Letters to the Editor
View(s):The State Council played a unique role in the development of Ceylon
I refer to the article on Legislative Reforms in the Sunday Times of September 10.
The State Council was the first legislative body of Ceylon which was elected through universal suffrage. Both men and women over the age of 21 years (not 18) could vote. The Council itself had little authority. The Government was essentially a British one. Finance, public administration, the legal system were still under the Governor.
It had some legislative power.
The State Council was a curious concoction of the Governor, the Council elected by the people, a board of ministers, public servants answerable not to the ministers but to the British Chief Secretary. The Council itself was predominantly upper middle class, elected through universal suffrage.
We have only to look at the opening up of the dry zone with over a million people settled. The Land Development Ordinance (LDO) is one of the most important pieces of legislation by any legislature in this country. We talk of the Mahaweli scheme. Under the LDO more people were settled, and it was all carried out within financial and administrative regulations. There was very little corruption at that time.
Then there was the education policy. The free education system was implemented, central schools were established, and English was maintained without demolishing it. There were many other pieces of social legislation. My conclusion is that the State Council made a unique contribution to the development of Ceylon.
The other matter which I wish to refer, is the role of Sir Ivor Jennings, in the making of the Constitution of 1948. Today he is a forgotten figure. It was Jennings who was the real author of the 1948 Constitution. It was Jennings who prepared what is called the Minister’s Draft (1944) and which was the basis of the later Donoughmore recommendations and the Constitution of Ceylon later in 1948.
I quote from A.J. Wilson’s “Politics In Sri Lanka 1947-1979”, published by McMillan: “The draft was ultimately the result of the endeavours of D.S. Senanayake and his constitutional adviser, Sir Ivor Jennings, at this time Principal of the Ceylon University College. The Senanayake-Jennings draft provided for minority safeguards, a territorial system of representation weighed in favour of the backward as well as the rural districts of Ceylon which at the time benefited the areas where the principal indigenous minority groups, the Ceylon Tamils and the Muslims, mainly resided, and most importantly, the cabinet system of government. It came to be referred to as the Ministers’ Draft Scheme of 1944’.
Some time in the late 1940’s Ivor Jennings wrote his book “the Constitution of Ceylon” which was at that time used in schools and the university. That book needs to be reprinted.
Leelananda De Silva Via email
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