Palliatives for paranoia:

Devolution dispirits separatism

by Kumar David

Seven years of Scottish home rule did not whet the separatist appetite but quite to the contrary sent it straight out of fashion. So while anti-devolutionists here bite their nails and fret that autonomy and devolution in the North and East will spell the doom of Sri Lankan sovereignty, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is reeling, bewildered by what hit it.

While 74% said yes to devolution in 1997, recent opinion surveys show disillusionment - entirely to be expected - as only about 50% think the new system is working well. No, no, almost no one wants to go back on the change, but they no longer blame the English for their problems. It is Holyrood (Scottish Parliament) and the Scottish Executive that "feels the lash of Scottish tongues".

I say: 'Damned good! This is healthy democracy at work; it's exactly the way it should be!' The Scots are no longer concerned about the "bloody English" they have plenty of their own problems to worry about - declining mining and industry, paying for university education and personal care for the elderly both of which have been made free, an economic growth rate that is consistently 1% below England, and the idiocy of their own politicians.

The Economist of 20th - 26th May carries two extended feature articles surveying the experience of home rule and web-site www.economist.com/scotland carries the data sources. The articles must be made compulsory reading for all our members of parliament (TNA included) and anybody else interested in politics - and can someone get the JVP to talk less and read more?

Washing the thala thel out of Sinhalese hair

If only the Sinhalese could let the Tamils get on with their own act they will succeed in getting them out of their hair. Then, far from scurrying around searching for Thamil Eelam, Prabharan or no Prabharan, the Tamils will get down to the business of sorting out their daily material lives.

Home rule in Scotland has neither intensified nor diminished the desire for independence; the issue is simply no longer centre stage, no longer a hot topic. There is the argument that the LTTE is not the SNP or Scottish Labour or the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

The Tigers, it will be argued, are hell bent on separation and any comparison is spurious; they will manipulate the dumb Tamils is the essence of this thinking. This is a phony belief system; it sees history as the outcome of conspiracies and treats the subjective motivations of the few as all compelling.

The way events will really unfold in the event of devolution will be far different from this simple obsessive and linear prognosis. Consider the following. It is now quite clear that both the LTTE and GoSL are in a state of shock in consequence of recent international interventions - the EU ban, the Co-Chairs statement, the EU President's statement and most recently Richard Boucher's tongue lashing in Colombo.

In both camps trauma is evident - Balasingham's maudlin interview, a chagrined Tamil diaspora; and on the other side, inconsistent stuttering by GoSL in the face of the JVP and an All Party Conference arranged precisely for the purpose of saying exactly nothing. To opine in the face of this that the LTTE can press on with the fixed mind-set, 'Whatever constitutional formula, Oslo Accord or federalism is offered we will ignore everything and go to war', is palpably absurd.

There is however a far more important reason why the obsessive nationalists who presume that the Tamil people are blinkered asses hitched to an LTTE wagon are wrong. While it is entirely true that in the absence of security, autonomy and devolution most Tamils will not break their link to the LTTE, in the event that these needs are met it is the LTTE that will be put on notice by the community.

The superficial minded see an LTTE problem in Sri Lanka mistaking the outer putrescence for the inner malignancy. The quintessence is a deep and unsolved ethnic deadlock and constitutional impasse; it is the Tamil question, not the LTTE question that is at the root, reams of newsprint and learned analysts who think otherwise notwithstanding In Northern Ireland, in Eritrea and in a more complicated way even in Palestine, when political structures changed fundamental relationships between people and movements changed.

Ultimately, it is the people who called the shots. How the LTTE responds to a hypothetical new devolved opportunity will decide its own future. It can transform from a military to a democratic political outfit and survive in an autonomous Tamil region, or it can choose to perish.

True, the LTTE if it can do this will cease to be what it is. And if the Sinhala-state can bring itself, after half a century, to depart from its erstwhile core ideology and institute "dramatic political changes" (to use the Co-Chairs terminology, or Boucher's more explosive "quite a different governing structure than what you have now"), it too will cease to be what it has long been.

There is tremendous pressure on both sides and there is little reason to see the metamorphosis of one belligerent as less likely than that of the other. The skeptic may well reason both epiphanies equally unlikely, but there is a just a possibility that both the Tigers and GoSL are getting an inkling that the old way is going out of fashion.

There is peripheral evidence that the LTTE has begun to rethink the old strategy (suicide bombers, assassination, and attrition warfare) and see that this way is not going to work any longer.

To those readers who are going to hoot with derision in the context of the last seven months events, I say just watch and see, yes it may not be settled yet but my hunch could well be right. The Tigers are not idiots on matters of strategy.

In GoSL's case the panic is obvious; its masters have just read it the riot act. Maybe, just maybe something will change. Oh well many of us are congenital optimists, otherwise why write 'the government must do this or do that' kind of articles? Another lesson or two

Back to Scotland, which deserves a lot more attention, but space permits only two points, one do and one don't. In addition to Holyrood, National Assemblies have been set up in Wales and Northern Ireland. The former, with limited powers, has proved popular.

The latter, which opens its doors from time to time when security permits, is answerable to both London and Dublin and has yet to get to full steam. The Act permits regional bodies in England as well, but nobody wants them.

The lesson is that the system, in totality, is designed to fit the problem or to say it correctly, devolution is asymmetrical. 'Standard federalism' or setting up numerous federal units in Sri Lanka is thoroughly inappropriate. The solution must fit the problem, not be a matter of fashion. Sri Lanka must design a system of Asymmetrical Devolution to deal with the issues pertaining to its Tamil and Muslim minorities.

One mistake that has been made in the case of Scottish devolution, according to the articles referred to previously, is in respect of finances, resource allocation and taxation.

It seems that the details were glossed over initially and mismatches and hidden subsidies (to Scotland's advantages) have now emerged. If and when we wake up and enact devolution, greater attention needs to be paid to revenue collection and resource allocation.

By Kumar David on 5 June 2006