Editorial

The emphasis on the outcome of the President’s overnight visit to New Delhi last week as outlined by the Foreign Minister at his media briefing last weekend appears to be India’s insistence on the “full implementation” of the 13th Amendment (13A), but whether this was mere camouflage to India’s ‘bigger picture’; that of greater ‘connectivity’ with Sri Lanka, remains open for debate.

An all-party meeting was quickly summoned in Colombo to discuss 13A, with special attention to granting police powers to provincial councils. This seems to deflect from India’s thrust for greater connectivity, i.e., gaining a greater footprint in Sri Lanka and that too in the island’s North and East provinces.

It was the Indian narrative through and through that dominated the visit. From its Foreign Secretary’s visit to Colombo to draw up the guidelines for the talks, and then its South Block (Ministry of External Affairs) putting the final touches to how the summit’s agenda must be steered, New Delhi called the shots. Sri Lanka’s version was limited to some disjointed, delayed releases and the FM’s news conference last Saturday, where more was unsaid than said. Issues that concern Sri Lanka, like the poaching by Indian fishermen in Lankan waters, were brushed aside and put on the backburner.

Significantly, there was no reference at all during the talks or in the various statements in Delhi to the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 (signed by a Congress PM), but 13A, which was the by-product of that Accord, was brought into focus. India never fulfilled its part of the Accord, i.e. to disarm the LTTE terrorist group at the time, but 13A remains the ‘Sword of Damocles’ hanging over the Sri Lankan polity ever since.

While Sri Lanka’s President was in Delhi, and in his very presence, the Indian PM called for “a life of respect and dignity” for the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka. As he spoke, his own Government was getting roasted both within the country and outside for ignoring the violence of the most vile kind — rape, beheadings and assaults on a minority in one of its states, Manipur—and seeking a life of respect and dignity. The state’s police were accused of being manipulated by the Chief Minister, who is from the PM’s party, to ‘look the other way’ while the mayhem was unleashed.

The state is gripped by narco-terrorism and local politicians are thoroughly involved in that business. The clashes stemmed from accusations levelled against the Chief Minister of rank discrimination against non-Hindus in land, public jobs and college entry allocations.

Is Sri Lanka wanting to replicate such a scenario where Chief Ministers are in charge of the police in their areas? Most Indian states are thrice the population and geographical size of Sri Lanka, and it is understandable that police powers need to be devolved. For Sri Lanka, there can be some argument in favour of devolving an element of police power, like traffic offences or minor crimes, but to hand over the entire Police Ordinance to a Chief Minister, whether in the Northern, Southern or Central provinces, is a disaster in the making.

The entirety of 13A needs to be reviewed given the complications and confusions in power-sharing with a third tier of government introduced since 1987. The provincial judiciary is proving alright, but that is because it still remains under the control of the Chief Justice. On the other hand, the provincial education system is in shambles.

The Provincial Councils themselves are a matter that needs a rethink. There is growing currency that District Councils are a more efficient unit of devolution for a small country, like the 26 Cantons in a small country like Switzerland.

At the all-party meeting boycotted by the JVP, the main Opposition SJB seemed only concerned with calling for Provincial Council elections, as if elections are the be-all and end-all of power-sharing, whether they are ‘white elephants’, or not. It was politics, not administrative efficiency that mattered to them.

The 13th Amendment and all the hot air should not, however, distract from the larger takeaway of the Presidential visit to New Delhi. Closer integration, called ‘connectivity’ was the essence of the Indian agenda. The 13th Amendment, especially in the North and East, is linked to this agenda of India’s ‘extended neighborhood’ policy.

The good, the bad and the ugly of this exercise is a matter that requires a lot of sunlight and careful scrutiny in such a context.

High-profile visits highlight tectonic shifts in geopolitics

It was seemingly the continuation of the dialogue President Ranil Wickremesinghe had with them both very recently in Paris and Tokyo. While the French President was reaching out to the Pacific island states, denouncing the “new imperialism” emerging in the region (without naming any one country), he has, though a NATO member, kept lines open with Russia and China. France wants Europe to maintain some distance from US foreign policy agendas, and support small states that wish to remain neutral in global power politics, stay that way. The Japanese FM was in Colombo reaffirming his Government’s desire to reignite what was once an extremely close relationship, all but dashed by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa Presidency.

Much has been written about the damage and lost opportunities for Sri Lanka during that period when Rajapaksa the Second didn’t know what some of his officials were up to. That damage has been gingerly repaired with some astute and mature political and diplomatic leadership from both Tokyo and Colombo, and a large-hearted degree of forgiveness from Japan.

Details of the official talks appear on page xx. While it is Japan’s Finance Ministry that spearheads Sri Lanka’s crucial debt restructuring efforts, the Foreign Minister touched on the subject while in Colombo yesterday. His main brief on this trip seems to be to reach out to the ‘Global South’ with visits to six countries, including the Maldives, India and southern African nations.

The two high-profile visits are clear signals that there is greater emphasis on the smaller island-states in the Asia-Pacific and that the geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting big time in this neck of the woods.