Community Peace Work in Sri Lanka: A Critical Appraisal

YesThis paper looks at community peace work in Sri Lanka, and represents work in its early stages. It provides a view of peace work from the perception of a Sri Lankan community peace activist. The popular practice of treating community peace work as an apolitical exercise will be challenged. An overview of the meta-narratives of the Sri Lankan conflict will be provided, since these inform the broader analytic context which needs to be understood for successful community peace work to be undertaken. Community peace building practice, which draws from knowledge of the international conflict resolution discourse, is treated as just one `peace¿ approach among several. Community level work is seen as one contribution to the overall peace effort in finding a resolution to the Sri Lankan conflict

The Failure of State Formation, Identity Conflict and Civil Society Responses - The Case of Sri Lanka

Ye

Earnings Inequality in Sri Lanka

Since the 1990s, accelerating economic growth has regained its dominance in the anti poverty strategies. However, the rising tendency of income inequity at the global level and within the countries emphasizes the need to incorporate distributional factors to make the pro-poor growth strategies effective. This paper explores the sources of this surge in income inequality in a developing country context. The paper attempts to estimate an earnings function for Sri Lanka based on the household expenditure survey. The earners are distinguished by ethnicity, gender, sectors of employment, place of residence, education and occupation. One of the significant results of this study is that there was no "ethnic effect" per se on earnings on Sri Lanka. Having seen a significant gender effect in earnings, the paper further attempts to calculate the degree to which this gender difference in earnings represents "discrimination" against women.Labor and Human Capital,

Polarization of the Sri Lankan Polity: An Analysis of Presidential Elections (1982 – 2005)

Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious developing country that has enjoyed continuous universal adult franchise since 1931. Under a new constitution enacted in 1978, Sri Lanka moved to a presidential system of government. Since 1982 five presidential elections were conducted. This paper analyzes voter behavior by looking at all the five presidential elections. This study shows that all the winners of the presidential elections (except in 2005) won them by appealing across racial and religious boundaries with a popular mandate. In 2005, there was a shift; the winner was able to secure victory by promoting a hard-line pro-Sinhala nationalistic platform. This signals a departure from the previous elections, as in the past it was understood that minority support is crucial to win the Presidency. The 2005 election sends a dangerous signal to a country that is ravaged by ethnic violence for over 20 years. Further, this study looks at the voter behavior in urban vs. rural areas. Similar to the red vs. blue states divide in the US, in Sri Lanka, there is a strong urban-rural division in voter behavior. Logistic regression was used to analyze the results of the elections

