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Provincial Councils – a real devolution? |
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2009-10-09 | 3.40 PM |
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It is now a forgone conclusion: President Rajapaksa’s ruling coalition will secure another victory at Saturday’s southern provincial council elections. While the UPFA focuses on securing maximum possible percentage of voters, the opposition UNP’s target is to reduce the winning margin.
That said, the ruling party candidates and supporters have been engaged on a campaign to intimidate and assault UNP and JVP supporters and have even clashed with the police. Interestingly, some UPFA candidates themselves were threatened by other candidates of the same ruling party. |
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It should however be reminded that supporters of Rajapaksa administration are not alone in assaulting and intimidating opposition supporters at local polls. Since the provincial councils were established, every administration, including the UNP and Chandrika Kumaratunga administration (in which SB Dissanayake and Mangala Samaraweera were leading members) have unleashed violence against the opposition at provincial council polls.
(And the JVP, for its part, threatened and assassinated left wing candidates contested first ever provincial council elections to be held in Sri Lanka.)
The PCs were established as part of the Indo-Lanka accord signed in 1987 devolving power into regions as an attempt to resolve Sri Lanka’s national question. But has it served its purpose?
Apart from the failure of consecutive administrations to properly devolve full powers, including police and land distribution powers, to the PCs, the conduct of the executive (and the ruling party) has raised serious questions over the establishment of regional bodies as a power devolution tool.
Contrary to wider expectations over resolving the ethnic issue, President Premadasa used executive powers to dissolve the first ever north-east PC as the then chief minister Vartharaja Perumal violated the constitution and attempted to unilaterally announce a separation from the south. That was the last PC in Tamil-majority north and the east until the establishment of the eastern PC last year.
Currently, President Rajapaksa-led UPFA is on its way to secure the control of eight out of nine provincial councils in Sri Lanka; the northern provincial council is yet to be established.
President Rajapaksa has been promising what he calls 13+ (13th amendment to the constitution that established provincial councils and some more devolution of power) as his ‘home grown’ solution for the national question. But his actions speak louder than the words.
Making a mockery of expectations over devolution of power, President Rajapaksa has been dissolving and calling for fresh elections for separate provincial councils for the last few months. No chief minister was given a say over whether or when to dissolve the PC. It is Mr. Rajapaksa’s centralised executive power that decided the fate of all seven PCs.
It was expected that the chief ministers and the provincial assemblies will have a wider authority over development in their respected regions, let alone deciding the elections, when the PCs were first established. It did not take long for those expectations to be faded, but fresh expectations were raised as the new eastern provincial council was established last year.
However, within months new chief minister Pillayan and provincial councilors have been complaining that the council is completely ignored in government’s development projects in the east.
Over the years, the infamous Wayamba elections during CBK administration, conduct of Premadasa administration and recent violent election campaigns in the south- despite almost assured victory for the ruling party- clearly indicates that the Sinhala political leadership is not interested at all in handing their power to any political rival –let alone to the minority Tamils. It is therefore unrealistic for the Tamils in Sri Lanka to expect any form of real devolution of power from the power-thirsty majority Sinhala nation.
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