Ananthi alleges Sumanthiran silenced her in Geneva

TNA, Tamil Diaspora split over US-led resolution backed by UK

March 7, 2014, 9:40 pm 

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Arift has emerged in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) with one of the most prominent Northern Provincial Council members, Ananthi Sashitharan publicly accusing TNA National List MP, M.A. Sumanthiran of having deprived her of an opportunity to address UNHRC members at a recent crucial meeting in Geneva due to her alleged past involvement in the LTTE.

 Ananthi was married to Velayutham Sasitharan alias Elilan, a hardcore terrorist who masqueraded as the LTTE’s Trincomlaee District political leader during the Ceasefire Agreement arranged by the Norwegian government in February 2002. Ananthi represents the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the dominant partner of the five-party alliance comprising the TELO, PLOTE, EPRLF, TULF and ITAK.

 Addressing the media at the Jaffna press club on Thursday, an irate Sasitharan charged that MP Sumanthiran had scuttled her plans in Geneva, where she was to press representatives of 18 member states of the UNHRC to demand that the US-led resolution recommend an international investigation into war crime allegations. MP Sumanthiran, she alleged was basically seeking the support of member states for the US resolution.

 MP Sumanthiran didn’t respond to an SMS message we sent him. The MP was in Australia this week to pressure the Australian government to co-sponsor US-led resolution.

 Sasitharan claimed that those who had believed that the ongoing Geneva session would lead to a war crimes probe were frustrated and those who led Tamils speaking people to believe that a tough resolution would be presented to the UNHRC had deceived them.

 She warned that the youth would be disillusioned unless the international community ensured that those responsible for war crimes were punished. The international community should take the responsibility in such an eventuality, she said.

 Emphasising that there hadn’t been any restrictions imposed on her before she left the country for engagements in Geneva with a TNA delegation, Sasitharan alleged that after a couple of meetings there, MP Sumanthiran had advised her not to address UNHRC representatives direct.

 Commenting on MP Sumanthiran’s strategy in Geneva, Sasitharan alleged that the National List MP had failed to push for an international war crimes probe though the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) had passed a resolution demanding ex external probe on accountability issues. Fielding questions, Sasitharan acknowledged that the MP had discussed the role allegedly played by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in the militarisation of the Northern Province, the takeover of land belonging to Tamil speaking people as well as the fate of those who had surrendered to the army and the missing.

The TNA won the first Northern Provincial Council election last September. Sasitharan polled the second highest number of preferential votes after Chief Minister, C.V. Wigneswaran

allow living to live in harmony

Geneva, India, and American Imperialism

March 7, 2014, 12:00 pm 

Prof. G.L. Peiris addressing UNHRC session in Geneva

By Izeth Hussain

At the moment of writing I have not had access to the full text of the US Draft Resolution on Sri Lanka that has been presented at the UNHRC Meeting in Geneva. But the most important fact about it is known: there will be no meaningful action of any sort at the present stage, and there will be such action only after the lapse of another year if Sri Lanka fails to show that there has been progress in taking credible action on internal investigations into war crimes etc. In the meanwhile there will be no international investigations into war crimes and no sanctions, both of which were being confidently anticipated. We don’t of course know what might happen by the time of the final vote on the Resolution. But it does seem that what threatened to be a dazzling Western pyrotechnic display at the expense of Sri Lanka has turned out to be a damp squib – not pathos for Sri Lanka but bathos for the US and the West.

What went wrong for the latter? Probably nothing. We are probably witnessing the unfolding of a game plan worked out between the US and India in 2011, as I argued in my article The Ban Ki-moon Conspiracy.(Island of May 2, 2011). Everything falls into place, in my view, if were recognize the fact that the outcome in Geneva depends not on the US, not on the Eu, not on the international community, but on India as I argued in my article Dawn on the Ethnic Front? In the Island of February 17. I quote from that article: "The present expectation is that the UNHRC vote will go against us I believe that the best way of countering that possibility would be to get India to act on our behalf, not necessarily openly but effectively. There are several reasons why India could have very special clout with the Western bloc. It is a regional power and an emerging great power, for which reason the Western bloc would very probably be prepared to recognize that Sri Lanka is India’s turf.

