Letters

Chaos & mayhem covered in turgid prose

I must confess that I had to read the Provisional Administration proposal sent to the LTTE by the government several times over, before I could even fathom what its authors were trying to say. Regardless of its merits or demerits as a workable proposal, the first thing that struck me was its amazing lack of clarity.

Even though it is supposed to be only a discussion document, it is so turgid and convoluted in its thinking and its prose so muddy and imprecise, that it is scarcely believable that it can be the work of persons used to clear thinking or of writing grammatical English. For instance, look at this sentence from the preamble.

"The Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) has developed the below framework (sic) for establishing a provisional administrative arrangement which will enable the LTTE to participate significantly in decision making and delivery related to administration (sic), and rebuilding of the war damaged infrastructure and economy, in the Northern and Eastern Provinces."

In heaven's name what sort of English is that? How unprofessional can we get? Is it conceivable that such a convoluted and ungrammatical expression could have come from the brains of legal luminaries who are supposed to have authored it. The rest of the document reflects even more turgid thinking and is so replete with ambiguities and undefined concepts that one is driven to apoplexy simply trying to understand what it is that GOSL is proposing.

On the other hand, it is just possible that this whole exercise has been a conspiracy, deliberately to obfuscate issues and policies which the GOSL wants to conceal from the public. In fact if one is not to impute to its authors a fundamental lack of rationality, that may be the only hypothesis that may adequately explain some of the document's inanities.

However, having with great difficulty distilled some of the mud that constitutes the GOSL's proposals, I offer the following comments in the hope that others who are more competent than I, will themselves address the issues involved and kick off an islandwide debate, as a matter of urgent and utmost national importance.

Very broadly, it seems to me that, what the GOSL is proposing in this document, under cover of the haze and obfuscation that characterise it, is a regime of chaos and mayhem and a recipe for further fragmentation, not only for the north and the east but also for the whole nation as well. Surely, there must be some less costly and less disgraceful way of levering out those $4.5 billion?

Let me comment separately, issue by issue.

Throughout the comments that follow, the word "proposal" shall signify the document submitted by GOSL

1. The Council: The document envisages a Council to administer the north and the east. However, while the proposal tells us who will comprise the Council it does not make clear who will take the initiative to set it up. Obviously, it is not an elected body. Then, who will declare it constituted as of such and such a date?

As for the Council's composition, in one place the proposal refers to "parties" meaning only the GOSL and the LTTE but in another place it refers to "parties"(sic) to include the SLMC also. Throughout the document, thereafter, there are references to “the parties” but it is not clear whether there are only two “parties” or three, including the Muslims.

A horrendous omission is the exclusion from the Council of representation for Tamil groups other than the LTTE. By what criteria of democratic practice does the GOSL justify this exclusion? It seems to me that GOSL is consenting to disenfranchise a vast swathe of Tamil opinion merely to accommodate the LTTE.

Neither is there any reference in the preamble to any obligation on the part of the Council to observe fundamental rights that are entrenched in the SL Constitution, or the Rule of Law, or ordinary democratic principles for setting up District Committees under the Council.

2. The Chairperson: Two alternatives are offered. The first alternative contemplates two Chairpersons with equal powers of veto and the second alternative proposes a Chairperson elected on the principle of a qualified majority voting which is now the fashion in the European Union.

The first alternative can only result in total paralysis of governance and is therefore a non-starter. It is hardly conceivable that such a proposal was ever made!

The second alternative, while workable within a sophisticated political environment supported by an efficient bureaucratic infrastructure, such as the European Union, has available to it, will simply not work within our local environment.

Most decisions of the Council are likely to affect the Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim populations of the province. If "qualified majority voting" is to safeguard Sinhala and Muslim interests, it will have to be stipulated that only decisions which affect one or other of these ethnic groups exclusively or mainly, will trigger the "qualified majority voting" provision.

This will require a clear set of guiding principles which will have to be agreed upon in advance and entrenched in the constitution of the Council, and not be left to the Council itself to determine.

3. Powers and Functions of the Council: A great deal of uncertainty and vagueness is generated through the repeated use of the word ‘participate’.

Matters are made worse by saying that the "parties" will participate in the powers and functions now being performed by the GOSL in its regional administration.

Is it the intention that the LTTE will also "participate" in exercising functions and powers currently exercised only by GOSL within the "cleared areas", but not vice versa? If that is so, is not GOSL abdicating governance over areas which are now its exclusive province and handing them on a platter to the LTTE while the latter stay put within their areas?

4. Police and Security, Land and Revenue: In the version of the GOSL proposal I have read, these functions are excluded from the Council's purview.

This means that they will continue under the GOSL in the area under its control. However, these very functions are now being exercised by the LTTE in the areas under their control. Are these functions to be exercised separately as now, under the GOSL and the LTTE, in their respective areas?

If the answer to that question is in the affirmative, will not chaos and mayhem result from the juxtaposition of three authorities of governance, namely, the GOSL, the LTTE and the Council?

Stanley Jayaweera

Avadhi Lanka Activist