Devolution will lead to dissolution of the State

Dr Kamal WICKREMASINGHE

During the 2013 budget speech in Parliament President Mahinda Rajapaksa commented that “devolution should not lead the country to separatism but it needs to be a mechanism that would unify the country.” This highly relevant remark by the President elevated the debate on the devolution process to another level because the proponents of devolution have not addressed this important aspect previously.

The foreign-funded NGO operatives and others who have led the campaign for devolution have not provided the Sri Lankan people with any compelling social, political or economic reasons as to why the government needs to continue to rely on this ‘dead-rope’ of a solution to the ethnic problem. They seem to expect the people to believe the unproven hypothesis that devolution of political and administrative powers is the essential prerequisite for the integration of Tamils to the Sri Lankan polity, without question. Any questioning of the hypothesis or counter views on the subject, irrespective of the level of logic involved, is immediately branded as arising from majoritarian ‘Sinhala chauvinist’ quarters.

The only reasoning the proponents of devolution have been producing in support of it is the need to avert the potential ‘wrath’ of their pay masters, euphemistically referred to as the ‘international community’ that does not necessarily include India. They assert that the Sri Lankan government and the people are compelled to embrace devolution uncritically and ‘meddling with it’ in any way or reneging on it would amount to a serious breach of trust of the West. The response in Parliament of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP V. Saravanapavan that “The Thirteenth Amendment was India’s baby and, therefore, it should play a role in convincing the Sri Lankan government not to repeal it” sought to bring India in to the picture.

Those clamouring for devolution, led by the NGOs, do not seem to see the need to examine the international experience of devolution in order to determine its suitability as a remedy for Sri Lanka’s particular ethnic issues. They seem to be taking great care to shift focus away from the negative consequences of devolution, mainly its role as a disintegrative force, in countries where they have experimented with it.

Francois Mitterand

Rajiv Gandhi

The Sri Lankan people on the other hand, by their show of distinct lack of enthusiasm to vote at the Provincial Council (PC) elections, seem to be asking as to why they should be embracing this white elephant simply to satisfy the wishes of those who are hell-bent on causing the disintegration of the Sri Lankan state and the nation in to tribal homelands and communal rancour. The foreign funded NGOs and their pay masters conveniently overlook the simple geographical fact that Sri Lanka is too small a territory for a devolved, decentralised or Federal system of government.

India’s possible concerns need not come in to the calculations of the future of the devolution attempt by the powers that be, because India will clearly understand the need to review the PC experiment based on its social and economic costs, and the largely un-accrued benefits we were told would be forthcoming. We need not worry about the ‘wrath’ of anyone else.

India may not be as keen on devolution as in 1987

As to India’s position on devolution of power in Sri Lanka, it would not be surprising to find that the current Indian administration and the Ministry of External Affairs bureaucracy in particular, do not see the provisions of the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord between Rajiv Gandhi and J.R. Jayewardene as the be all and end all of solutions to the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. As revealed by the late J.N. Dixit, High Commissioner in Sri Lanka between 1985 and 1989 in his memoirs Assignment Colombo, the policy elements of the Accord were devised not by professional Indian Foreign Service (IFS) bureaucrats, but by the Indian Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) with minimal input from President Jayewardene’s Secretariat in Colombo. The haste in which the Accord was prepared and imposed on Sri Lanka vouched for the lack of forethought exercised in its design about future implications for India.

Though the Indian PMO convinced Rajiv Gandhi to force the Accord down President Jayewardene’s throat at his weakest moment, soon they realised that helping the separatists secure a de facto Eelam in Sri Lanka through such a harebrained scheme would ultimately pose the same problems to India a Tamil ‘Eelam’ would have posed: a devolved ‘Province’ dedicated to ethnic Tamis with extensive devolution of powers is Eelam by any other name. Professional IFS bureaucrats soon became aware that separatist forces in South India are waiting, rubbing their hands with glee. Naturally, India will be looking for a way out.

The removal of India from among the so-called ‘international community’ keen to see devolution in Sri Lanka reduces the grouping to the so-called West, our neo-colonial masters. Like many ideological prescriptions they have been throwing at us over the years, the idea of devolution is of course a disguised recipe for destroying Sri Lanka’s national integrity: they tell us devolution is the sole means of efficient and effective governance we could have to serve the needs of diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious identities. Incredibly, they expect us to believe that devolution is a means of achieving national unity and political stability. The international experience point to the exact opposite!

Devolution, identity, and ethno-regionalism

There is strong evidence from several Western democracies that devolution introduced as a strategy for managing ethno-regional conflict gives rise to ethnic-nationalist challenges to the integrity of the shared state, by way of demands for increasing levels of autonomy leading to outright secession. Devolution creates opportunities and incentives to mount such demands by ethno-regions, threatening ethnic conflict and therefore democratic stability of the country.

Changing patterns of political identities, inspirations, and voting in regional elections in the autonomous communities of countries such as Spain, Belgium and Canada have demonstrated changes in demographic, institutional, political, and cultural trends towards secession with serious implications for the democratic state. Even in France where regions do not enjoy as extensive authority as the provinces of Spain or Belgium, the administrative decentralisation seems to have given rise to cracks in the unitary state model with a strong civic identity.

Professor Dawn Brancati of the University of Washington at St Louis argues, based on statistical analysis of electoral data from 30 democracies, that devolution increases both ‘anti-regime rebellion’ and “inter-communal conflict”. She suggests that regionally organised groups increase ethnic conflict and secessionism by “reinforcing regionally based ethnic identities, producing legislation that favours certain groups over others, and mobilising groups to engage in ethnic conflict and secessionism or by supporting terrorist organisations that participate in these activities.” In essence, she concludes that devolution is not an effective tool for the management of ethnic conflict, but introduces the real risk of aggravating ethnic enmities.

