The legacy of President Kumaratunga

AS THE country assesses President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga's services to Sri Lanka as Head of State and Government it is increasingly evident that her greatest contribution to the common weal has been the paradigm change she has helped bring about in conceptualising a solution to our ethnic conflict.

To be sure, the "federal option" is not the brainchild of the President but there is no denying that the latter, more than any other politician who has held the foremost public position in our land so far, has consistently advocated it as the solution to our problem and thereby increased public awareness on its merits.

As a result, the "federal option" has come to occupy a dominant position in local political discourse on the National Question.

The President's crowning achievement in this regard was the year 2000 draft constitution, which the opposition deemed suitable to reduce to tatters and put to the torch in Parliament, although the chief opposition Presidential candidate too is today waxing eloquent about the merits of federalism.

It is no exaggeration to state that it was President Kumaratunga's doughty stand on devolution of power which has today helped forge a general consensus on this issue - that is, devolution of power is the most effective solution to the conflict.

Had the opposition stood by the President when the year 2000 draft constitution was presented in Parliament, the history of Sri Lanka could very well have been somewhat different.

While no purpose would be served now by wondering over what things might have been, we consider it incumbent on whoever comes to power on November 17 to perpetuate the priceless legacy President Kumaratunga has bequeathed to them in the form of the conceptualisation that devolved power within a geographically intact Sri Lanka, is the most effective solution to our conflict.

An inability to advocate this solution would be tantamount to pandering to the forces of ethnic and religious extremism, whose agenda would only strengthen the forces of disintegration in Sri Lanka.

Accordingly, the incoming President is obliged to continue from where President Kumaratunga left off. The level of awareness of the people on federalism and power devolution needs to be raised and this involves honest and hard campaigning.

It is very crucial that the country's leaders learn the lessons of history. There is wishful thinking in some quarters of a 1956-type national resurgence. This amounts to attempting the impossible because 1956 is a closed chapter in our history.

The national resurgence of those times was a spontaneous reaction to the socio-political circumstances in which Sri Lanka was then placed.

These circumstances do not inhere in the present moment. The experience of 1956 was an important phase in the process of decolonization in that it ensured that political power passed into hands of important sections of the people from being centralized in a Westernised political elite which did not have many commonalities with the people.

The events of 1956 served the purpose of vesting political power in the broader masses of the people.

However the challenges of the present are entirely different to those of 1956. Today, the principal challenge is nation-building and not the furthering of hegemonic control of the State by a single group.

It is the latter tendency which has wetted the knife of separatism and driven sections of the Tamil people to take up arms for a breakaway state.

Thus, our nation-building process has run awry. The challenge of the times is to make the nation-building process evolve on the correct lines. Rather than think of a separate state, all communities of the land should be encouraged to make Sri Lanka their home.

This could be achieved by making all our communities equal partners in the exercising of political power.