"I have in mind two other reasons as well. As I have been arguing in earlier articles the Sri Lankan Tamil ethnic problem is really an Indo-Sri Lankan ethnic problem because Delhi can never ignore the fall-out in Tamil Nadu of what happens to the SL Tamils. India is therefore an integral part of the SL Tamil ethnic problem, not just an ancillary factor. The Western bloc would therefore probably recognize that India should have a legitimate say in any action to be taken against Sri Lanka in connection with the SL Tamils. My other reason why India could have very special clout with the Western bloc is my theory propounded in 2011 that the Us and India were engaged in a benign conspiracy to make Sri Lanka move towards a political solution and ethnic reconciliation by using the threat of war crimes investigations as an instrument of pressure. My guess, for all these reasons, is that the US – which will be the prime mover behind any anti-Sri Lankan Resolution – will go along with India if the latter adopts firm positions against war crimes allegations and sanctions".

A clarification is due at this point. The interests of India and the US in regard to Sri Lanka are not identical. For the US the fate of the Sri Lankan Tamils is of no great moment whereas for India it could be of vital importance, vital in the sense that under certain contingencies it could even threaten the very unity of India. We do not know what dark forces might not be unleashed by the coming to power of the neo-Fascist BJP. On the other hand, the issue of war crimes investigations probably matters little or nothing to India, except as an instrument of pressure. It could matter much more for the US as it could serve the purposes of American imperialism – I will explain this point later.

The reason why India would not be enthusiastic about war crimes investigations, or rather would be against them – perhaps accepting them only if they are of a token order – is that they would be incompatible with moving meaningfully towards a political solution of the ethnic problem and ethnic reconciliation. Our Government has in recent weeks taken to emphasizing this argument and giving it central importance. However this argument can be taken seriously only if the Government is really serious about moving towards a political solution and ethnic reconciliation. But for almost five years it has given the contrary impression: it sees no need for any special action towards a political solution or ethnic reconciliation because all that will follow if the Tamils accept the gifts of the benign Rajapakse Government which embodies the will of the majority.

There might apparently be a case for arguing that war crimes investigations will not be really divisive if the actions of both sides – the Government forces and the LTTE – are investigated, and the investigations are not limited to the final phase of the war. There will be impartiality if there is no invidious focusing on the actions of the Government forces alone. May be, but it is impossible to believe that the whole process of investigations involving allegations and counter-allegations and detailed enquiries stretching over years will not further polarize and envenom our ethnic relations,, making impossible the spirit of mutual accommodation required for ethnic harmony. The dead cannot be resurrected and our primary obligation is to the living. This means that accountability has to follow at some stage after the process of ethnic reconciliation takes hold.

The Congress Government is practically certain of losing the next elections, and it would not want to leave office with the record of having been a party to the creation of an insuperable problem for Sri Lanka. The ethnic problem has to be sorted by the next Indian Government on the basis of a quadripartite agreement or understanding involving the SL Government, the SL Tamils, the Indian Government, and Tamil Nadu. That will probably become inevitable unless the present SL Government changes course and becomes fully democratic, which could lead to a political solution. For these reasons it seems very probable that the Indian Government would want to see that war crimes investigations are postponed.

There is a new factor that could make the US give much weight to what India wants. I refer to Ukraine, the most momentous development in international relations since 2000, which will come to be seen retrospectively as a landmark, a landmark in the US imperialist strategy of containing Russia. I am influenced to think along these lines by my experience of Russia from 1995 to 1998. At that time Russia was in a state of collapse but it was apparent that it would, sooner rather than later, get a grip on itself and re-establish itself as a power that the rest of the world has to reckon with. That is happening under Putin. The American Empire has been in decline since the 1970s and is most certainly doomed. But Russia can establish itself as the centre of a Eurasian configuration, not an imperialist centre, but some sort of centre exercising influence in an important segment of the world. Kissinger and Brzezinski, both of whom influenced American foreign policy even after they left office, saw all that very clearly and advocated a policy of containment of Russia. That policy has consisted of expanding NATO right up to the borders of Russia and the prizing away from Russian control and influence of some countries on the Russian periphery. That is how we have to make sense of ongoing developments in Ukraine.

