Political challenges in post-war Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan perspective:

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP

Undoubtedly the greatest challenge in Sri Lanka at present is the restoration of trust. On the one side there is fear that a separatist agenda has not been abandoned, on the other there is fear that unity will be enforced by subordination of minorities to a dominant centre.

Connected with this latter fear are fears about demographic change and militarization. Conversely, the other fears of the majority are in fact distinct from the fear of separatism. They relate to worries about domination by a minority through disproportionate influence on governance.

Rehabilitated ex LTTE combatants

I will look first at the challenges represented by these last worries, since they are the easiest to assuage. They spring from two sources, the first being the high number of Tamils in positions of importance in government in the period leading up to and just beyond independence.

This factor arose however simply because of the better educational facilities available in the North, as well as the commitment to education evinced by Northerners, in view of the paucity of other opportunities in the area.

Education systems

Overcoming any imbalance caused by this is easy, since it only requires ensuring that good facilities are available islandwide, and that students all over the country are committed to education that will develop good administrators as well as entrepreneurs. At the same time it should be recognized that the earlier imbalance was based not on race but on geography, and that there are minority areas with appalling education systems, just as there are many majority areas that have good facilities. Reforms in the education system must be based on equity on a national basis, and the ideal outcome would be employment relating to governance that ensures equitable representation of all communities.

Communication skills

In this regard government must also note that there is a greater commitment to educational excellence on the part of minorities, and this should not be held against them. The recent experience of the Post-Graduate Institute of Management in marketing a Master’s course for administrators is a case in point, given that applications poured in from the North and East, with very few from the rest of the country.

The remedy for that is not to penalize the North and East, but rather to ensure that officials in other areas too understand the value of high level education and training. Incidentally the enormous superiority of the Northern Province and Eastern Province websites to those of other provinces makes clear the greater professionalism of personnel in those Provinces. The failure of government at all levels to take corrective action in the other Provinces is a fault that cannot be laid at the door of the competent.

In this regard I should stress the relative failure on the part of majority community administrators to understand the need to broaden their horizons. Tamil speaking public servants, perhaps because they necessarily understand the limitations of the language they function in most readily, strive as a general principle to become competent in the other languages used in Sri Lanka. Conversely Sinhala speaking public servants are often content to remain functionally monolingual. This then leads to better and more productive relationships on the part of Tamil speaking public servants with international interlocutors, including aid donors. The resentment this sometimes leads to is obviously unfair on the capable, and is best remedied by concerted efforts on the part of all public servants to improve their communication skills.

This element relates to the other worry on the part of the majority community, that there is a built in bias amongst foreigners towards minorities. There is some element of truth in this, but it arises largely from perceptions of discrimination in the past. Unfortunately it is true that there was discrimination, and in particular discrimination involving violence, in the attacks on Tamils in the first six years of the Jayewardene government. Though all that is in the past, its memory has been kept alive by the separatist movement over the years. But overcoming that negative impression cannot be done by further discrimination, it requires instead a much better communication strategy on the part of government, and a strategy based on facts rather than arguments of bias.

International community

I have long argued that government has suffered badly from its incapacity to tell sensibly and accurately the story of the last few years. It is to my mind a very good story, but unfortunately - perhaps an inevitable consequence of democracy - government concentrated more on telling a story that would translate into electoral success, and did not concentrate enough on winning hearts and minds on a wider scale. That must change, and to do so it is necessary both to develop communication skills, and also to work harder at understanding reasons for resentment and the perpetuation of a discourse, including in the international community, that dwells on the deprivation suffered by minorities.

To be continued