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| Sunday, 12 January 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Federal solution : towards greater democracy by Ajith Rupasinghe This article intends to demonstrate that there are only two concrete choices in solving the national crisis as it has developed at the present time. Either a federal state with a united people within an undivided country OR a Unitary state with a country split into pieces and the people living in a permanent state of conflict. This is how the question is posed by history. Everyone will have to decide. A rational decision will first have to ask: What is the problem that federalism is intended to solve? What is the problem for which solutions are being negotiated? The way we define the problem is going to determine how we set about to solve it. Next we have to address the concrete ground realities under which a political solution to the national crisis is to be worked out. It is only after we have sincerely addressed these issues that we can begin to evaluate the necessity and possibility of a federal solution. Defining the problem The question of defining the problem is most contentious. But there can only be one truth. There are those who have built their political identity, careers and fortunes behind the argument that what exists is a terrorist problem to be liquidated militarily, and not a national problem to be solved politically. This argument claims that the LTTE represents a terrorist threat to the Sinhala-Buddhist nation and its state, and therefore, should be liquidated militarily. This argument is that there is and could only be one nation and one state that belongs to this country and that is the Sinhala-Buddhist nation, while all others are alien ethnic minorities. This country has been divided because of this political ideology of the ruling class which has been imposed on the people. The war against the LTTE was carried out for two decades based on this argument. This stand is a reactionary stand. This reactionary stand has been taken by the UNP, the SLFP, the PA and the JVP when it suited them to mobilize the masses and build up their chauvinist political base. All these parties are equally responsible for having communalized the state and the political field by this stand, and for creating the conditions for this war. They have joined in the imperialist game of divide and conquer by the construction of a chauvinist hegemonic colonial state. All people will be called upon to assess this argument - this political ideology. Either we can claim that this country belongs exclusively and only to the Sinhala- Buddhist nation and only this nation has the right to form a state and all others are aliens to be accommodated as minorities, or we can claim that this is the home of the Sinhala-Buddhist nation, heirs to an unsurpassed and pre-eminent ancient civilization, and the home equally of all the nations and communities who have peopled it and cohabited in this land through history, each with their own distinctive historical traditions. The first leads to a highly centralized, theocratic-hegemonic unitary Sinhala-Buddhist state. The other leads to a democratic secular federal state. One would lead to a permanent state of war and the other to a democratic political settlement. First of all, let us examine this concept of a Sinhala-Buddhist state. Let us examine its historical legitimacy. This state is NOT a state of the Sinhala Buddhist nation. This is the biggest myth propagated by this ruling class. It is a semi-feudal, comprador-bureaucratic, neo-colonial state. In other words, it is a state that represents the class dictatorship of the most powerful Multi-national Corporations, Imperialist Agents, Ministers and Bureaucrats, and Feudal Ideological Agents. It is the UNP and the SLFP, aided by their parliamentary socialist junior partners, that have constructed and protected this so-called Sinhala-Buddhist state. What has this state accomplished? The land of the Pure Theravada Buddhist tradition has been mortgaged for ever to the World Bank. Today, it is Coca-Cola, MacDonalds, Levis and International Stock Markets that govern our society. All nations and people have been desecrated and defiled by this state, including the Sinhala Buddhist nation. The Dharma lies buried under gilded temples while the country is handed over to the US to wage a global war to defend and expand its empire of profit and plunder. Our own mothers and daughters slaving in foreign countries, garment factories and on our hill tops have become the mainstay of our economy. This is the extent of our depravity. This state has brought universal decadence and degeneration of our society. It has brought endless poverty, indebtedness and misery to the people. It has generated two insurgencies and a protracted war which has taken the lives of over one hundred thousand youth. This state is drenched with the blood of the people. The definition of the problem as a problem of eradicating a mortal terrorist threat has been promoted by all these parties in order to cover up a powerful truth, which is that it is these parties that have applied the most savage and widespread terror against the masses. This racist propaganda has been to cover up the truth that it is the state, the present neo-colonial state rigged up by the British colonial state to preserve and protect imperialist domination and exploitation, that is responsible for generating the politics of terrorism. State-terrorist communal pogroms have been deliberately unleashed against unarmed innocent civilians just for being Tamil. State terrorism in the form of illegal massacres and inhuman torture has been unleashed against Sinhala youth as well, in the context of suppressing armed insurgencies against the state. The truth is that this colonial state is neither Sinhala nor Buddhist, but has suppressed the national democratic rights and aspirations of all the people, including the Sinhala people. The Sri Lankan state is engaged in negotiations with the LTTE only because it failed miserably to defeat it militarily. This is because continuing a state of war has proven to be more costly politically for the ruling class than waging peace. The war has served to fracture and polarize the state and the social order to the point of internal implosion. The degree of degeneration of the state and the social order due to the war had become intolerable for the system. Some form of democratic restructuring has to be undertaken to prevent the system from overheating with a crisis of political legitimacy. Therefore, it has become expedient for the UNP, which started the war, to try to stop it by coming to some political accommodation with the LTTE. This is the ground reality that has to be addressed. The failure to achieve a military victory is precisely due to the fact that there is no military solution. There is no terrorist problem to be eradicated militarily. But a national problem to be settled politically. Yet, even after two decades of protracted war, the PA and the JVP have, like a rickety pendulum, united to oppose any political solution - simply to plunder the Sinhala-Buddhist constituency once again with various versions of anti-Tamil tribalist Sinhala chauvinism in order to seize state power. Nature of the national crisis The problem to be addressed is a national crisis brought about by the systematic and intensifying suppression of the national democratic aspirations of the people of Sri Lanka by the