January
28, 2008
Sri Lankan Party Questions Indian 'Influence' on Rajapaksa By P.K. Balachandran
Colombo
A radical Sinhalese Marxist party wants India to clarify if it
influenced the Sri Lankan government's move to finally implement a
controversial constitutional amendment in a bid to resolve the
ethnic conflict.
"We don't know whether India influenced the decision. But in 1987
India forced Sri Lanka to accept the India-Sri Lanka Accord and go
for a constitutional amendment," Somawansa Amarasinghe, who heads
the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JPV), told IANS.
"We want India to clarify whether this time too it had forced the
government to accept the 13th amendment as the solution to the
conflict," he said.
The 13th amendment was the first serious bid to dent Sri Lanka's
unitary constitution by devolving powers to its provinces, including
the Tamil-majority northeast.
Amarasinghe said: "We have always opposed the 13th amendment and we
will do so now also. We opposed it in 1987 because India thrust it
on us. We believed then, as indeed we do believe now, that solutions
for Sri Lanka's problems would have to be indigenous. We have to
seek a solution that will suit us and not India or any other
country."
The All Party Representative Committee (APRC), tasked with unveiling
suggestions to push Sri Lanka towards a federal set up, last week
recommended the full implementation of the 13th amendment after
President Mahinda Rajapaksa expressed a wish for such a suggestion.
"Perhaps the president wants to please India but this is not the way
to please India. If he wants to please India, there are other ways
of doing so, ways in which both countries will gain 50:50,"
Amarasinghe said.
"The JVP believes that India's main concern in its dealings with Sri
Lanka is its security. We should guarantee that our actions would
not be prejudicial to India's security interests. And India must
approach us with true friendship based on give and take," the JVP
leader said.
Amarasinghe mocked Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) for
swearing by the 13th amendment now, forgetting that it had organised
street demonstrations against the India-Sri Lanka pact in 1987.
That amendment, of 1987, led to the formation of elected provincial
councils, unification of the Tamil-speaking northern and eastern
wings into a single entity and the grant of a measure of autonomy to
Sri Lanka's nine provinces.
The Sinhalese, who make up more than 70 percent of Sri Lanka's
population, opposed the India-Sri Lanka Accord because they saw it
as an Indian imposition.
Then president J.R. Jayewardene used his brute majority in
parliament to get the 13th amendment passed amid protests by the
opposition.
Subsequently, Sri Lankan politicians across the board accepted the
amendment and the provincial councils.
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