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RENOUNCE THE UNITARY STATE, PREACHES TNA
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By Dr Dayan Jayatilleka
When a leading English-language Sunday newspaper in Colombo, hardly supportive of the incumbent administration and known instead for its pro-western and pro-Opposition orientation, calls in an editorial marking the 25th anniversary of the Indo-Lanka accord, for the holding of an island-wide referendum on the 13th amendment and the Provincial Councils, it means it is hardly the time for the TNA to stridently sermonise on the need to abandon the unitary state and convert to federalism and Tamil self-determination.
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However, the affable TNA parliamentarian Mr MA Sumanthiran has recently authored a pair of essays saying just that, definitively entitled ‘Self Determination: Myth and Reality’ (Ceylon Today July 29, 2012, p 9) and Federalism: Fact & Fiction (Ceylon Today Aug 5th 2012, p.9). In the latter essay, Mr Sumanthiran proclaims: “By insisting on a unitary state devoid of a federal structure, the government of Sri Lanka has deprived the Tamil people of sovereignty, and self-determination...There is no substitute for self –determination”.
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In the first half of his earlier essay Mr Sumanthiran defines ‘internal self-determination’: “It is important to note that a people can, in the exercise of their right to self-determination decide to remain within a pre-existing state but choose the degree of autonomous self-government within the framework of a sovereign state. This is known as internal self- determination.”
So, in Tamil nationalism’s definition the ‘internal’ character of self-determination is purely volitional and utterly elastic: “the people can, in the exercise of their right to self-determination decide to remain within a pre-existing state”. Note: ‘can’, not ‘shall’. They can, but are not obliged to and may not. Or they can today, but may choose not to, tomorrow. What’s ‘internal’ about that?
Furthermore, the definition of internal is the decision of the relevant collective and has no larger or less subjective constitutional or legal constraint, because “the people can...choose the degree of autonomous self-government within the framework of a sovereign state”. Going by this definition, the ‘people’ that does the choosing is by no means the entire citizenry of a state, a country. It is that ‘people’ which perceives itself as a people or a nation bearing the right of self-determination. It is entirely self-referential. Thus, quite irrespective of the basic law or the adjudication of the highest courts or the democratically ascertained wishes of the country’s citizenry as a whole, any segment of a country’s citizenry which perceives and declares itself as a ‘people’ have the right to “choose the degree of autonomous self-government within the framework of a sovereign state”. Most dangerously, the need for legitimacy based upon the consent of the majority of the citizenry is peremptorily obviated.
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Here is the concluding paragraph of Mr Sumanthiran’s exposition: “...the Tamil people in Sri Lanka have been subjected to discrimination within the model of a unitary state where they have been denied the right to express their right to self-determination within an internal arrangement, such as a federal government. In such a situation the continued denial of the existence of the right to self-determination itself may give rise to the right to unilateral cessation as an expression of that right. Therefore, it is the recognition of the right to self-determination of the Tamil people and not its denial that will help to preserve the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka from claims to the right of cessation. Thus it is a sine qua non that the right to self-determination is recognized and the nature of the state is restructured to enable meaningful exercise of internal self-determination if the right to external self-determination is to be avoided.” (Ceylon Today July 29, 2012, p 9)
The argument is that the right of internal self-determination is denied within-- and by virtue of being within-- a unitary state, i.e. a strong central state. It is sufficiently ensured only within and by some form of federal state, and if the right of self-determination is not recognised by such a federal arrangement in place of a unitary one, it is justifiable and likely that the right of external self-determination--the right to unilateral secession--will be activated.
In other words, either Sri Lanka stops refusing to recognise the right of the Tamil people to self-determination, proceeds to recognise that right and restructure the state accordingly or the assertion by the Tamil people of external self-determination as the right to unilateral secession may be triggered. More: it is no less than “a sine qua non”, i.e. an essential, indispensable precondition for the non-assertion of the right to external self-determination in the form of unilateral secession, that Sri Lanka must accept and recognise the right of the Tamil people to internal self-determination and restructure the state accordingly, moving outside of the unitary model to a some sort of federal model.
Where Tamil nationalism in the form of the TNA or any other party may go with federalism, is clearly discernible in yet another statement in Mr Sumanthiran’s essay: “The claim of the Tamils to self-determination is also based on the fact that prior to colonization they were a nation, exercising sovereignty over a defined and separate territory. Consequently, they claim that the right to independence from colonial rule was a separate right that was vested with the Tamil People.”
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Tamil nationalism is not fighting for reforms (13 A or 13 Plus) which would make for the full implementation of the Constitution or enhanced devolution within the unitary frame. Even if Sri Lanka were to adopt the unitary French Constitution with its secularism and equal republican citizenship, the Tamil nationalists would regard it as denying internal self-determination because it remained unitary, and would find it justifiable to exercise external self-determination i.e. unilateral secession, at a time of their choosing.
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