Editorial

A snap general election has been sprung on the long-suffering British public next week due to the sheer ineptness of their politicians to exit the European Union with an acceptable deal.

They who ditched the Commonwealth to seek better prospects with Europe are crawling back to the group of former colonies of their Empire forgetting these are independent and sovereign states now. No longer does Britain rule the waves, nor can it waive the rules.

If one thought this was an election about Brexit and nothing else, it is not so. In the process of its campaign, desperate “toffs” (right-wing Conservative Party) and the “working class” (left-wing Labour Party) are slavishly at the feet of every vote available, the sizable numbers of voters of Sri Lankan origin among them. The Liberal Democrats have also jumped into the bandwagon and the Far Right is not worth talking about.

The Conservative Party is under fire for its Islamophobia and the Labour Party for its anti-Semitism, but they don’t see the mote in their own eye.

The Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonald takes the cake for his buffoonery and/or in causing violence to the Queen’s English when he speaks of “genocide” in Sri Lanka. For someone who says his hobby is “fermenting the overthrow of capitalism”, he seems to ferment trouble outside Britain as well. He talks from a handout given to him of a “homeland” in Sri Lanka. As former prime minister Dudley Senanayake would say; “Parliamentary language prohibits us from saying what he’s talking through”.

There’s no immediate concern, however. The Labour Party is in for a thrashing at next week’s elections, if the pollsters are accurate. The Conservatives have won even the blue collar vote base with what has now become a global phenomenon — nationalism. Their motto is ‘For Britain and the ordinary man’.

Their election manifesto has a reference to Sri Lanka and a good sub-editor or proof reader would have spotted that Sri Lanka and Cyprus were unintentionally lumped together with their otherwise praiseworthy support for the “two state” policy of Palestine. This has given rise to genuine concern which has now been clarified that it applies only to the West Asian issue.

It is a welcome sign that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (now renamed Foreign Relations) is taking a more pro-active role in challenging double standards either in the case of UN peacekeeping operations or with British politicians treating Sri Lanka like a political football.

British politicians do not realise that others see their actions as double standards.

Just this week, the Westminster Magistrates Court’s Chief Magistrate found the former Military Attaché at the Sri Lanka High Commission in London guilty of making a “Disreputable act for a senior military officer”. It ignored his diplomatic status and it is worth noting that within the last few weeks their government has been accused of discharging military officers found guilty of murdering innocent children in Afghanistan and just last week their cops were videoed on the London Bridge by a passer-by shooting a “terrorist” who had been disarmed and subdued, as if in a firing squad.

Mauritius has labelled Britain “an illegal colonial occupier” and the United Nations has set a deadline for Britain to leave Chagos Islands, which it is refusing to do.

Though banned in the UK as a terrorist group, LTTE flags were waved in front of the London court this week thumping British law enforcement and the judiciary in the nose. No wonder Britain is being called a state that harbours terrorists. It seems one country’s terrorist group is another country’s vote bank.

Needs of the people, not greed of politicians

The Indian Prime Minister asked the visiting Sri Lankan President last week to “fully implement” the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Coming as it does after suspending Article 370 of his own country’s Constitution vis-à-vis Jammu and Kashmir and in the throes of a new controversy over an amendment to its citizenship laws, the request seems ironical.

Article 370 might not be on ‘all fours’ with 13A, but both are based on the same premise, if not fears, that they are a platform for a separate state. In August this year, the Narendra Modi Government brought Jammu and Kashmir entirely under the Indian Constitution and run from New Delhi.

In arguing its case, the Modi Government said that henceforth New Delhi will be responsible for the economic development of J & K and that there will be no privileges on land ownership.

Northern Sri Lanka also has its own peculiar land ownership laws and President Rajapaksa has said that it will be his government’s responsibility to economically develop the North and East and that would be his priority rather than quibbling over devolution issues that have gone on ever since Independence.

What has 13A bestowed upon Sri Lanka other than a Provincial Council system that serves neither man nor beast? Even the Northern PC did nothing other than pass resolutions to placate the Diaspora and ended up under Presidential rule without a hum from those who originally demanded such a council.

Provincial Councils were meant to be the nursery for the national Legislature. But the quality of councillors speaks for itself. With a few exceptions, it has only seen the emergence of a new breed of politicians who have neither a vocation nor a profession worthy of mention. This resulted in a third-tier of politicians at the local government councils who were mostly either bodyguards of the PC members, village thugs, three-wheeler drivers, illegal sand miners and the like.

Those political parties in the South which went on the streets in 1987 opposing the Indian forced devolution system are now demanding elections for it to feather their own nests rather than in the national interest.

There’s no serious quarrel whether certain powers should be devolved from Colombo to the rest of the country. It has long been done administratively through Government Agents of yesterday only for their powers to be gobbled up by political authorities — and now, the Provincial Councils.

Whether the District should be the more appropriate unit of devolution, and whether the country can do minus party-nominated candidates is up for discussion if administrative efficiency is the key rather than political power.

Being a military officer, the President knows how the chain of command works from headquarters to the soldier. That’s the military though but in a civil administration the 13A model just does not work and a new model in consultation with, and the concurrence of, the elected representatives is imperative.

The needs of the people in the provinces should be served, not the greed of politicians.