colonial state and its ruling class. This suppression has been carried out by the imposition of imperialist domination and exploitation through the workings of the system of international finance capital. Today, the whole country and all its nations and people have been subjected to complete and total imperialist enslavement under the system of neo-colonialism. We are completely subordinated today by the political economy of world imperialism. We have no sovereignty to decide our life or future. We have neither dignity nor culture. We have all been reduced to beggars and paupers. Within this overall structure of imperialist domination enforced by the colonial state on the people, national minorities have been effectively suppressed internally as well, by the construction of a highly centralized, majoritarian-hegemonic-chauvinist-militarist unitary state. This state has now produced an organic crisis which can either result in splitting the country into pieces or unite the people within an undivided country. The issue is clear. Either federalism and a united people living in an undivided country OR a Unitary state with a country split into pieces with the people in a permanent state of war. Everyone will have to decide. A political solution brought about as the fruit of a long, cruel and bitter war and that helps to unite the people and the country is the only progressive solution to the national crisis at the present time. A federal solution will help to clear the path to bring the class struggle to the fore. It will help to displace the politics of ethnic-based nationalism which divide the people with the politics of the class struggle which unites the people against the common oppressor, which is the system of world imperialism and neo-colonial state. A federal solution will create more favourable conditions for building the common struggle to overthrow our colonial slavery and the colonial state and replace it with a people's democratic state. The way to build towards a people's democratic state can be paved better and faster through a federal solution to the present national crisis, provided that the political space is cleared to bring the class struggle to the foreground as opposed to ethnic-based politics of nationalism. No reformist illusions This article locates the question of a federal solution to the present national crisis in the context of the revolutionary perspective of achieving a people's democratic state. This article favours a federal solution because it would provide the political structure to give recognition to the equality, dignity, security and autonomy of all the nations and communities in Sri Lanka. It would be a step forward in resolving the national crisis and ending the war. Finally, it is decisive that this time the effort to reach a negotiated settlement shall not be sabotaged by a reversal into the politics of tribal chauvinism. However, it is clearly recognized that the federal proposal that is being negotiated is a fundamentally reformist solution. A federal solution is NOT going to liberate the people-whether Sinhala, Tamil or Moslem. In fact, federalism will tie the masses more securely to the system and the state. However, a federal solution is a democratic right which the people and the country have won through bitter struggle and sacrifice. It constitutes a partial defeat to the political ideology of chauvinism promoted by the state. This victory has to be upheld and built upon. A federal solution will help to displace the politics of ethnic-based nationalism and to replace it with class-based revolutionary politics. It will create favourable ground for propagating a revolutionary perspective where the struggle for a federal solution is located as a transitional stage for building national unity in order to bring the independent revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat to the fore. It will serve to expose, denounce and defeat tendencies defending the old order and who serve to perpetuate the centralized hegemonic, chauvinist state. Some basic issues within a federal solution A federal solution is necessary to give recognition to the Tamil people living predominantly in the North-East as an independent nation. This is the most basic and sacred demand of the Tamil national movement. Or else there would be no political solution, but a return to a state of war. The recognition of the Tamil nation is predicated on the recognition of a historic homeland constituting the North-East. Unless these claims are recognized, there would be no permanent political solution. However, recognition of Tamil nationhood based on a historical homeland cannot mean an exclusive Tamil-dominated political unit in the North-East which exercises any form of the same majoritarian hegemony practices on it by the colonial state. That simply would be a travesty of justice. Recognition of Tamil nationhood cannot in any way or form reduce the political status of the Moslem and the Sinhala people living in these areas, or in the country. The same is true for all communities elsewhere in the country, including the Tamil plantation workers. Nor can it lead to any loss of sovereignty on the part of the country as a whole. The only acceptable formula may be to recognize the North-East as the historical homeland of the Tamil nation, but also equally and distinctively, the historical homelands of the Moslem and the Sinhala people as well. Any other effort to marginalize or degrade any community is bound to lead to violent contention and compound the national crisis. No politics of class collaboration It is my studied view that such a perspective offers a democratic form of sharing political power within a federal framework in the current highly ethnically charged political environment. The truth is that all these seemingly intractable problems could be solved if there is a genuine commitment to finding a democratic solution that honours all the nations, communities and groups constituting the people of Sri Lanka. Finally, on no account should the demand for a federal solution on the part of the people be any form of subordination to the agenda of the UNP government or of the neo-colonial state. A federal solution has been made possible not due to the good offices of a reformed state or a particular government, but to actual victories won on the ground in fighting a corrupt and defunct state. The stand in favour of a federal solution should not in any way be interpreted to mean support for the UNP or for the colonial state, but a stand taken to defend the democratic gains won through struggle and to clear the ground for class-based proletarian revolutionary politics to establish a people's democratic state. There could be no illusions about the class nature of the UNF government, in as much as there could be none concerning the PA and the JVP. All these parties of the ruling class are subservient to and serve imperialism. The UNF government has planned the most reactionary agenda, along with its peace program. The country will be plundered by the wolves of international finance capital, the economy will be opened even more for ruthless exploitation, the people will be bled even more. All progressive, democratic, patriotic, revolutionary forces should unite to resist all the conspiracies of the ruling class to tie this country to any military-strategic cooperation with the US or India and to further mortgage our future generations to the World Bank. |
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