But what has all that got to do with India? I used to think that the special, very special Indo-Soviet relations were a product of the Cold War and had disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union. During my spell in Moscow I found that that was far from being the case. The prestige and influence of India in Russia was really on a grand scale, partly a result of the fact that over many decades India sent many of its ablest diplomats to Moscow. The point I am getting to is that the US will give much to loosen or break the Indo-Russian special relationship. That means, I think, that if India wants the US to forget about international investigations into war crimes in Sri Lanka, the US will probably do so. (Izethhussain@gmail.com)

CRUDE CALLUM CALUMNY - Chris Nonis

CRUDE CALLUM CALUMNY - Chris Nonis

Gutter journalism passed as ‘Pulitzer material’

Allegations are such unmitigated, unsubstantiated rubbish

‘Your crude journalism exposes both Callum and your calumny”, said the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in the UK, Dr Chris Nonis, responding to the latest Channel 4 video timed to coincide with UNHRC sessions in Geneva, and purporting to be about rights abuses by Sri Lankan forces.

His reference was to Callum Macrae the producer of the so called Channel 4 documentary series on alleged abuses by Sri Lankan forces during the 2009 assault on the LTTE.

‘Your allegations are such unmitigated and unsubstantiated rubbish that you make even gutter journalism appear to be Pulitzer Prize-winning professionalism. Your latest attempt to denigrate Sri Lanka is a continuation of your pernicious campaign that has already been exposed in the book Corrupted Journalism Channel 4 and Sri Lanka,” High Commissioner Nonis stated.

What makes your journalism doubly dubious and obnoxiously unbalanced is that you expect us to comment on footage which, in fairness, we have not even been given the opportunity of seeing or hearing.

It is a pity that your continuing propagandist vendetta against Sri Lanka only continues to undermine the process of reconciliation and healing that we have undertaken after a near three-decade long terrorist war.

It is certainly not going to help those in Sri Lanka you pretend you are helping but who only wish to live in peace without external meddling and posturing, Dr Nonis added. Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka Army spokesman states that the release of the latest video about Sri Lanka by Britain’s Channel Four has been timed for the UN Human Rights Council Session. Military media spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasuriya added the latest video was no different from the other videos Channel Four had telecast earlier. He rejected in total the charges levelled in the new Channel Four video. 

- See more at: http://dailynews.lk/local/crude-callum-calumny-chris-nonis#sthash.hfDIXHKW.dpuf

DOUBLE STANDARDS Snowden calls for help to ‘fix’ US spying Edward Snowden speaking

Snowden calls for help to ‘fix’ US spying

RUSSIA: American whistle blower Edward Snowden urged the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference audience to help “fix” the US government spying on its citizens.

“South by Southwest and the tech community, the people in the room in Austin, they're the folks who can fix this,” Snowden said on Monday at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin through a teleconference from Russia. “There's a political response that needs to occur, but there's also a tech response that needs to occur.”

The SXSW marked the first time the former security contractor has spoken to the American public directly since he left the United States and gave thousands of classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to journalists.

Speaking to an audience of thousands, Snowden said he does not regret his decision to leak NSA documents.

“Would I do it again? Absolutely. Regardless of what happens to me, this is something we had a right to,” he said.

“I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. And I saw the Constitution was being violated on a massive scale,” he added, to applause from the 3,000 people in the auditorium at the Austin Convention Center.

During his speech, Snowden took questions both from the audience and from Twitter. The first question he answered was from Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web 25 years ago. Berners-Lee asked Snowden what he would change about the nation's surveillance system.

“We need public oversight ... some way for trusted public figures to advocate for us. We need a watchdog that watches Congress, because if we're not informed, we can't consent to these (government) policies,” Snowden replied.

Hugh Forrest, director of SXSW Interactive, said Snowden wanted “to talk to a tech-focused audience about the importance of building the next generation of online tools that protect user privacy.”

The 10-day SXSW festival which began on Friday concludes on March 16.

- PRESS TV 

- See more at: http://dailynews.lk/world/snowden-calls-help-fix-us-spying#sthash.FrJeINc8.dpuf

WELL TIMED SELF DEMOLITION

WELL TIMED SELF DEMOLITION

It seems decisively to be end game for Channel 4 and Callum Macrae. There is conclusive evidence that so called key witnesses in his so called documentaries on Sri Lanka were known LTTE agents on the Tamil Tiger pay list, and after this fact was revealed by Lord Naseby in the British House of Parliament, Macrae is now in his last gasp, coming up with more impromptu works of fiction targeted for the Geneva UN HRC sessions, 2014.

