Merry-go-round in Sri Lanka

June 21, 2024

KATHMANDU – While discussing and debating the forthcoming Sri Lankan Presidential election scheduled for September 2024 and the implementation of the 13th Amendment, I asked my journalist friend Bala, who has spent more than two decades in that country, “What is new?”

“Pat,” he replied, “It is a merry-go-round.” Indeed, it is.

The debate on 13A—an amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution to implement the understanding between India and Sri Lanka to resolve what was then a decade-old Tamil insurgency, has never been outdated. It was reported that JS Jayewardene, the then President of Sri Lanka, compelled the legislators belonging to his party, the United National Party, to vote in favour of this amendment. This led to a severe difference between him and the then Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were fighting for a separate homeland, did not accept this 13A-created, truncated Provincial Council (PC). It resumed the fight against the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) that was deployed as a part of the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord. Premadasa, whose only objective was to remove the IPKF, armed them. The IPKF returned to India in 1990 after Premadasa became president. While this became a lesson for India, an LTTE suicide bomber killed Premadasa in the May Day rally. Rest is history.

Yet, this truncated power of PCs has been at the centre of debates in all Presidential elections in Sri Lanka since the 1990s. In 2013, there was an attempt to abolish the PCs, but the Mahinda Rajapakse government did not get the support of all the PCs. His party could not pass the proposal in the Central Provincial Council ruled by his party. While the Tamils who believe in a