: The Northern Provincee Chief Minister appear to be on a collision course as indicated by the recent happenings which have highlighted the limited powers of the provincial councils. This is likely to get worse as Sri Lanka becomes more sensitive in March 2014 when Sri Lanka faces the UN Human Rights Council on its response to earlier resolutions on its accountability.

Growing authoritarianism

A number of actions of Sri Lanka government appear to confirm the fears of Ms Navneetham Pillai, UN Commissioner for Human Rights that the country might be heading towards authoritarian rule. Recent instances show the government’s growing authoritarianism in the name of patriotism and sensitivity to allegations of war crimes and human rights violations against it. 
Major General Jagath Dias, commanded 57 Division deployed in the Vanni during the last Eelam war. Later he served in Sri Lanka embassy in Germany. At present he is at the Army Headquarters in Colombo. General Dias had been dogged by allegations of war crimes wherever he served abroad.  

In spite of this background, Army Headquarters had nominated General Dias as its representative to attend an International Red Cross (ICRC) meeting in Australia. However, Australia refused to issue a visa to him to attend the event. The ICRC spokesperson explained the fiasco as “procedural matters relating to international travel were beyond its control,” whatever that meant. 

Sri Lanka government peeved with the embarrassing turn of events was reported carrying out an “urgent review” of its relationship with ICRC; however, there was no report of such a review of its relations with Australia which denied the Visa. The Colombo daily Island questioning the wisdom of such a move as the ICRC called the move as “most disturbing.” The daily raised the question “Does that mean we are seriously considering asking the ICRC to leave the country over Major General Jagath Dias not being able to travel to Australia for an ICRC event to be held there?”

Sri Lanka has black listed Geoffrey Dobbs – an Australian hotelier who owns a chain of four luxury properties in the Galle region - from entering Sri Lanka because he had flown four Sri Lanka’s flags upside down in one of his properties near the home of Provincial governor Ms Kumari Balasuriya. Driven by patriotic concerns, she painted him as “very undesirable” and initiated the ban.

Apparently the Dobbs issue was not so simple. The Opposition has alleged the action against Dobbs was part of an official strategy to take control of his money-spinning luxury hotels. Justice Balasuriya quickly denied it. Even if the allegation was true and Dobbs did commit the offence, why was not he allowed to enter Sri Lanka where he could be hauled up before a court of law?

Nobody raises such questions in Sri Lanka for fear of Many media scribes who had been critical of Rajapaksa's governance were chased out of the country or done to death by “unknown” thugs for their “anti national” attitudes. But what can one expect from a regime that had sacked the Supreme Court chief without a trial for writing a critical judgement against a draft bill of the government.

TNA on collision course

Despite President Rajapaksa’s assurance of “fullest support” to Northern Province Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran at his swearing in ceremony, the relations between the Chief Minister and Governor Chandrasiri appear to be on a collision course as indicated by the recent happenings which have highlighted the limited powers of the provincial councils. The relations started getting sour after the Chief Minister proposed to set up the departments of housing and housing in the appropriations budget 2014 he presented. The Governor observed that this was beyond his power as provincial council could only set up Authorities and not departments as per the Constitution.  

In another instance, the Governor appointed Mrs Vijayalakshmi as chief secretary ignoring the Chief Minister’s request that he should be consulted before he appoints civil servants in the province. Again the Governor rejected the request, and went ahead with the appointment quoting constitutional provision in support of action.   

The Chief Minister in his budget speech had reiterated the demand for replacing Chandrasiri, a former army general, with a civilian and withdrawal of the army from the province as it was interfering with normal life.

All the demands of the Chief Minister were in keeping with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA)’s electoral promises within the ambit of its demand for greater autonomy for Tamils.

The Government is unlikely to accept these demands as it would be contradicting its strategy of keeping alive the bogey of resurrection of Tamil Tigers. Moreover, the Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is calling the shot on all issues relating to the armed forces and Tamil insurgency, has already shot down the demands. He has made it clear that military pull out would be disastrous for the country as it could lead to the rise of LTTE under the patronage of the TNA.

So it is not surprising that the TNA had rejected the President’s recent suggestion to participate in the parliamentary select committee (PSC) deliberations on provincial autonomy. In any case the PSC is unlikely to make any progress as its composition is heavily weighted against the TNA which has only two members in the 17 member PSC.

TNA has reiterated that it would not participate in the PSC unless the government comes out with some proposal as such deliberations earlier had not produced results. In this environment, TNA-Colombo confrontation is likely to get heated up further in March 2014 when Sri Lanka is taken to task at the UN Human Rights Council for its unsatisfactory response to resolution on accountability for its conduct during the Eelam War –a touchy issue for both Rajapaksa and the TNA.
Written on December 31, 2013
Courtesy: South Asia Security Trends, Vol 7 No 12 January 2014
www.security-risks.com

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