Devolution experience in Spain, Belgium and Canada

Spain is a country with a long history of inter-regional and inter-cultural conflict with periods of war between regional entities recognised by contemporary populations as their ethnic or national homelands. The modern Spanish state that attempts to integrate disparate territorial entities with varying cultural identities under a single central authority is a case study in devolution. The devolution experience in Spain has been one of the autonomous communities engaging in a spiral of escalating demands that are progressively ‘hollowing out’ the central state.

In the Basque Country, Catalonia, and Navarre of Spain, the momentum generated by the creation of the autonomous regional governments equipped with extraordinarily wide-ranging institutions, resources and policies has generated conflicting perceptions of regional identities. It is argued that the institutional levers of control and the construction and dissemination of identity, myths, and symbols, in these regions is often in competition with the state.

Such identities are consolidated and reinforced through regional administrative cadres, intelligentsia, public agencies, services, education, and cultural life in general. In the Basque Country, the nationalist regionalist government is pressing for implementation of a de facto demand for independence that has already led to direct confrontation with the government in Madrid and to an intensification of political conflict in the autonomous community.

Analysts believe Belgium, a country founded as a centralised state, after the French model, but gradually ‘reformed’ into a federal state through consecutive constitutional amendments since the 1970s is on the brink of losing its nationhood. Survey data on political attitudes and patterns of party support in the Flemish speaking Northern region of Flanders, the French speaking southern region of Wallonia and in Brussels, point to a trend towards demands for higher and higher levels of autonomy. A crucial element in such trends is the lack of national political parties that represent national interests: Belgium has broken-up into three rival regions defined in ethno-linguistic terms, threatening the survival of the nation state.

In France, the decision by President Francois Mitterand to introduce regional elections in 1982 created the opportunity for the re-emergence of historical regionalisms in Corsica and Brittany where a strong regionalist movement had already extracted concessions to regional autonomy prior to Mitterand’s reform.

Patterns of evolution of dual Canadian-Quebecois identity over time have showed clear evidence of a strong association between ‘Quebecer’ identity and support for provincial sovereignty for Quebec. The Quebecois in Canada have mounted a nationalist challenge to the state.

Secession requests are nothing novel in the grand old Federation of the United States itself: South Carolina, the state whose 1860 secession sparked the civil war, has renewed its intentions in response to Barack Obama’s victory and Texas, which considers itself a ‘republic,’ not a mere ‘state,’ almost annually mentions secession in the context of disagreements with Washington.

The dynamics of national and ethnic identity under devolution

In multi-ethnic societies, various ethnic groups may claim to project ‘dual identities’ made up of predominant or partial regional and common national cultural identities. Contrary to the assumption that ‘dual identity’ is an expression of support for the state, the regional identity by its very nature tends to inflate under devolved power structures, challenging the central state with increasing demands for more autonomy and independence: the degree of regional or subnational consciousness is closely intertwined with unreasonable demands for constitutional reform and the level of autonomy for the provinces.

Changing identities and preference for more autonomy in the regional electorates, and grievances arising out of perceived status inequalities associated with devolution ensure continuing demands for ever-expanding powers and authority from regional electorates, and the ‘strategic calculus’ of elites who seek to ‘lead’ take up the cudgels. The tendency to disregard the conciliatory gestures of the State further increases the probabilities of demands for more autonomy and independence. Over time, ethnic myths become powerful political instruments that can destroy national solidarity and social integration for the sake of regional privilege. The end result would be more conflict, court challenges and demands for secession.

Sri Lanka does not need devolution

Devolution has always been an instrument of the ‘divide and rule’ strategy of the neo-colonialists. Cunningly, they present it as a ‘solution’ to the problems of multi-ethnic societies that are based primarily on limited economic opportunities resulting from ever shrinking national economies. The countries who have adopted devolution have done so following pressure from ‘donors’ and international money lenders, the IMF and the World Bank, same instruments that maintain grossly unfair terms of international trade that causes economic problems in the first place.

Sri Lanka during its independence struggle, and immediately after, has been a multi-ethnic state in in which people of all ethnic groups have lived in solidarity, showing allegiance to the larger polity inspired by a common history and a set of shared values. The shameful history of the last 30 years that was an aberration to this long pattern of national unity should not be allowed to permanently distort the destiny of the nation.

Like all post-colonial states, Sri Lanka’s past ethnic problems were not caused by homogenising, state-centric nation-building policies. It was the worsening levels of poverty that caused the temporary collapse of the national value system. The poverty and lack of economic opportunity in Sri Lanka, like in all post-colonial societies, is not synonymous with ethnic identity as being portrayed by the Western sponsored research and NGO activity: there are poor Sinhalese in Moneragala as much as there are poor Tamils in Mannar and poor Muslims in Kalmunai.

The way to lift these people out of their poverty is not by giving them their own ‘government’ with another bureaucracy and a fleet of vehicles; What is needed the government in existence correctly identifying the projects that can provide them with the economic opportunities they need.

There are valid governance related objections to devolution too: it has often resulted in mere transfer of power to regions with inadequate or ineffective modes of accountability. The remoteness of devolved governments often insulates them against scrutiny by national media, contributing to corruption, and other forms of maladministration. The Sri Lankan experience also shows that it attracts anti-social elements and other undesirable characters to regional level politics.

Those who campaign against review of the Thirteenth Amendment on account of Western preference for it may do well to remember that the American Declaration of Independence dramatically asserts that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new government.”

Many Sri Lankans agree, and they are taking necessary steps to sustain the national integrity of Sri Lanka.