When the witnesses from his tele fictions are called, Macrae will surely have the very little that is left of his reputation in tatters...

His latest so called documentary release purports to show videographed evidence of human rights abuses including rape by members of the armed forces.

The scenes are very probably staged, but even if they are not, they say nothing, as there is episodic footage of people being carried into vehicles -- and scenes purporting to show wounded men and women.

A so called forensic pathologist asserts, looking at the grainy pictures, that there is enough evidence to say that some of those shown in the video images were sexually abused.

This man must have extraordinary microscopic eyesight and amazing forensic skills to inspect grainy video images and determine from his vantage, that people who figure in them have been sexually violated.

As stated before, the footage is very probably of scenes staged for full theatrical impact, but even assuming that the scenes are authentic, there is hardly anything here that could even remotely implicate the Sri Lankan forces.

For example, there are scenes purportedly of supposed Sri Lankan army soldiers carrying those who appear to be wounded people and loading them bodily onto military vehicles.

At one point the soldiers appear to be discussing whether a person being attended to should be put into the vehicle or not.

Eventually, somebody appears to say in Sinhalese that one person ought to be left behind.

This appears to be the classic application of the principle of triage in the context of combat. Those who are determined to be beyond help are left for dead while those who can be dispatched to hospital are taken. This is to ensure that some will survive when obviously all cannot.

This seemingly normal application of triage in a war situation which is obvious from the footage, in fact paints the Sri Lankan soldiers in a good light. They seem to be keen on transporting the victims of war, civilian or LTTE cadre, to hospital.

This meshes in well with the image of Lankan soldiers as rescuers as depicted in the film The Last Phase which was Sri Lanka’s counter to the fictionalized Killing Fields productions.

There is also an allusion to the language used by the soldiers in some places which is ridiculous in terms of proving anything.

These are fighting men in a theatre of war and they can speak to each other in any way they want, and in a situation of raging combat, it is highly unlikely they will communicate in the dulcet tones of convent nuns.

If less than parliamentary language is a criteria for beginning to investigate war crimes, all schoolboys this big match weekend in Sri Lanka -- Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese -- run the risk of being marched off to the Hague.

All this is written down after assuming that the footage is authentic, which is rather unlikely with emerging evidence that the Star Channel 4 witnesses have all been bought and paid for Tiger operatives, as Lord Naseby asserted in the British House of Parliament.

With an installment on the ready before each key event -- be it UNHRC sessions, CHOGM or some banshee Tamil Tiger bash -- it is the theatrical aspect and nothing else that is conspicuous in the Channel 4 productions.

This time Macrae is particularly lame in his reasoning that it takes one look at his recent production for any reasonable individual to conclude that it is indeed end game for this mountebank, with it being clear that in his last gasp he is straining to do his best with no material at his disposal.

His brief and notorious career as ‘a freelance documentary producer’ is definitely reaching its bitter end which is why he seems to be keen now on moonlighting as some sort of anti Sri Lankan advocate in the civil society circuit. Such people of course usually don’t even make a feeble show of having credible material at their disposal at all, and therefore this ‘filmmaker’ can slide into inevitable oblivion in whichever hole in wall NGO he chooses for his retirement. 

- See more at: http://dailynews.lk/editorial/well-timed-self-demolition#sthash.JjpkM54K.dpuf

Religious leaders lash out against Geneva resolution

Religious leaders lash out against Geneva resolution

Disna Mudalige

The resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC constitutes unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of an independent and sovereign nation, representatives of the Inter-Religious Alliance for National Unity said at a press conference at the Government Information Department yesterday.

Alliance President and Sabaragamuwa University Chancellor Ven. Prof. Kamburugamuwe Vajira Thera said all people should set aside political and other divisions and confront this challenge in unison.

The thera said the resolution undermines the hard won freedom and peace of the country. He said certain powerful nations are envious of the fact that Sri Lanka is trying to stand on its own feet after years of colonial invasions and 30 years of disastrous terrorism.

