The rights dimension in peace

It is indeed important to realise - as President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has pointed out - that the majority of the Lankan citizenry agree to a negotiated solution to our ethnic problem. This is on account of the fact that the SLFP and the UNP, the two biggest political parties, are agreed on this issue.

Therefore, the attitudinal basis has been laid for working out a power-sharing arrangement as an answer to the ethnic problem. If petty political considerations are not allowed to get in the way by our major political parties, the path could be said to have been opened as never before, to a negotiated solution.

While, it needs to be conceded that President Kumaratunga's efforts at finding a political solution over the past 11 years have contributed towards the building of this foundation for peace, the President has also drawn our attention to an important but often underplayed dimension in the conflict by addressing the issue of the rights of the Tamil people. The President said it was important to adopt a rights-based approach to resolving the conflict by recognizing that the Tamil community had been subjected to injustices over the years.

It is important that this dimension of the violation of rights is brought into public discourse. Very often it is forgotten that it is the violation of a community's rights and liberties that compels it to rebel and even take up arms against the State. More than any other Lankan political leader, President Kumaratunga kept this rights based approach in focus.

It is vitally important that this aspect of the problem is kept in mind at this important juncture in our post-independence political history. For, the question is very often asked with ample sarcasm, as to what the Tamil people lack or, in what ways they have been discriminated against. Such posers are likely to be asked at present when the challenge of taking the peace process forward reasserts itself, amid a hardening of attitudes in some quarters.

Fortunately, as the President points out, the majority of our political parties are for a negotiated solution except for two, but it is little realised that there is a price to be paid for peace at this point in time. This price consists in our evolving a political solution on the basis of power devolution and power devolution needs to be considered an answer to the problem of the violation of the rights of the Tamil people.

Power is devolved to meet the collective rights of the communities and this is the rationale for proposing a federal solution to our conflict.

Those hoping to be at the pinnacle of the power structure in this country, need to come to grips with these issues. President Kumaratunga showed in ample measure that she had a sound grasp of these questions and thereby helped in broadening the terms of local political discourse. Those coming to power would need to carry this process forward within the same framework of ideas. This challenge cannot be glossed over. It would be best to meet the challenge head on right away.

While at this task, political leaders would need to remember that they cannot revert to the language of majoritarian chauvinism.

Human and fundamental rights should be considered entitlements of all our communities. Fundamental rights could never be considered the prerogative and preserve of only one community. They should be enjoyed by all if we are to bring about a just political order which would bring peace.

Generally speaking, a unitary constitution does not provide for equal rights satisfactorily or for power devolution. It is only a federal system of government which could pave the way for equality.