SRI LANKA MULLS POLITICAL REFORMS AS IT WRITES A NEW CONSTITUTION

Sri Lanka’s reformist President Maithripala Sirisena has lived up to his election promise as he has proposed a new constitution aimed at devolving power, a long-pending demand of the country’s minorities, including the Tamils. One hopes the constitution, once adopted, will genuinely usher in national unity in the country, which was torn apart by the 26-year-long armed conflict between security forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels. Even after the end of the fierce conflict in 2009, the island nation has been struggling to establish bonafide democracy and restore fundamental rights to all its citizens.  President Sirisena should be lauded as he is making an honest attempt to put an end to ethnic tensions that led to a long and bitter civil war in which more than 100,000 people were killed.

The new constitution seeks to guarantee fundamental rights and freedoms that assure human dignity and promote responsible and accountable government. It is a bold statement which attempts to take reconciliatory steps to reach out to all communities. 

President Sirisena’s comments that the constitution must “suit the needs of the 21^st century and make sure all communities live in harmony” are aimed at addressing the concerns of Tamil minority, which felt alienated in the previous set-ups.

The proposed constitution also seeks to overhaul the present electoral system which many considered flawed and non-representative. There is a proposal to increase the seats in the country’s parliament from 225 seats to 237. Besides 145 elected representatives, it seeks to select 55 representatives on a proportional representation basis keeping in mind the interests of all the communities. Another 37 representatives will come from a national list of candidates. The proposed changes make the political system more transparent and inclusive. The thrust is to unify different ethnic communities by giving them proportionate representation, something which was missing in the constitution since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. The successive governments always bowed to the pressures from the powerful majority ethnic Sinhala community which was against any power-sharing deal with the minority ethnic Tamils.

Another major contentious issue has been the denial of higher government positions to the ethnic Tamils by the successive governments after the independence. During the British regime, the local Tamils were favoured for key government positions over the Sinhalese. Tamils’ alienation grew into frustration as the governments started ignoring their interests and pandering to the majority Sinhalese population.  This led to the creation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE which waged an armed struggle against the government for the creation of an independent state for the country’s minority Tamils.

The seriousness of the new government in carrying out political reforms is beyond doubt as it agreed to investigate alleged war crime allegations against government troops and LTTE rebels only a few months ago. The government has pledged a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the charges, which, however, falls short of the demands for an internationally-backed judicial   inquiry. A United Nations report estimates that at least 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war when the then government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa launched a massive military operation to crush the separatist LTTE and reclaim the areas controlled by it.

Sadly, the proposed reforms, which have far reaching consequences, are being fiercely opposed by some disgruntled elements led by the former President Rajapaksa who have accused the government of kowtowing to the western nations. Attempts are also being made to fan communal tensions by opponents who say the new government is diluting the main religion, Buddhism. Rajapaksa and his family, which had completely monopolized the power, are opposing the proposal to abolish the Executive Presidency for political motives only. The draconian powers of the Executive Presidency were first introduced by the then President J. R. Jayewardene in 1978 weakening the authority and supremacy of parliament.  No government had misused the Executive Presidency as much as President Rajapaksa did.

The challenges are too many for President Sirisena who is seeking to restore the credibility of parliament and address the genuine concerns of the Tamils within the framework of the constitution. There is no doubt that Sri Lanka desperately needs a new constitution which seeks to democratize the existing institutions and establish the rule of law. Sirisena was voted to power on these twin promises. Now that the people have given him a mandate, no attempt should be made to weaken that mandate. 

DELHI SETS AN EXAMPLE TO CURB POLLUTION, IT’S NOW INDIA’S TURN

Chaos will return to roads of Delhi from January 16 as Transport Minister Gopal Rai announced an end to road rationing experiment. What was proving to be a game changer should not have been discontinued so abruptly. Even the government, which introduced the plan on a trial basis, must have been surprised by the positive outcome.

