{"id":141160,"date":"2015-03-16T00:42:43","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T19:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=141160"},"modified":"2015-03-22T00:00:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-21T18:30:49","slug":"beyond-the-13th-amendmentwhere-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/beyond-the-13th-amendmentwhere-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond The 13th Amendment\u2026Where To?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Dayan+Jayatilleka&amp;x=7&amp;y=4\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Dayan Jayatilleka<\/span><\/a> &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_100154\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Dayan-Jayatilleka.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-100154\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-100154\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Dayan-Jayatilleka-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Dayan-Jayatilleka-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Dayan-Jayatilleka-50x50.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-100154\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>\u201cSomewhere over the rainbow\u2026\u201d <\/em>\u2013 The Wizard of Oz<\/p>\n<p>Three vital questions arise from Prime Minister Modi\u2019s recommendation that Sri Lanka goes beyond the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=13th+Amendment&amp;x=7&amp;y=6\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment<\/span><\/a>. The first is: has India changed its stance? The second is: if beyond 13A, \u2018where to?\u2019 The third is: \u2018why?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>New Delhi\u2019s stance in the post war period was early and full implementation of the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment and \u201cbuilding on it\u201d. Now Mr. Modi urges us to \u201cgo beyond\u201d 13A. There is a crucial difference between \u201cbuilding on\u201d and \u201cgoing beyond\u201d. \u201cBuilding on\u201d is a vertical increase while \u201cgoing beyond\u201d is a horizontal one. The latter is not \u201cstretching\u201d the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment; it is a framework other than the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment.<\/p>\n<p>It is understandable to suggest \u201cbuilding on\u201d the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment. Veterans of the negotiations of 1987 will recall that there were \u201cresidual issues\u201d which President Jayewardene agreed would be resolved at a later date, but were not because they couldn\u2019t be, with a war on and a two-thirds majority lost. If these residual issues were resolved, then the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment would be built on, because the architects of the accord did not envisage a framework other than the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment; one that went \u201cbeyond\u201d it.<\/p>\n<p>What would \u201cbuilding on\u201d the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment have looked like? It would have entailed re-opening negotiations on the concurrent list. It may have also entailed an upper house, a Senate. (President Rajapaksa was amenable to both, but after Mr. Wigneswaran\u2019s public pronouncement that Prabhakaran was a \u201cgreat hero\u201d, not so much). Swaps of the powers in the concurrent list and the construction of a Senate, i.e. \u2018building upon\u201d the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment so as to address the \u201cresidual issues\u201d is as far as we should have gone and been requested to go by Prime Minister Modi.<\/p>\n<p>Instead we have been asked to go beyond the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment, but where to? Mr. Modi, a most intelligent man, dropped a heavy hint in his address to the Parliament&#8211; a hint that was promptly picked up by the TNA and the international media. An AFP report reads:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201c\u2026Modi told the Sinhalese-dominated parliament in Colombo that &#8220;cooperative federalism&#8221; was working well in India and suggested it could be a model for Sri Lanka too&#8230;India has long supported greater autonomy for the minority group, but Suresh Premachandran, a Tamil lawmaker from Jaffna, said Modi&#8217;s comments were the strongest in a long time. &#8220;He is going to be very welcome after the powerful message he sent,&#8221; Premachandran told AFP.\u201d<\/em> (\u2018India&#8217;s Modi to visit Sri Lanka&#8217;s Tamil heartland\u2019, Lakruwan Wanniarachchi, AFP, March 14, 2015)<\/p>\n<p><em>The Hindu<\/em> noted the same point:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201c\u2026Commenting on the Indian Prime Minister\u2019s speech in Parliament earlier on Friday, TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran said Mr. Modi made an \u201cexcellent speech\u201d with a strong case for greater devolution in a manner that was not \u201coverbearing\u201d. \u201cI am firm believer in cooperative federalism,\u201d Mr. Modi said in his address.<\/em>\u201d (\u2018Be Patient with Sri Lankan Government: Modi to Tamil Leaders\u2019, Meera Srinivasan, <em>the Hindu<\/em>, March 14<sup>th<\/sup> 2015)<\/p>\n<p>Now to the \u2018Why\u2019 question. When, by Prime Minister Modi\u2019s own admission, the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment has not been fully implemented, what could make him think that it is at all necessary to go beyond it? It is necessary or advisable to go beyond something or some point, when that has been proved inadequate, i.e. when its potentials have exhausted themselves. When the full potential of the 13<sup>th<\/sup> amendment has not been experienced, on what basis could it be thought necessary to go beyond it? Is that not a matter to be raised, if at all, at a subsequent stage? And should it not emerge from a national i.e. Sri Lankan consensus at least in parliament if not in society at large?<\/p>\n<p>Given the spillover of Sri Lanka\u2019s Tamil issue into India, our Tamil Question has long been an \u201cintermestic\u201d one (to use Dr. Kissinger\u2019s coinage about issues at the interface of the domestic and the international) rather than a purely domestic concern. Therefore, one cannot realistically take exception to the Indian Prime Minister\u2019s references to it. However, those references should be general and not publicly prescriptive. Mr. Modi should be hailed for his commitment to India\u2019s (quasi) federalism and moving it in a fuller federal direction is entirely an Indian prerogative. However, he doubtless knows that many societies, especially in the Global South and most especially within Asia, have preferred not to opt for \u2018cooperative federalism\u2019, and to remain precisely within the parameters of the unitary state while devolving power in a manner that makes way for limited local autonomy while avoiding the dangers of centrifugalism and\/or irredentism.<\/p>\n<p>The model of state\u2014the state structure&#8211; is entirely a sovereign national decision. If it is not, what is or could be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":100154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Beyond The 13th Amendment\u2026Where To? - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/beyond-the-13th-amendmentwhere-to\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beyond The 13th Amendment\u2026Where To? 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