Devolution & Personal Laws: Another Perspective

Dilrook Kannangara

It is only a matter of time till another set of devolution proposals take shape. However, there is a phenomenon that slips through the cracks every time it happens. Our complex legal system accommodates a set of personal laws including Thesawalamei, Muslim law, Mukkuwa law, Kandyan law, etc. Although their application is minimal, it is important to consider the reasoning behind these personal laws.

It is a popular theory question in legal studies to demonstrate that these laws emerged originally as territorial laws and have henceforth become personal laws attached to persons who have opted to be governed by them wherever they reside in Sri Lanka.

This concept recognises the vast internal movement of people and economic realities that drove them. Still the law permits them to be governed by their respective personal laws.

We will have a very interesting situation if devolution of state power is effected based on geographical area. It will first and foremost fail to recognise the ‘ethnic issue’ that is said to exist. Worse still it will not be a solution to the ‘ethnic problem’ as devolution will only serve (if at all) people living in the Northern and Eastern provinces. However, the vast majority of ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils living outside these provinces will not have any benefit of power devolution.

Simply race and geographical area do not match and hence geography based power devolution will return nothing but an additional burden on the people.

Against all odds, assuming we adopt a devolution system based on provinces, what will happen to the ‘new minority’ in each devolution unit? Shouldn’t discrimination that is said to exist in our island be same? In fact, it is likely to create more problems for the ethnic minorities in the Northern, Eastern and Central provinces. To make matters worse, these minority groups have their numbers (and relatives and friends) elsewhere. What can stop a flare-up of ethnic tensions in any of these provinces from spreading into other areas? On the other hand in the present day set up, there is one police administration that works with national interest at heart; there is no room for acts that aren’t congruent with the best interest of the nation as a whole.

Also it incentivises isolation and concentration of the four races of this country. Regional and race based conflicts will result from this type of a set-up. Especially resources such as water, arable land, fishing rights, access roads, schools and hospitals will cause large spread race-based conflicts.

On the other hand if we can go back to the first-pass-the-post election system that allows regional leaders to emerge at the electorate level and if there is no authority above them like the executive presidency, it gives enough scope for the championing of interests of specific communities. Sufficient authority should be devolved for MPs to work for the betterment of their respective electorates. For example, the Colombo-North electorate will most likely have a Tamil member who will look after the interests of that electorate which is different to what the voters in Colombo-Central would want. There will hardly be any ‘new minorities’ and there will be no need to have executive presidents, provincial councils, LG bodies and other overheads and complications.

Additionally the war that wages during election times will disappear; political stability will once again rule the country and the underworld would not be able to enthrone an otherwise losing politician. Everyone will know the politician who represents him at the national level and there will be a formal and permanent grievance handling mechanism. Above all the Sri Lankan way of life will be preserved where citizens irrespective of race can intermingle in the unique Sri Lanka style, may it be ethnic restaurants, shops, festivals, colours in the street or whatever.

However, it will be disadvantageous to those politicians who cannot step into their electorate due to manyfold wrong doings or those who are not interested in solving people’s problems but rather have ambitions set upon their utopian ideologies (may it be ‘ealam’, communism, separate states for eastern Muslims or plantation workers). Then what about those politicos, one may ask. Well, that is exactly the point.

Elected politicians will be forced to serve their electorate and not their ideological dogma in preference to peoples’ problems because we all have same economic, social, security and development related problems irrespective of race or region. Politics will not provide breeding grounds for separatists, terrorists, extremists or other psychopaths to make peoples’ lives miserable.