The thirteenth amendment was passed under duress and if not for India the amendment would not have obtained a two third majority in the Parliament, and most probably would not have seen the light of the day.
by Nalin de Silva
(September 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan democrats of both the right and the left are very much concerned of the eighteenth amendment. They are of the opinion that the relevant amendment was passed in the Parliament in undemocratic ways and that it should go. However, they have up to now not come with any undemocratic method that has been adopted by the President Mahinda Rajapaksa or by the government. It is true that certain UNP MPs crossed over and the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress voted with the government. The crossing over of MPs cannot be an undemocratic feature from the point of view of pundits and this is not the first time that an opposition party decided to vote with the government.
Then why do all these pundits shout from roof tops that democracy in Sri Lanka is all over and there is nothing left of that noble form of government given to the world by the Greeks. The Greeks of course did not have representative democracy and as far as they were concerned it was direct ruling by the public. It was government of the people by the people for the people unlike in the case of western democracy where representative democracy has been introduced.
I do not have much faith in the democracy as practised in the west where it is government of the representatives by the representatives for the representatives. How many people in the United States of America have the ability to elect their representative to the congress? The Presidential elections are notoriously complex and many people have no interests in the so called primaries that are held to decide the candidate of a particular party.
The average turn out at the elections is very low in this "superior democratic country of the world" and many people cannot be motivated to go to the polling booth. Democracy is nothing but hypocrisy where some people vote for a person who has been already nominated by a mammoth political party. The people have no control over the nomination of party candidates and it is wrong to say that so and so was elected by the people. The people are mere spectators who think erroneously that they also take part in the games.
The so called democrats in Sri Lanka are worried that several MPs crossed over to the government but not if it happened the other way around and that the SLMC decided to vote with the government. However, there were no threats from the President or the Chief Government Whip or the Leader of the House or any other authority to the MPs to vote for the eighteenth amendment.
Compare this situation with the passing of the thirteenth amendment. The thirteenth amendment was imposed on us by India using military power and it was Dixit who fixed it as they used to tell those days. There was massive protests against the thirteenth amendment and the MPs were kept in a hotel on the previous day violating their so called fundamental rights and they were taken for a ride both literally and literary to the Parliament. It was nothing but strong arm action by India and JR Jayewardene had to just give in to what Dixit said in Colombo, after the latter got his instructions from Delhi.
The thirteenth amendment was passed under duress and if not for India the amendment would not have obtained a two third majority in the Parliament, and most probably would not have seen the light of the day. The protests in the streets by the largest opposition party the SLFP and JVP that used to vacillate between Marxism and nationalism were completely ignored by claiming that they were the work of extreme nationalists who did not respect democracy. It is true that the thirteenth amendment is law but it was passed in the Parliament using the most cruel methods that a Parliament could think of.
Compared with the passing of the thirteenth amendment the passing of the eighteenth amendment was very "democratic" in the sense the word is used by the pundits. However, I have not come across any literature by the pundits telling us that the thirteenth amendment was undemocratic. The most undemocratic piece of legislation in the recent past was nothing but the thirteenth amendment.
It is clear the pundits are as much as hypocritical as democracy itself. However there is a reason for the pundits to oppose the eighteenth amendment while projecting the thirteenth amendment as good legislature. The Pundits in general are anti Sinhala and especially anti Sinhala Buddhists. The seventeenth amendment that was replaced in part by the eighteenth amendment was anti Sinhala to say the least. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is a nationalistic leader unlike J R Jayewardene and no pundit would like Mahinda Rajapaksa to be elected as the President for a third term. Thus they do not want to give the public another opportunity to elect Mahinda Rajapaksa as the President.
The pundits both of the right as well as the left have only one criterion in deciding whether anything is democratic or not. If something is anti Sinhala and especially anti Sinhala Buddhist, it is democratic while anything that recognises the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture in the country is undemocratic. The eighteenth amendment is undemocratic simply because the pundits think that it will strengthen what they call Sinhala Buddhist hegemony in the country. For the pundits the thirteenth amendment is democratic is because it works against what they call the Sinhala Buddhist hegemony. Some pundits would say fighting against any form of hegemony is democratic. However, they have to be told that not giving due place to the Sinhala Buddhist culture in the country by writing of Tamil Buddhists who did not exist not only in Sri Lanka but also in India, (Kanchipuram where Buddhists have lived did not belong to the Tamil country in India until the English made it part of Madras Presidency) and attributing a history of thousand years to the Tamils in Sri Lanka, by recognising the Northern and Eastern Provinces in Sri Lanka demarcated by the English as late as 1889, as traditional homeland of the Tamils etc., is not agitating against a so-called hegemony but reinforcing the English hegemony by repeating the pet theories of the English who supported Tamils both in Sri Lanka and India. If the pundits are genuine in their support for "democracy" they should oppose the thirteenth amendment, and agitate at least for the repeal of obnoxious clauses giving police powers and powers to distribute land to the provincial councils.
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