The Sri Lanka Government would work for a solution to the ethnic Tamil issue after the general elections next year, Minister Tissa Vitarana who headed the all-party panel on the issue said in Colombo on Monday Oct 6.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa presently doesnot have a majority in parliament to push through constitutional amendments. Government needs two-thirds majority to push statute amendments.
‘A political solution to the ethnic issue will not be found until a new parliament is convened after a likely general Election in March as the Mahinda Rajapaksa government expects a clear 2/3 majority to pass a new Constitution based on APRC proposals’, Tissa Vitarana said.
The position so far maintained by the government was that President Rajapaksa would include a formula to settle the ethnic issue in his manifesto at the next Presidential Elections expected in January 2010.
Presidential Elections will be followed by the Parliamentary elections in March next year.
“It is not correct to say that the government has neglected a political solution following the military victory over the LTTE in May. President Rajapaksa is under tremendous pressure locally and internationally including India to come up with a political solution. But it is a long process and cannot be done in a hurry. The APRC is aware of the weaknesses of the 13th Amendment and has incorporated proposals to mitigate them,” Prof. Vitarana remarked.
He handed a ‘Summary’ of the recommendations of over three years of deliberations of the APRC over to President Mahinda Rajapaksa in August 16.
“We expect a feedback from President Rajapaksa for our next move. He will go through the summary report before giving instructions to the APRC on the next step,” Prof. Vitarana said, according to a report in The Daily Mirror of Colombo.
The summary report carries a new Constitution that recommends reverting to Westminster System, pruning of Executive Presidential powers, a second chamber of Parliament, a national Land and Water Commission and the Village Committee system.
MAX POWER TO PROVINCES
The APRC has attempted to give maximum power to the provinces pertaining to provincial issues and protect the rights of the provinces to formulate legislation for the exclusive use of their respective provinces without the interference of the center.
The proposed second chamber will be a house of province ( SL has nine provinces) from all nine provinces. Another important proposal was setting up of a Constitutional Court to deal with constitutional issues that are likely to crop up when the new Constitution is implemented.
Vitarana is confident that the problems that had bedeviled the implement the 13th Amendment in the past would not arise since ‘there is a clear division of power between the center and the province’ in the proposed Constitution. By doing away with the concurrent list, the centre and the province can exercise the powers without interference by the other, Minister avrs.
It is expected that through a uniform system that benefits the people in all parts of the country, the grievances of the Tamil speaking people in particular would be addressed. Suitable changes will be made to ensure that the undue concentration of power which has been a feature of the Executive Presidential system will be diluted, Prof. Vitarana opined.
Remarking that the victory over the LTTE has removed the biggest obstacle to resolve the national question, Prof Vitarana said, ‘the door is now open to collectively work out a political solution that is acceptable to a vast majority of our people’.
‘We do this’, he went on to say, ‘in a sensible and in a cooperative manner to ensure the danger of separation is removed for ever and we could live together as one Sri Lankan people within an undivided country’.
The APRC appointed on July 20, 2006, held 178 sessions before arriving at a consensus on its proposals. 13 parties were represented on the panel.
