“We are seeking maximum possible”...

Now, these are proposals, none of them that are being placed here have gone beyond anything that the seven Chief Ministers and their Opposition Leaders other than the North East Provincial Council made before the Steering Committee. All of the Chief Ministers in the seven other provinces, other than the North East, want to share power. They came before the Steering Committee. They want law and order, they want land powers, they want the powers of the Governor reduced. I am saying this because one must remember that in 1987 when the Thirteenth Amendment was being passed, several Opposition MPS, then the SLFP, gathered at Pettah, outside the bus stand and performed a hartal.they said the country is going to be divided by this Thirteenth Amendment. Mahinda Rajapaksa was there personally leading the protest saying if this Amendment is passed, the country will be divided. He is the one, as the Leader of the House recalled, who repeatedly said when he assumed power, “I will implement the Thirteenth Amendment in full and go beyond it and make power sharing meaningful.”

Today when the provincial council elections are postponed, it is he and Members associated with him who are protesting and saying, “Do not postpone the provincial council elections.” The man who said, “Country will divide if you create provincial councils”, is screaming his head off today saying, “Do not postpone provincial council elections. That is the violation of our sovereignty”. Prof. GL Peiris’ petition to the Supreme Court- on which the Determination on the Twentieth Amendment was made- was made on the basis that a postponement of the provincial council electionaffectsthe sovereignty of the people and they don’t want it postponed. So, the creation of provincial councils hasn’t resulted in the country being divided.

I also have with me the 2000 August Draft Constitution Bill that was presented to this House by the People’s Alliance Government of that day of which the Hon. Mahinda Rajapaksa was a Cabinet Minister; a Bill which was certified by the Cabinet of Ministers as a Bill that is intended to be passed by this Parliament by a two-thirds majority and approved by the people at a referendum. He was a Cabinet Minister who approved of this Bill and what does that Bill say? These proposals before us today say, we are one country. Therefore, we can call ourselves,

“talsh rch”, meaning of which will say, “ஒரு நாடு” or “ஒருமிதத் நாடு” - “one country.” This doesn’t even say that. This says, “Sri Lanka is a Union of Regions”. All the Cabinet Ministers at that time supported this, in this House. The UNP supported that principle. The UNP burned a copy of this Bill in this House because there was a transitional provision with regard to the Executive Presidency, not because of power sharing, not because of change of status of the country.

When you were in power you approved of a Draft Bill that went far beyond, far beyond what is contemplated by this Interim Report. Is it not to mislead the people of this country, and prevent a final resolution to the national question that has plagued this country ever since Independence? Don’t we want a reasonable resolution regarding this? If you ask the question what is the biggest problem this country has faced, obviously it is the national question. This country hasn’t faced a war for three decades on account of anything else, not on account of any other issue, it is only with regard to these issues that actually parts of the country were ruled by others, also for certain durations. So, we are now in a process. As responsible representatives of our people, we are Tamil Members of Parliament from the North and East - except two, all others belong to the Tamil National Alliance - we have an overwhelming mandate from our people to resolve this question within a united, undivided country and we have gone one step further and said, an indivisible country even in the future. So, when we are participating like that, our people have misgivings of this Interim Report. Our people are saying, “We told you it must be a Federal State”. Our people are saying, “There must be one unit of devolution”. Our people are saying, “It must be a Secular State, is it not a reasonable thing? You are compromising beyond the mandate that we have given you”. They are right. We do not want to compromise beyond the mandate given to us, but we want to see that through negotiation a reasonable position is reached.