Are we ready for a Western dominated, semi-colonial Sri Lanka of the sort we lived in during the Ranil–Chandrika-Solheim years; that disgraceful decade of diminished and retrenched national sovereignty? Are we ready for the inevitable blowback, polarisation and radicalisation? In its narrow judgment in favor of the 13th Amendment in 1987, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ruled that this structural reform, which made for provincial autonomy, remained within the framework of the unitary state because of the executive presidency and its powers over the council as vested in the Governor. Without the magnet or ‘maypole’ as it were, of the elected executive presidency, the centripetal potential of the provincial councils would be greater than their centrifugal potential. This is yet another, doubtlessly unwitting, danger posed by the joint Opposition’s stated project. A presidential election is not about constitutional change. It is about picking a leader for the country, the state – or more fundamentally, the collective, the community, the tribe (if you prefer an anthropological existentialism). I am reluctant to dispense with the services of the leader who passed the crucial test of ‘domestic R2P’ – the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ his people and country from the armed enemy. I hesitate to ditch a strong leader and proven success in the most important matter, and replace him with an unproven if courageous, decent man who will cede much of his power to two proven failures. -Dr. Dayan Jayatillake
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:25:46 +0000
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