Analysis and Prescription: undercurrents in the peace process
Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary-General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
One of the reasons I accepted with alacrity the post of Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat was that after intensive writing a new challenge seemed welcome. During my sabbatical I had written frenetically, and over the twelve months that followed the various books I had worked on had been readied for publication. By June 2007, apart from a new edition of ‘Liberal Values for South Asia’, which the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung had finally decided to reissue, and the bringing together of my trilogy of novels about ethnic conflict and political violence in Sri Lanka, under the title ‘The Terrorist Trilogy’, I had nothing constructive to look forward to.
I don’t think very many people knew about the publications. Even ‘Ideas for Constitutional Reform’, the revised version of the seminal collection Chanaka Amaratunga had put together nearly twenty years previously, had scarcely been reviewed in the media. In general we are not a country that values books or ideas adequately, rarely reviewing them in a discursive manner, rarely indeed looking at ideas very deeply. I am therefore quite sure that my books had nothing to do with my being selected for this position. However, as it happened, all the books that have appeared or will appear this year are singularly appropriate for the task I have taken on.
Ideas for Constitutional Reform, Chanaka Amaratunga Foundation / International Book House, January 2007
‘Ideas for Constitutional Reform’ was the product of the informed idealism of Chanaka Amaratunga, founder of the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka, the first intellectual in the country to point out the need for a principled approach to politics that did not rely on a socialist foundation. When he hit the political scene, J R Jayewardene was running riot, institutionalizing authoritarianism through his preposterous constitution and its first six crude amendments. Opposition to this was led by left wing politicians who saw the open economy as the root of all evil, not J R’s refusal to open up anything except trade to the private sector. Meanwhile, inclined as he himself was to the racist wing of the UNP, the minorities were being ruthlessly alienated, with the persecutions and the pogroms of 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983.
It was Chanaka who first pointed out that the crisis we faced was a crisis on institutions. And the answer he believed was less government, not more. In a series of seminars that brought together the best minds in Sri Lanka, Colvin R de Silva of the old left, Gamini Dissanayake the only person in the UNP who took scholarship seriously, Neelan Tiruchelvam, G L Pieris, H L de Silva, Qadri Ismail, C R de Silva, and so on, he explored structures for executive and legislature and judiciary and the media too that would best suit the requirements of the nation in the continuing context of individual liberty. In revising the book, which is now out of print, and producing a shorter volume, I concentrated on issues that are now of critical importance in the ongoing debate about constitutional reform. Devolution, which maximizes decision making power amongst those affected by decisions, an electoral system that is both just and ensures clearcut representation of constituencies, a second chamber that provides representation for the periphery at the center, a judiciary that actively promotes individual rights – these are some of the areas the revised book, which came out in January, explore in succinct and informative essays.
Sadly, I don’t think the book is still the indispensable text it ought to be, for politicians as well as students. It never will be, if we do not replace the abstract notion of literacy on which we pride ourselves with truly functional literacy. But it is there, for anyone who cares, even if they might disagree about details of implementation, about the principles on which a Sri Lankan constitution should be framed.
Declining Sri Lanka: Terrorism and Ethnic Violence as the legacy of J R Jayewardene, 1906-1996, Cambridge University Press Delhi, July 2007