Sri Lanka: Tamil politics and the quest for a political solution

This report argues that the Sri Lankan government’s refusal to negotiate seriously with Tamil political leaders is heightening ethnic tensions and damaging prospects for sustainable peace. The administration, led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party of Mahinda Rajapaksa, has refused to honour agreements with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), broken promises to world leaders and not implemented constitutional provisions for minimal devolution of power to Tamil-speaking areas of the north and east. Militarisation and discriminatory economic development in Tamil and Muslim areas are breeding anger and increasing pressure on moderate Tamil leaders. Tamil political parties need to remain patient and keep to their moderate course, while reaching out more directly to Muslims, Upcountry Tamils and Sinhalese. International actors should press the government more effectively for speedy establishment of an elected provincial council and full restoration of civilian government in the north, while insisting that it commence serious negotiations with elected Tamil representatives from the north and east. Many believed that the end of the war and elimination of the separatist Tamil Tigers (LTTE) would open space for greater political debate and moderation among Tamils, while encouraging the government to abandon the hardline Sinhalese nationalism it had cultivated to support its war efforts and agree to devolve meaningful power to the majority Tamil-speaking northern and eastern provinces. While there has been an increase in democratic and moderate voices among Tamils, the government has failed to respond in kind. Instead, it has adopted a policy of promising negotiations and expanded devolution in discussions with India, the U.S., and the UN Secretary-General, while denying these same things when addressing its Sinhala voting base. It has refused to negotiate seriously with TNA representatives, repeatedly failing to honour promises and ultimately breaking off talks in January 2012. Since then it has demanded that the TNA join the government’s preferred vehicle, a parliamentary select committee (PSC), a process clearly designed to dilute responsibility and buy time. Three-and-a-half years after the end of the war, President Rajapaksa continues to delay the long-promised election to the northern provincial council – elections the TNA would be nearly certain to win. Despite repeated public promises, the president has refused to grant even the limited powers ostensibly given to provincial councils under the constitution’s thirteenth amendment. Instead, he and other senior officials have begun to discuss the amendment’s possible repeal or replacement by even weaker forms of devolution. Even as the government refuses to respond to longstanding demands for power sharing, Tamil political power and identity are under sustained assault in the north and east. While Tamil leaders and nationalist intellectuals base their demands for political autonomy on the idea that these regions are the traditional areas of Tamil habitation, government figures, including the president’s powerful brother and defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, follow a long line of Sinhala nationalist thinking and explicitly reject that the north has any privileged Tamil character. Military and economic policies have been institutionalising this ideological position with vigour. The de facto military occupation of the northern province and biased economic development policies appear designed to undermine Tamils’ ability to claim the north and east as their homeland. For many Tamils, this confirms their long-held belief that it was only the LTTE’s guns that placed their concerns and need for power sharing on the political agenda. In the face of the government’s resistance to a fair and negotiated settlement, TNA leaders have come under increasing pressure from their constituencies to adopt more confrontational language and tactics. Growing demands for the right to self-determination for the Tamil nation and hints that separatist goals have not been permanently abandoned have, in turn, provoked harsh reactions and expressions of distrust from Sinhala leaders. The situation is likely to remain difficult, with major negotiating breakthroughs unlikely in the near term. Nonetheless, the international community – especially India and the U.S. – should increase pressure on President Raja­paksa to significantly reduce the numbers and influence of the military in the north and hold credible northern provincial council elections in advance of the March 2013 meeting of the UN Human Rights Council. The president should also be pressed to agree to the TNA’s reasonable terms for joining the PSC and begin implementing the thirteenth amendment meaningfully. Effective and lasting power sharing will almost certainly require forms of devolution that go beyond the current unitary definition of the state. Yet if skilfully handled, the current political conjuncture, both domestic and international, holds out possibilities to convince the government to concede greater space and ratchet back some of the worst abuses. For the TNA to improve Tamils’ chances of receiving a fair deal from the state and, ultimately, some significant degree of power sharing, it will need to articulate grievances and the value of devolved powers more clearly and in ways that larger numbers of the other main communities – in particular Sinhalese and Muslims – can understand and accept as reasonable. In particular, the demand for autonomy needs to be framed in ways that can reassure at least some large minority of Sinhalese that the threat of secession is no longer there. It is also important for Tamil political leaders of all parties to begin mending relations with Muslims, so badly damaged by LTTE killings and the expulsion of all Muslims from the northern province in 1990. The TNA should insist that Muslim representatives be given a central role in negotiations on expanded devolution of power. Finally, the Tamil leadership needs to find both practical and rhetorical ways of building links between its struggle for rights and power sharing and the growing unease among Sinhalese at the corruption and abuse of power characteristic of the Rajapaksa government. The Tamil struggle for rights and freedom is likely to succeed only when the broader national struggle for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law, including the depoliticisation of the judiciary and the police, has made substantial progress. Joining together efforts to solve the two different forms of the “national question” should become an imperative part of the struggle for Tamil rights

The politics, policies and progress of basic education in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is hailed internationally for her achievements in literacy, educational enrolment and equality of educational opportunity. However, progress has not been straightforward due to the complex interactions between politics, policy formulation, and the implementation of reforms. This dynamic process has often led to contradictory outcomes. This monograph describes and analyses the political drivers and context of educational reform from the colonial era to the present before an in-depth exploration of the origins and implementation of the comprehensive 1997 education reforms. Much of the evidence referring to the later period has been drawn from extensive interviews with 20 senior members of Sri Lanka’s education policy community. From 1931 to 1970 education policies were driven by the need to assert national control over an inherited colonial system and to create a unified system of education. Policy formation relied heavily on debate in public and in parliament, following practices of governance inherited from the former colonial master. The implementation of reforms was largely undertaken by bureaucrats and teachers without interference from politicians. This policy environment changed markedly during the 1970s as decisions regarding education came to be largely driven by the need to contain rising youth unrest. Debate was stifled both in the public domain and in parliament, and politicians became increasingly involved in the day-to-day practices of education, especially those concerning teacher transfers. The 1997 education reforms were comprehensive, including programmes to ensure universal access to basic education and improvements in learning outcomes. They attracted considerable ‘political will’, a vague but much vaunted term in the international policy discourse. Yet, despite seemingly high levels of national political will, reform has not been plain sailing. School rationalisation has been impeded by community resistance and by bureaucratic demands insensitive to local conditions and cost constraints. The reforms in junior secondary education have been inhibited by weak leadership, lack of planning, heavy curriculum demands, and the absence of a pilot programme. The monograph explores the connections between the political and technical drivers and inhibitors of reform in practice and argues that low-level, as well as high-level political will, has played an active part in determining whether formulated policies are translated into action on the ground. Bi-partisan support for education policy is essential if implementation is to endure