The doomsayers were proved wrong. Delhiites should be patted for their overwhelming response to the government’s odd-even car policy on alternate days. None had expected that the policy would be a runaway success given the huge opposition to the proposal. It was a bold idea whose success depended largely on the compliance of the people. Such a radical decision could not be enforced through the rule of law only. But what appeared to be a herculean task has been made easier by the people of Delhi. It proves that the people are aware of the dangers of pollution levels which had crossed manifold beyond the permissible limits. Delhi earning the sobriquet of the most polluted city of the world was something that had started troubling the conscience of the people. The common man was worried. The courts were disturbed. Environmentalists were red-flagging the issue. Enough is enough, remarked the National Green Tribunal (NGT) as it banned all vehicles older than 15 years from the roads of Delhi. The aggrieved rushed to the courts against the order. Gladly, the Supreme Court trashed the petitions and lauded the efforts of NGT.

But the NGT order was not enough in arresting the galloping pollution levels of Delhi. The order, which comes into effect from April 1 this year, will bar a third of an estimated 8.4 million vehicles, including motorbikes, trucks, cars and three-wheelers. It needed to be supplemented with more harsh measures in a city where 1,500 new vehicles are added on to the roads every day. The Arvind Kejriwal government then decided to bite the bullet. An idea, which was doing the rounds for the last several years but was deemed unenforceable and impractical, was put into practice on a trial method for a fortnight. 

The government decided to implement the stringent measure to allow vehicles with licence plate numbers ending in an odd or even number to ply on alternate days. It was an idea which critics gave thumbs down even before it was put in place. It was also supposed to ruffle the feathers of many who were loath to the idea of using public transport.

But Delhiites had made up their mind. It’s now or never. The idea was a success from day one. All of a sudden, Delhi resembled a new city. Roads looked wider. Commuting became hassle-free. The average speed of a vehicle almost doubled. The travel time got reduced significantly. There was peace of mind. No more unnecessary and irritating honking. Road rage appeared to be a thing of the past.  And there was a sharp drop in the number of road accidents. Nobody was complaining. A city re-born!

Experts said there was drastic fall in pollution levels, even up to 30 percent.  Had the weather not played spoilsport, there would have been tell-tale signs of results.

But such positive developments did not cheer car-makers and petrol pump dealers. The gas stations registered a sharp drop in the daily sales of petrol and diesel. If some reports are to be believed, petrol and diesel sales registered a drastic fall of 30 to 35 percent in Delhi. That itself is a proof of the success of the car rationing policy. The lesser usage of fuel means lesser pollution. Nevertheless, the car makers approached the Supreme Court again to lift the ban it had imposed on fresh registration of diesel vehicles with at least 2,000 cc engines in Delhi and National Capital Region till April 1. But the Apex court stood its ground and refused to amend its earlier order.

It is sad that some lobbies are active again and pressuring courts and the Delhi government to abandon the path-breaking initiative. Are commercial considerations bigger than the health of Delhi which is gasping for breath? The newborns of Delhi are battling severe allergies and asthma. Don’t we have any responsibility towards them?

Delhi has set a wonderful example. The 12 other cities of India out of a list of the world’s 20 most polluted cities named by the World Health Organisation should replicate Delhi’s campaign to improve air quality for a clean environment for their citizens. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has announced several campaigns, should also pitch in his efforts as his government has undertaken to develop 98 smart cities. No city can be smart as long as its air is dirty. The challenge for Delhi was huge as it has the highest number of vehicles in the country, more than three other metros -- Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai -- put together. When Delhi can do it, so can any other Indian city. 

PING PONG INDO-PAK TALKS NEED A PAUSE

An attack on an airbase in the border town of Pathankot by Pakistan-based terrorists poses a serious challenge to immediate engagement between New Delhi and Islamabad. The siege, which continued for more than 72 hours, left seven Indian soldiers dead and scores others injured. The January 15 foreign secretary level talks seem to be in jeopardy. That National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was forced to put off his scheduled meeting with his Chinese interlocutor this week sums up the mood of Prime Minister Narendra Modi government. For Modi, who had invested so much in Pakistan by making a surprise and unscheduled meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the Christmas Day last year, the attack is a personal loss of face.

