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Prof. C. Suriyakumaran

Prof. Suriyakumaran has been a participant in and observer of the story of devolution and the ethnic question from as early as the Forties when, working for S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, he had been closely associated in the ideas, first to establish Regional Councils and later, at the B-C pact.

In this interview Daily News asks him about the LTTE's proposed Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) and its implications and prospects.

by Florence Wickremage

Question: How do you see the background to the LTTE proposal - what led to it?

A: In a personal letter I addressed to the Prime Minister in January '02. I stated therein:

(1) "There is a vacuum across all elements of our society, political and social, about both the actual nature of the conflict and the needs for its solution, based as much on misperceptions of history, as simple confusions on terms for them.

(2) This has led to persistent insistences on exclusivisms, or on self-arrogated functions of governance, supervision and controls.

(3) All past peace processes - from the BC pact on - simply failed, for these reasons, in particular a lack of understanding of some truths on governance, self-expression or satisfaction, not indeed because of failure in making the humanitarian concessions. There were absolute mental vacua on 'alternative structures of governance' that would satisfy the expectations of those negotiating on the one hand, and the basic considerations and needs of government on the other.

(4) Commendable as all the humanitarian initiatives now on-going are, they can never substitute for the 'frame of thinking' of a mutually desirable structural solution that must be already in hand. This, nobody, 'on this side of the House' as yet has. (Parenthetically, it is essential to note that those lastly empowered with State powers, despite statements now, had - either by inclination or inability - no answers to this central need of a frame of thinking for solution).

(5) Polarised positions have been, and still are now, in place. Two countries vs one country argumentations (the Thimpu 'principles', the Sihala Urumaya 'principles' and others); separation, federation, monolithism (only with varying degrees of deconcentration, or decentralisation, or devolution) are all being argued out, as if peace talks can come to any sensible solution on basis of a little here and a litte there."

These thoughts have been catapulted again to the forefront by the latest developments, of the LTTE's proposal for an interim "Self Governing Authority for the North-East".

"Beginning just prior to the Tokyo Aid Conference as an imbroglio on the nature of a proposed 'Interim Administration' structure (to replace SIHRN) that amorphous bureaucratic body) to handle the development work of the North-East, the concepts and intentions have now rapidly advanced, one may say changed, to a structure for an Interim Council arrangement of which both Government and LTTE yet seem unclear as to their final nature, content, or scope.

So we are now as if skipped a circuit, from an administrative framework (ad interim) to a political framework that was earlier expected to be formulated succeeding the first.

Before we go to look now at the LTTE's proposed Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA), let us also be clear that for the purposes even originally set, namely 'to serve properly the organisational needs of the large reconstruction and development process' contemplated - by the LTTE and the Government - even an 'Interim Administration', as the specified 'authority', would have access to and directive powers over all the administrative bodies and agencies in the region, required for it to discharge its functions fully, including eg. police or land matters as relevant and needed for the discharge of the functions or duties of the 'administrative authority'. It could not be otherwise, this being inherent in any such authority'.

Question: Well then, where does the LTTE's proposal for the Interim Self Governing Authority stand in all this?

A: The first matter of note is its 'approach'. It is, as stated, its responsible to the Government's own proposals put out in July. Both are ostensibly addressing 'the same issues', of handling the vast needs, of relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction and development - as seen above - the one as an administrative authority and the other as a 'political' (self governing) authority. Yet the gulf is a 'yawning' one.

It would seem that while the Government expected 'political' aspects of 'interim' authority at the regional level to be taken up subsequently, the LTTE, by its 'proposal', clearly opted for what it saw as indispensable 'political' functions to carry out, with any effect, the 'interim' functions themselves (of NERF and related issues).

The Government simply cannot now discuss this with the LTTE, without itself first looking at the needed 'political' functions of any sound Interim Administration or authority. So, any timetable, and agenda, for the next talks must have from the Government, its own (internal) additional thinking on the so-called political facets of effective functioning of any administration or authority.

Yet, gaps need not be that large, as thought, as pointed by us here, for even any effective 'administrative' authority needs wider powers than superficially conceived at one time.

Question: So where do we stand now?

A: Let us list these:

(1) We have gone beyond mere administrative authority in the region, to 'politico-administrative authorities'.

(2) We still have a government's 'traditional' inability (since the 13th amendment was supposed to be implemented!) to face up to the meanings and contents of true 'devolution' itself (let alone any recollections of the sabotaged B-C pact framework)

(3) Instances abound. As examples:

- on land, the well-known principles of distinction between 'ownership of resources', and 'use of resources'; or

- on 'law and order', the absolute need to the region for authority in matters essential to its discharge of its functions; or

- on finance, in the known concepts of 'fiscal devolution' as in a 'sharing of resources' (including the principles of 'derivation' and 'earmarking'); as opposed to the totally unrelated concept of 'allocation of resources': or.

- similarly, in foreign investments, borrowings, trading, marketing, and of course above all

-development planning.

Question: How do you see our way forward ?

A: The Government in its response to the need to replace 'SIRHN' through its own 'interim' offer of July, clearly allowed itself to fall between two stools of neither an effective alternative, nor true devolution.

No matter. It can, must, pick itself up and look at the full devolutionary structure now.

Indeed the best now, for the LTTE and the Government (and so-called Government in opposition) would be to take the next discussions as being in order to put in place, mutually, this autonomous regional devolutionary structure (in truth, as other provinces in the country should also have had, but do not!)

Government and opposition in joint agenda, would be wonderful - NOT impossible! Finally - now that this 'distance' has, perforce, been travelled - of 'devolution' and not 'administration' alone, - the Government should have the mettle to structure, by constitutional amendment process, the long needed participatory system of governance at the centre, in central government - something that not only never existed so far, but which would have averted all the horrors of our last 50 years - as I had it, in my writings past, 'The 50-years Folly of a Uni-Ethnic Governmental Structure in which parliamentary decisions were made by uni-ethnic majorities (leave aside volatile 'flights' of mini-ethnic groups from one major party to the other) and not by a majority-based on issues.

These principles, of participatory government at the centre (and I say, in the region) would allow (a) complete freedom of movement to all peoples everywhere, and, (b) extension to Sinhalese in the 'North' of the same rights and privileges as to the Tamils in 'South', without making them even into 'issues'!

Question: Do you have any concluding thoughts?

A: For now, as the well-known Regi Siriwardena, quoting H. W. Auden cited in a foreword to my own writings on our ethnic issue, "Enlightenment ...... which if it had not been driven away, would have averted tragedy and disaster, that habit forming pain, that we must suffer all again"!

Finally, some 'latest developments' in central government, which may be seen as a 'block', quite contrarily, is an opportunity now for 'all sides' to embrace these principles of central government, of devolution, and of development. We shall have to wait, to see - if we have grown up!

Yet, they could take shorter than we think!

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