The thera observed that all religious and ethnic groups are working in unity towards the prosperity of the country, while healing the wounds of the past. "Under the leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Northern and Eastern Provinces have seen an unprecedented development within a short period after the war, making it impossible to imagine that those areas had once been a battlefield. Even the foreign delegates who visited the country in the post war phase had been astonished by the massive transformation taking place," he said.

The thera said the international community should allow sufficient time for the internal mechanism - the LLRC- to be implemented in the country. Alliance Co-Chair Rev. Fr. Sarath Hettiarachchi said those who make false allegations about human rights violations in Sri Lanka are actually trying to campaign to win the votes of the Tamil diaspora that supports the LTTE.

He said at this crucial moment all people have a duty to line up with the leadership of the country to defeat the anti-patriot and opportunistic segments within the country who demand international inquiries on the last stages of the war. Fr. Hettiarachchi said these anti-national groups who depend on NGO funds have now become desperate as they could no longer earn money in the name of war. Alliance Co-Chair Moulavi Hassan Moulana said all people irrespective of their religion, ethnicity or political divisions suffered alike due to prolonged LTTE barbaric acts, adding that no human rights agency, activist or international media channel cared about the woes of the people during that time. He said the UN Human Rights Commissioner has more grave issues in the contemporary world to focus on rather than interfering in affairs of a country enjoying newly found peace and unity. Ven. Galagama Dhammaransi Thera and Ven. Pallekande Rathanasara Thera also spoke. 

- See more at: http://dailynews.lk/local/religious-leaders-lash-out-against-geneva-resolution#sthash.kvPwp3kd.dpuf

Now, US named and shamed for HR violations

Geneva: Now, US named and shamed for HR violations

... some abuses as old as America itself

March 14, 2014, 9:18 pm 

The US spearheading a resolution against Sri Lanka at the ongoing UNHRC session in Geneva drew heavy flak on Thursday for grave human rights abuses.

The US was accused of systematic human rights violations both on its soil and abroad.

The Guardian has revealed that the US was censured on March 13, at the beginning of a two-day examination of the US human rights record by the UN Human Rights Committee consisting of 18 members responsible for the investigation. The investigation has dealt with a long list of human rights abuses including detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, target killings as well as clandestine surveillance operations undertaken by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Expressing its serious concerns over the US rights record, the expert committee asserted that its concerns related to faultlines as old as America itself, such as guns and race, according to The Guardian.

The US has moved two successful resolutions against Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013 at the UNHRC. The Guardian quoted the head of the US delegation, Mary McLeod, Principal Deputy Legal Advisor as having said: "While we are certainly not perfect, our network of federal, state and local institutions provide checks on government...Since the founding of our country, in every generation there have been Americans who sought to realise our constitution’s promise of equal opportunity and justice for all."

McLeod is quoted as having said that Obama is working to reduce the number of detainees in Guantánamo; drone strikes are conducted "in compliance with international law" and the NSA is under "substantial oversight" by other parts of government. The administration was taking measures to reduce disparities in racial sentencing and profiling, and the death penalty was steadily declining in the 32 states that still practiced it.

However, the US failed to respond to specific issues raised by the UN committee, particularly the failure on the part of Obama administration to prosecute any of the officials responsible for permitting waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques under the previous administration.

Walter Kälin, a Swiss international human rights lawyer, who sits on the committee, lambasted the US for refusing to recognise the convention’s mandate over its actions beyond its own borders. The move, Kalin pointed out was taken after 9/11 as a way of evading international scrutiny over Guantánamo and other "extra-territorial" measures of dubious standing in international law.

The Swiss national was quoted as having said: "This world is an unsafe place," Kälin said. "Will it not become even more dangerous if any state would be willing to claim that international law does not prevent them from committing human rights violations abroad?"

Kälin expressed shock at some of America’s more extreme domestic habits. Referring to the release this week in Louisiana of Glenn Ford, the 144th person on death row in the US to be exonerated since 1973, Kalin said: "One hundred and forty-four cases of people wrongfully convicted to death is a staggering number."

Pointing out the disproportional representation of African Americans on death rows, he added: "Discrimination is bad, but it is absolutely unacceptable when it leads to death."