The Sri Lankan unemployment problem revisited

Sri Lanka's high unemployment rate has been attributed to a mismatch of skills, to queuing for public sector jobs, and to stringent job security regulations. But the empirical evidence supporting these explanations is weak. The author takes a fresh look at the country's unemployment problem, using individual records from the 1995 Labor Force Survey and time series for wages in the economy's formal and informal sectors. He assesses, and rejects, the skills mismatch hypothesis by comparing the impact of educational attainment on the actual wages of those who have a job with the effect on the lowest acceptable wages of the unemployed. However, he finds substantial rents associated with jobs in the public sector and in private sector activities protected by high tariffs or covered by job security regulations. A time-series analysis of the impact of unemployment on wage increases across sectors supports the hypothesis that most of the unemployed are waiting for"good"job openings but are not interested in readily available"bad"jobs. In short, unemployment in Sri Lanka is largely voluntary. The problem is not a shortage of jobs but the artificial gap between good and bad jobs. Policy efforts should be aimed at reducing the gap between good and bad jobs by making product markets more competitive, by reducing excessive job security, and by reforming government policies on pay and employment.Labor Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Health Promotion,Labor Markets,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Youth and Governance,Labor Markets,Economic Theory&Research

Decentralization, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka

Since the 1990s ethnic violence within states has become much more common than interstate violence and tends to be harder to stop, leading to the question, how states can avoid ethnic violence and best accommodate multiple ethnicities within their boundaries. The worldwide increase of inner-state civil wars or complex emergencies has set peace and conflict studies high on the agenda of development and foreign policy debate. A central question in the theoretical debate is the consolidation and arrangements of democratic systems and institutions in ethnically heterogeneous societies, to prevent and resolve violent conflicts. In this recent debate there is still a lack of empirical research, analysing the opportunities and obstacles of conflict resolving political structures, processes and institutions in more depth. This paper therefore aims to contribute to the recent debate on conflict preventive/transforming arrangements of democratic systems by discussing proposals on federal restructuring and devolution of the political system in Sri Lanka as well as by looking into the realities of recognition of minorities at local level

Linguistic Nature of Prenasalization

The linguistic nature of the class of sounds which are traditionally called prenasalized consonants (PNCs) has never been adequately explored. The purpose of this work is to provide a descriptively adequate framework in which to characterize PNCs, and to express their behavior most generally. This is done within the theory of generative phonology (essentially the Standard Theory of Chomsky and Halle 1968), incorporating a theory of markedness and syllabification. It is argued that PNCs cannot be described adequately as monosegmental entities in linguistic theory. Rather, PNCs in all languages are claimed to be sequences of homorganic nasal and oral consonant in underlying phonological representations, which surface in systematic phonetic representation as (tautosyllabic) syllable onsets. For a language to exhibit such onsets, it must contain a costly (language-specific) syllabification rule which converts the unmarked syllabified string XN$CY (whose syllabification is given by universal convention) into the marked structure X$NCY, where $represents the syllable boundary. There is no linguistic level, nor any stage in phonological derivations, where PNCs must be represented monosegmentally, nor at which the characteristically brief nasal onset period must be referred to as an internal component of an oral consonant. Such properties as are necessary to fully characterize PNCs as physical-phonetic events are assigned to systematic phonetic$NC sequences by mechanisms within a phonetic performance theory. One of the very few languages where PNCs appear to contrast directly with ordinary heterosyllabic clusters of homorganic nasal and oral consonants is Sinhalese, an Indoeuropean language of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). An analysis of this language, and a similar case in the West African language Fula, are presented, and strong evidence is provided for the adequacy of a sequential analysis of prenasalization, in spite of the apparent contrast. The analysis of Sinhalese also reveals a rich interaction between the behavior of PNCs and the general syllable structure of the language. This relationship can be revealingly expressed only if the notion of the syllable is formally available in phonological theory