Dr.DAYAN JAYATILLEKA, March 10
    

Seeing it comin’: Will the Tamils silently celebrate and the Sinhalese secretly curse the day that Prabhakaran died? With his secessionist fundamentalism and ghastly terrorism, he was the biggest obstacle to achievable autonomy for Tamils and the best excuse for the Sinhala establishment’s tardiness in devolving power to the Tamil speaking periphery. Now the North is no longer hostage to secessionism and the South is bereft of a human shield against democratic demands for devolution.

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- The Academic

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The problem arises when our leadership refers to "village level devolution" on an occasion as portentous as the first peacetime Independence Day in decades. It is as if we have learned nothing.

Dr DJ seeing it coming only after 5 years !!!

There is now no incentive, and hence no need, for the Sinhala majority to devolve power. With the short memory span and happy-go-lucky attitude of the majority, minority concerns will be largely ignored.

Also, MR has been able to forge a majority composed of the majority. Leaders like Rauff Hakeem for the Muslims are doing their community a great disservice by not being in the ruling party. in fact his position defies reason, unless he is personally hugely benefitted, which is also a possibility considering his past antics and moral bankruptcy..


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I'm the only one

Romeo wrote:

There is now no incentive, and hence no need, for the Sinhala majority to devolve power.

well that's what SWRD & JR thought as well.

According to DJ, 13th Amendment comes closest to the following:

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3) A secular, unitary/non-federal state with suitable regional/provincial autonomy arrangements (China, Indonesia, Philippines)

But all the countries in this above example have minority issues. Tibet issue in China and home grown terrorism issues both in Indo. & Philippines.

Can some one here shed a light how implementation of 13th amendment would be beneficial (a solution to SL problem) over a model based on meritocratic multiculturalism?


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Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way! - Proximus
"I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways" - Michael Jackson

Dammika wrote:

Can some one here shed a light how implementation of 13th amendment would be beneficial (a solution to SL problem) over a model based on meritocratic multiculturalism?

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Multiculturalism as an ideology has flourished alongside a worldwide resurgence of racial and ethnic identity. It accepts diversity and supports policies of maintaining ethnic identities, values and lifestyles within an overarching framework of common laws and shared institutions. It is entrenched in political discourse in modern Western societies.

Accepting that diversity is a good thing, we may still differ on whether to support a limited role for the state (that it should not discourage or suppress multiculturalism) or an interventionist role (that it should foster and promote multiculturalism). Belief in an interventionist state will likely produce active government involvement in promoting the cause and policies of multiculturalism.

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A meritocratic polity allocates valued resources like jobs according to principles that are uniform across the social spectrum. To abandon these principles is to reduce political institutions to a collection of interest groups engaged in a zero-sum distributive struggle where the gains of one group match the losses of another.
http://www.unu.edu/hq/ginfo/media/Thakur27.html

It’s a good question how does the 13th fit in to the above definition.

In my opinion this model does not fit in to the 13th amendment.

I did believe and still believe that devolution of power will not solve the problems of the ordinary man (where I belong to), it will only satisfy the needs of the politicians to weild their power. I see development that empowers the people with opertunities as the long term solution to the problems.

If we look at above in this model “according to principles that are uniform across the social spectrum”. Also “It accepts diversity and supports policies of maintaining ethnic identities, values and lifestyles within an overarching framework of common laws and shared institutions.”


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MAC1