On guns, Kälin pointed to another "staggering figure" – that there are 470,000 crimes committed with firearms each year, including about 11,000 homicides. "We appreciate the position taken by President Obama on these issues. Nevertheless, much more needs to be done to curb gun violence."

Among the other issues that came under the committee’s withering gaze, according to The Guardian report were:

· the proliferation of stand-your-ground gun laws

· enduring racial disparities in the justice system, including large numbers of black prisoners serving longer sentences than whites;

· mistreatment of mentally-ill and juvenile prisoners;

· segregation in schools;

· high levels of homelessness and criminalization of homeless people;

· racial profiling by police, including the mass surveillance of Muslim communities by the New York police department.

The head of the US delegation, Mary McLeod, a senior official in the State Department, insisted that the country was "continually striving to improve". She said: "While we are certainly not perfect, our network of federal, state and local institutions provide checks on government …

The experts raised questions about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of digital communications in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. It also intervened in this week’s dispute between the CIA and US senators by calling for declassification and release of the 6,300-page report into the Bush administration’s use of torture techniques and rendition that lay behind the current CIA-Senate dispute.

The committee is charged with upholding the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty that the US ratified in 1992. The current exercise, repeated every five years, is a purely voluntarily review, and the US will face no penalties should it choose to ignore the committee’s recommendations, which will appear in a final report in a few weeks’ time.

But, The Guardian says the US is clearly sensitive to suggestions that it fails to live up to the human rights obligations enshrined in the convention – as signalled by the large size of its delegation to Geneva this week. And as an act of public shaming, Thursday’s encounter was frequently uncomfortable for the US.

The US has come under sustained criticism for its global counter-terrorism tactics, including the use of unmanned drones to kill al-Qaida suspects, and its transfer of detainees to third countries that might practice torture, such as Algeria.

From Jennings to Geneva:
Sri Lanka’s tortuous decline

March 15, 2014, 6:13 pm 

Rajan Philips

There have been quite a few news reports and nostalgic commentaries on Sir Ivor Jennings inspired by the visit to the Peradeniya campus by his granddaughter, Catherine Watson. Sir Ivor’s pioneering contribution to university education in Sri Lanka has not been sufficiently honoured and appreciated. For several decades, honouring Jennings was a one-man mission for the late H.A.I. (Ian) Goonetilleke, the venerable bibliographer of Sri Lankan scholarship. Ian fought a lone battle against powerful odds and without any official resources to remember and honour Jennings, to preserve his writings and to publish some of them. It was not just the establishment for, as has been duly noted by the popular "People and Events" columnist Nan, even the student population at its boorish worst spurned the efforts in the 1970s to honour Jennings with a statue or monument on the campus he founded. Perhaps a better way of honouring Jennings today, than statues or street names that are no longer a mark of distinction, would be for the universities to offer (seminar or reading) courses on Jennings, his work and his contributions to Sri Lanka.

Apart from nurturing the island’s first university and its picturesque campus, Jennings played a crucial role in the transfer of power from a colonial Governor to an indigenous government, and in the development of independent Lanka’s first constitution. Jennings was "honorary constitutional advisor" to DS Senanayake from May 1943 to February 1948, and a consummate participant observer in the Senanayake administration both before and after independence, from 1943 till Mr. Senanayake’s death in 1952. His monograph "The Constitution of Ceylon", first published in 1948 followed by two editions in 1950 and 1953, is still the foundational framework for assessing Sri Lanka’s constitutional development from the Soulbury Constitution (1947-72), through the First Republic (1972-78), to the Second Republic since 1978 with a seemingly unlimited term.

Some of us born in 1948 or after have been fortunate enough to experience Jennings through hearsay from our intellectual mentors and more directly through his own writings. He wrote not just on the constitution, but on the resplendent land’s flora and fauna, and the culture of its people including their food habits, describing in one instance, the "innumerable small dishes of curries" that decorate a sumptuous Lankan meal. He offered the insights of a trained mind into the structures of our society and its nascent transition from being a traditional caste-society to an emerging modern nation-society. The political manifestation of that unevenly unfolding transition is what I have ventured to call, for the purpose of this article - Sri Lanka’s tortuous decline from Jennings to Geneva.