Daggers would be out if the Modi government were to proceed with the proposed talks given the hard line position that his administration had maintained throughout last year before the unexpected somersault. Modi faces opposition not only from rival parties but his main ally, the Hindu hardline Shiv Sena, which has been scornful in its statements since he undertook the impromptu visit to Lahore to mend ties with the estranged neighbour.

India should satisfy itself first about Pakistan’s response to the latest attack. Condemnation is fine but it should be reciprocated with some visible concrete action. Initial investigations point fingers at Jaish-e-Mohammed, which had earlier carried out several terrorist attacks on India, including the deadly December 13, 2001 attack on our parliament, which brought the two countries to the brink of war. Its founder Maulana Masood Azhar, who formed Jaish-e-Mohammed soon after his release in December 1999 from an Indian prison in exchange of passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane in Kandahar, continues to be a free man despite the government banning his organization. Nowhere in the world does it happen that a country, which bans a terrorist group, allows its leaders to remain in the loose. Pakistan banned Jaish-e-Mohammed in 2002 after it was designated as a terrorist organization by dozens of countries, including the United States, but has fought shy of putting Azhar behind bars.

New Delhi has already shared some facts with Islamabad in the Pathankot attack case. The sincerity of Nawaz Sharif will be tested in the coming days. Whether his government acknowledges those evidences and takes some concrete action will decide the future course of talks between the two countries. Sharif can’t just afford to parrot the same old line that this is the handiwork of non-state actors and that his government has no control over them. The fact that these terrorists, in thousands, continue to enjoy the hospitality of Pakistan is something which is known to the entire world. Pakistan can’t escape the responsibility of their actions. It will have to demonstrate not only to New Delhi but to the entire world what it proposes to do with them. Not taking any military action against them would be seen as Pakistan’s complicity with terror groups. Here in lies the problem with Sharif. His hands are tied. He is incapable of taking an independent line against the wishes of his masters in Pakistan army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) who dictate the country’s foreign policy.

Pakistan’s army and the ISI have invested decades in creating various terrorist groups as assets, keeping the global community on the tenterhooks, pocketing billions of dollars by switching off the tap of terrorism periodically and unleashing them again to further their diabolic designs. And the relationship between the two has deepened so much that it will not be that easy for Pakistan to get rid of terrorists so easily. Any military action against its guest terrorists is bound to have major implications for Pakistan which may not come out unscathed.

As long as Pakistan’s two powerful institutions are not on board, there is very little possibility of India-Pakistan talks making any meaningful headway. One need not dig deep to understand this challenge. The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s widely-appreciated 1998 “Lahore Yatra” on bus was met with Kargil a few months later in 1999. India had to pay the heavy price by losing its 530 soldiers during the Kargil war. Mr. Sharif, who was the prime minister of Pakistan then, made a silly statement that he was not in the know of the operation. Hard to digest!

Mr. Vajpayee again extended the hand of friendship to General Musharraf, who had by then usurped power by overthrowing Sharif and packing him off to Saudi Arabia, and hosted him in Agra in 2001. Pakistan’s response? There was a ghastly attack on the assembly of Jammu and Kashmir in Srinagar to be followed with the deadliest attack on Parliament. The attacks led to the massive military standoff between the two countries resulting in the massing of troops on the border and the line of control in Kashmir for about a year. India claimed that the attacks were carried out by two Pakistan-based terror groups, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, a charge that Pakistan denied. In between, India was rocked by 2006 Mumbai trains blasts and the 26/11 terror attacks in 2008 which led New Delhi to stop all diplomatic engagements with Islamabad. And now we have Pathankot within a week of Modi’s trip to Lahore, not to mention the attack on Dina Nagar police station in Gurdaspur district of Punjab in July 2015 days after Modi and Sharif signed an agreement in the Russian city of Ufa.

