FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AS-080-2006
April 25, 2006
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
SRI LANKA: Civil society in Sri Lanka must learn lessons from the people’s movement in Nepal
As a major victory is being won by the Nepalese people in reclaiming democracy and the Constitution from the grip of the country’s despicable monarch, Gyenendra, who staged a coup against his own people, it may be a good time to reflect on why civil society has been unable to emerge with vigour to defend democracy in Sri Lanka.
It may be a good occasion to ask this, as civil society has done little to win back the limited achievements, comprised in the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, made against the absolute power of the executive presidency. These achievements have been stolen from the people through the refusal by the president and the government to appoint the members of the Constitutional Council, which has the powers of appointment for other vital commissions. While the Nepalese people have been able to defeat an actual coup, performed by the King of Nepal with the backing of the military, Sri Lankan civil society has been unable even to deal with the issue of the 17th Amendment.
The victors in Nepal are not the political parties or the Maoist insurgents. What these parties have failed to do and the Maoists could not do in spite of occupying large areas of the country and using violence, the people have succeeded in doing by gathering tens of thousands of persons to defy the King’s orders to shoot to kill. Within three weeks, the King has capitulated, perhaps still hoping to save his skin. Sri Lankans claim greater literacy and better political enlightenment, but never has the Sri Lankan people’s movement been able to emerge beyond the political parties to express their own free will independently.
Perhaps it may be time to examine the causes of this apparent weakness in Sri Lankan civil society. The blame is often laid on the educated classes, which have demonstrated their incapacity to take up a common cause with the ordinary people, even on matters of democracy and basic human rights. The members of the middle class have often been confused by and preoccupied with their own limited interests and have felt somewhat insecure in the face of the large scale education of the children of the ordinary folk. The educated class, by and large, stands opposed to the democratic participation of these newly educated young people in the country.
Particularly since the 1978 Constitution usurped the power from a democratic system in favour of virtual absolute power by the executive president, hardly any attempts have been made by the people to wrest power back to democracy. This is at least partly due to the fact that people have depended too much on the political parties, and the political parties have, in turn, used the people to come to power and then to abandon their aspirations. Even the massive resistance that rose against the reign of terror under presidents Jayawardene and Premadasa was used only for the opposition to come to power and, once in power, the promise to dissolve the position of executive president was abandoned. The promises to prosecute the perpetrators of disappearances, torture and other gross abuses of human rights in the south, north and east were also completely forgotten.
The people have not yet learned to develop their own independent strategies through which the political parties could be bound to restore democracy and to ensure the continuation of the democratic process. The issue of civil society finding its own independent course for the realisation of the commitment to democracy as its primary objective also suffered due to nationalism, which rose both in the majority and the minority communities, dividing the capacity of the people to stand against authoritarianism. Even the various peace movements that arose did little to awaken the people as a whole to be united in the defence of democracy as a primary framework within which the rights of all groups would be respected. In the absence of any serious commitment to democracy, there has been no possibility at all for results in the search for genuine resolution of the ethnic issue. Bluff politics mixed with corruption keep the people confused while a few benefit through the betrayal of the people’s aspirations.
It is time for independent interventions from the people to emerge in the same way as it has done in Nepal, to assert their will and to be able to dictate terms to the political parties. A self-critical approach by all civil society movements is a primary issue now. The issue of the abandonment of the 17th Amendment provides a forum through which civil society movements can begin to gather with the idea of reasserting the people’s place in the political affairs of the country. The Asian Human Rights Commission fervently hopes that Sri Lanka will learn a lesson from the peoples’ intervention in Nepal in the last few days and repeat it in their own way in the near future.