The making of the Soulbury Constitution

I will start with Jennings’s description of how things were during what he has called "The Making of the Constitution" (Chapter 1 of "The Constitution of Ceylon") from May 1943 to May 1946. There were three key players involved in the process: the Colonial Office in London, the Governor in Colombo and the Board of Ministers of the State Council functioning under the Donoughmore Constitution. The final constitutional reform leading up to independence began with the British government’s Declaration of 1943, which ambiguously laid down the purpose of reforming the constitution towards granting Sri Lanka "full responsible government", and the procedure for achieving it. Making its own interpretation of the London Declaration, the Board of Ministers set out to draft a new constitution for Sri Lanka, which after years and some changes would become independent Sri Lanka’s first constitution, better known as the Soulbury Constitution.

"The major difficulty, however, was the minority problem", wrote Jennings, while "the rest of the constitution was comparatively easy." How was this difficult problem addressed? While Jennings claims no credit for himself, according to AJ Wilson, Jennings, as the adviser to D.S.Senanayake and the principal drafter of the "Ministers’ Draft Scheme" (as it was officially called), was instrumental in incorporating various safeguards to protect minority rights. The safeguards addressed the main concerns in regard to representation in parliament, equal treatment before the law, and fairness in recruitment to government jobs, by providing weightage in representation, a rigid constitution requiring two-thirds majority for amendment, and independent public service and judicial service commissions.

While there was good understanding between the colonial rulers and the Board of Ministers in regard to the purpose and even the content of the new constitution, there was a misunderstanding about procedure. The Board of Ministers understood the procedure as literally requiring the support of "three quarters of the State Council" for its draft constitution. To the Colonial Office, the requirement of "three quarters" support was intended to "compel the Ministers to negotiate an agreed draft with the minorities, or some of them." The Ministers did not negotiate anything with the minorities, and Jennings has noted that "nobody in Ceylon had understood this to be the intention." He goes on to say: "Not only had it not been done, but some of the minority members protested to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that they had not been allowed to express their views on the Ministers’ draft."

This was the background to the Soulbury Commssion, whose task, Jennings notes, was very different from that of the Donoughmore Commission seventeen years earlier. While the latter had to create a new constitution, the former was tasked with approving one of three constitutional alternatives: 1) Do nothing and let the Donoughmore Constitution continue, and nobody was in favour of this; 2) the Ministers’ draft, which had about two-thirds support in the State Council (SC); and 3) the Tamil Congress scheme focused on "balanced representation", which would have garnered 12 votes in the SC. In the end, it was the Ministers’ Draft with modifications and embellishments that became the Soulbury Constitution. The main changes were the addition of a Second Chamber, flexible powers given to the Delimitation Commission, and the increase in the powers of the independent Public Service Commission.

At its core, the Soulbury Constitution was meant to be the "communal compact" between the Sinhalese, the Tamils, and the Muslims, and "the rest of the constitution was comparatively easy", to re-quote Jennings. The communal compact was formally sealed when G.G. Ponnambalam joined the D.S.Senanayake cabinet soon after independence, leaving, as Jennings as casually noted, "only a small Tamil section, which produced a scheme (or at least an idea) for a federal constitution" … in opposition." Notably, the word ‘unitary’ does not appear in Jennings’s monograph. But what he describes in passing, in Chapter 2 ("Independent Status") of the monograph, as British success in establishing "a democracy by convention while remaining a monarchy in legal theory", could well be tried even belatedly in Sri Lanka to establish devolution by convention and practice, while remaining a unitary state in constitutional theory. Jennings saw no inconsistency between laws and conventions when the latter reverse the effects of the former.