There is no doubt that there is a section within Pakistan establishment which does not want better relationship between the two countries. India’s experiments with both the civilian as well military leaderships have been frustrating. There were high hopes when President Musharraf was at the helm. It was widely expected that he had the unflinching support of the army and the ISI. But the subsequent actions belied those expectations.

Therefore, Prime Minister Modi will have to tread with caution. The attack is a major setback personally for Modi who took the audacious gamble of re-engaging with Pakistan after a series of massive ceasefire violations on the border and line of control, and a number of daring terrorist attacks last year.

India should put off the January 15 foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan and instead press for National Security Advisor-level talks where terror should be the only agenda. Pakistan, which has condemned the Pathankot attack, has said in a statement that it remains committed to partner with India to completely eradicate the menace of terrorism afflicting South Asian region. Let it prove its sincerity. Pakistan should demonstrate through its action that it stands with India and the global community as far as the war against terrorism is concerned. Its time Pakistan matches its words with action. Talks can follow later. 

NO LESSONS LEARNT, INTELLIGENCE FAILS AGAIN

  

While Indian government may be self congratulating itself for containing the terror attack in Pathankot and securing assets in the air base, it can be accused of glossing over intelligence failure. Authorities had prior information of such an attack. An alert had already been sounded. Then on Friday, the terrorists infiltrated into India before striking at two different places in Pathankot. They first killed a 40-year-old Sikh man before decamping with his Innova car. Later they seized an official car of Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police (headquarters) Salwinder Singh on the Pathankot highway before driving down from the border to the heavily fortified strategic air base, about 25 kilometres away. The terrorists were on the loose from Friday till early Saturday when the first contact with them was made at 3.30 a.m. at the air base. And mind you, they were heavily armed, had assault rifles and grenades. And still they could not be spotted.

Two important questions arise here? Firstly, security agencies had specific intelligence about the terror attack at least four to five days in advance.  Secondly, the Gurdaspur SP had alerted Punjab police about the incident and the presence of five terrorists on Friday itself after his car was waylaid. Still the security agencies could not locate them. In fact, there was a delay of full 12 hours before the agencies began probing the terror angle despite being told by Salwinder Singh. The terrorists themselves announced their arrival at the air base after they opened fire at security forces. If this is not intelligence failure, then what will you call it? Their main aim was to carry out a spectacular attack and they succeeded partly in their mission. If our security agencies could not track them despite having specific intelligence information, then something is wrong somewhere. But we won’t own it.

The government and security agencies are still unsure about the number of terrorists. It’s four, perhaps six or more. We don’t know yet. As the siege dragged on, it became clear that there were certainly more than four terrorists. Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who was quick to announce the end of operation by commenting that all five terrorists were killed, was forced to delete his twitter after it became known that only four terrorists were neutralized and there were reports of fresh firing. Was the Home Minister in the dark or he jumped the gun? It clearly shows there is no coordination among various agencies. That the operation is going on for the last four days does not reflect well on our security preparedness.

Nobody has answers yet as to how many vehicles did the terrorists use? Some reports suggest two teams may have entered the airbase using two different vehicles. If it is true, then where is the second vehicle? Did somebody drop the second team of terrorists near the air base? It’s all speculation. We don’t know yet.

And it is less said the better as far as monitoring of the international border with Pakistan is concerned. There are reports suggesting that the terrorists might have crossed the border from the same point from where terrorists from Pakistan had infiltrated before carrying out a daring attack on Gurdaspur police station in July last year in which 10 people were killed. We were told that more troops were sent to the border after the Gurdaspur terror attack. But still they could not notice the movement of terrorists? How does one explain this? Clearly, the Border Security Force is inattentive and did shoddy work in guarding the international border.

The fact of the matter is that we have not learnt any lessons from previous attacks. Why is it that terrorists succeed in carrying out the attacks whenever they wish to? We just respond to the attacks by eliminating the terrorists and pay a heavy price by losing our brave hearts. There is something seriously amiss in our intelligence gathering and sharing. It is high time we strengthen our intelligence network so that the terrorists are either arrested or neutralized before they dare to attack our country. Hope, it is not a wishful thinking.