The tortuous decline

Describing the "Political Developments since 1947" (Chapter 3), Jennings observed that the "first United National Party Government had an easy passage," and attributed it to a weak and divided opposition with political issues being "more controversial outside parliament than inside." Of the official opposition party, Sir Ivor wrote, the "Lanka Sama Samaja Party was well managed by its leader, Dr N.M. Perera, but it lacked personnel." Even though "Mr D.S. Senanayake was thrown from his horse and died on 22 March 1952," the second UNP government elected later that year "was even stronger … than it had been in 1948." Yet, by the time Sir Ivor Jennings left Sri Lanka in January, 1954, political storm clouds were already gathering. Writing in March 1953, for the Third Edition of the book, Jennings noted that "the period of ‘easy money’ had come to an end, and in 1952-53, the government faced the prospect of a heavy deficit in the revenue". The 1953 August Hartal had forced Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake to resign and he was replaced by the ebullient but blundering Sir John Kotelawala. The latter shattered the communal compact by firing G.G. Ponnambalam from the cabinet. SWRD Bandaranaike, whose departure from the government in 1951 had been seen as a blessing in disguise for the UNP government, was only an election away from capturing the highest prize that he had always considered to be his entitlement.

But what Sir Ivor Jennings, like Lord Soulbury, would not have foreseen was the swiftness with which the political pre-suppositions of the Soulbury (Jennings) constitution would be undermined by one government after another. It was not the ‘unitary’ nature of the constitution that led to the undermining but acts of parliament that eroded minority rights in violation of the spirit of the constitution and the judicial reluctance to challenge these violations. Eventually, with the adoption of the 1972 and the 1978 constitutions, even "the rest of the constitution" that Jennings considered to be "comparatively easy" in 1947, were made unnecessarily difficult, rigid, and presently frozen. It is not just the minority rights that are of concern today, but the overpowering of the public services, public spending, the judiciary, and parliament itself by the executive president with hardly any check or balance. Jennings, who died prematurely of cancer in 1965, could not have foreseen the abandonment of the slowly evolving parliamentary-cabinet system and its replacement by a rapidly degenerating presidential-cabinet system.

Geneva represents the nadir of Sri Lanka’s constitutional and political decline after independence. The "minority problem" that Jennings considered "the major difficulty"in the making of the Soulbury Constitution nearly seventy years ago, is now the Sri Lankan government’s insurmountable international hurdle. For the third year in succession, the UNHRC is set to pass a resolution against the Sri Lankan government. That the draft 2014 resolution has excluded the call for international investigation of wartime excesses could hardly be a solace, let alone a victory, for the government, because the new draft widens the scope of international oversight of the Sri Lankan government. In addition to repeating the call to implement the recommendations of the LLRC Commission, the new resolution brings within the purview of the UNHRC – the attacks on religious minorities, the army attack on Weliweriya protesters, and the government’s reluctance "to provide the Northern Provincial Council with the authority and resources to govern as required by the 13th Amendment of Sri Lanka’s constitution."India’s hand in the draft could be seen in the exclusion of the call for international investigation, while giving the Sri Lankan government more time to put in place a "credible national process" of investigation, and in the specific reference to the 13th Amendment for the first time in an international resolution on Sri Lanka.

The government may reject the resolution as unacceptable, as Minister G.L. Peiris has already indicated in his opening speech in Geneva. But this rejection is not even a formality because the government is promising at the same time to work with the UNHRC and it intends to attend the Geneva sessions twice a year and by the looks of it forever. It will not boycott the UNHRC sessions and insisting on rejection without boycotting is practically meaningless. Nor is Sri Lanka’s predicament going to be attenuated by attacking the United States for its hypocrisy. President Clinton once remarked that his country must project itself to the world through "the power of its example and not the example of its power." While the world must condemn the example of American power, many countries including Sri Lanka would do well to learn from the power of the American example of a progressively inclusive constitutional democracy.

Speaking of constitutional democracy, Sir Ivor Jennings left Sri Lanka’s constitutional development on a firm footing. I am not suggesting that Jennings is beyond criticism, and there have been many criticisms of Jennings in Sri Lanka and elsewhere especially in regard to his reluctance to including a Bill of Rights in the constitution. But what Sri Lanka has done in dispensing with the Soulbury Constitution and replacing it with not one but two homegrown substitutes is so horrendous that Jennings’s contributions look all the more superhuman. In regard to the "minority problem" that was his "major difficulty", Jennings offered this insight: "As always happens when constitutional reform is under discussion for long periods, members had pledged themselves to conflicting principles." In other words, long periods of constitutional discussion reinforces inflexibility. And Sri Lanka has had a longer than long period in reinforcing its internal inflexibilities. Every new generation has created its own constitutional idiocies. The upshot is the annual pilgrimage to Geneva.

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