Significant in Isolation: Sri Lanka’s Right to Information Regime in Enactment and Operation

ABSTRACT

Over 2015 and 2016, Sri Lanka enacted a comprehensive right to information (RTI) regime by constitutionally recognising the RTI and passing enabling legislation. Taking into account the context of the country’s political and bureaucratic culture, its history of RTI jurisprudence and repeated legislative attempts and the particularities of the enacted provisions themselves, this article argues that the RTI regime represents a significant constitutional advance in Sri Lanka. The regime’s operationalisation has unearthed a number of operational difficulties as well as promising advances, underscoring both the challenges and the potentials of effectively providing for the RTI. As one of the few governance reforms enacted by the national unity government, however, the RTI regime’s lone operation within a deficient and unreformed architecture of transparency and accountability places a particular and heavy burden on it, one which may also adversely impact its future sustainability.     

试析中国与斯里兰卡关系的发展

中国与斯里兰卡的交往历史悠久.1949年中华人民共和国成立后,双方的联系进一步加强,并呈现出经济联系促进政治交往、政治交往转而带动经济交流的特征.进入21世纪后,两国在各个方面的联系得到进一步发展,两国关系进入一个新的发展阶段.     

Federal or Unitary? The Power-sharing Debate in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

Sri Lanka’s power-sharing debate is focused on the labels ‘federal and ‘unitary’. A recent Judgment of the Supreme Court recognising the fluidity of these terms, and a creative reform proposal defining Sri Lanka as a ‘aekiya rajyaya/orumitha nadu’, present opportunities for consensus. Yet there are also powerful obstacles, including the virtual collapse of Sri Lanka’s coalition government and exclusivist nationalist ideologies. Regardless of the outcome of this round of reform, however, reformers must focus on the political if Sri Lanka is to ever reach a just and equitable solution to the ethnic conflict.     

What Money Can’t Buy: The Security Externalities of Chinese Economic Statecraft in Post-War Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

China’s growing trade, investment, and aid links are commonly believed to constitute a potent instrument of statecraft, generating important security externalities. Yet there is insufficient research tracing the precise mechanisms linking economic relationships between a “sender” and “target” state to actual influence in the security domain. We offer three contributions. First, we map out the theoretical mechanisms of influence in a sender–target relationship. Second, we empirically investigate these mechanisms through a case study of China’s economic influence in Sri Lanka since 2009. Third, we use our findings to generate new insights on the mechanisms of influence in the economic statecraft literature and the dynamics of great-power competition in South Asia. Beijing’s ability to convert its considerable economic resources into strategic influence in Sri Lanka is currently hampered by the poor planning and implementation of infrastructure projects, domestic politics, and Sri Lanka’s relationship with India, a regional competitor and rising power.     

“印太战略”背景下的中斯合作

近年来,由于印度洋战略地位的提升以及印太战略逐步从构想转变为现实,以美国为首的域外国家和以印度为首的域内国家不断加大对印度洋及其周边国家的政治、外交、经济、军事、安全等投入,使得印度洋的大国博弈日趋激烈。这不仅对印度洋周边国家的内外政策产生了重要影响,而且对我国倡议推动的一带一路国际合作也产生了深远影响。尽管斯里兰卡是印度洋上的一个小国,人口不多,经济实力不算强,在印太战略中也非核心国家,但其独特的地缘政治经济优势成为各方争夺的对象和大国博弈的一个重点。在此背景下,斯里兰卡的国内外政策与形势出现了许多新变化,国内政局稳定性下降,对外政策出现摇摆,经济增长率下降,民生改善缓慢,恐怖活动增加,民众意见日益多元化,这值得我们在推进一带一路国际合作过程中高度关注。     

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Social Media in Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Referendum

ABSTRACT

Social media use around those aged 18–34 will significantly impact the prospects for the public validation of a new constitution in Sri Lanka, especially the planning and conduct of a referendum. This paper examines key developments in the consumption of and perceptions around social media, and how a networked society within a context of democratic deficit and plunging faith in electoral processes can pose a greater risk for public faith in constitutional reform.     

Acute and Everyday Violence in Sri Lanka

Police torture in Sri Lanka has been subject to extensive investigation and condemnation but remains a widespread and seemingly entrenched practice. Seeking to understand the resistance of such practices to existing interventions, this article locates the police’s use of torture within a broader geography of social violence in Sri Lanka. We discuss the findings of extensive fieldwork conducted in the north-west of Sri Lanka where we examined not only police behaviour and interactions between police and the broader community but also the social dynamics relationships more generally. One significant finding was that violence against certain types of people, including police use of torture against such people, is generally accepted, even as the police are broadly criticised in the community for their unethical and ineffective behaviour. Another significant finding was that the society is riven with social hierarchies and that patterns of domination are embedded in social, political and symbolic systems. We conclude that police torture needs to be understood against the background of broader cultural practices whereby social subjects are disciplined and policed to produce appropriate citizens and punish social boundary violations.     

Elite patronage over party democracy – high politics in Sri Lanka following independence

When Sri Lanka became independent in February 1948 it lacked a well-established party system and instead relied upon patronage and elite social relationships. Though it had a long pre-independence history of constitutional development and evolving democracy, party politics was not deep-rooted and political power continued to be wielded by an elite that had an almost feudal relationship with the masses. The convention based Westminster model Sri Lanka adopted engendered a local system that relied more on relationships than rules. Political parties and institutions were often unable to check and balance the Executive's conduct of power. Sri Lanka's elite operated British institutions in an anachronistic eighteenth-century manner such as in having a patronage-based Cabinet dominated by its prime ministerial leader/patron rather than by collegial attitudes or values. The weakness of party institutionalisation and the ambiguity in the constitutional arrangements laid the foundations for future political conflict and marginalisation of segments of society. The continuity of affairs of state from the colonial era and the known and reassuring leadership of D.S. Senanayake and his ‘Uncle-Nephew Party’ masked the democratic tensions and institutional fragility within the Sri Lankan state that would come to the fore violently only years after what was then seen as a model transfer of power.     

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IN POST-CIVIL WAR SRI LANKA

Post-civil war, Buddhism has gone from being a privileged religion in Sri Lanka to a hegemonic religion. If the ethnic conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam calcified Sinhalese Buddhist sensibilities, the comprehensive victory over the group has emboldened Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists who insist on majority superordination and minority subordination. This essay discusses how the nationalist ideology undergirding Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism has exacerbated religious intolerance especially towards the island's Muslims and Christian Evangelicals.     

The Sri Lankan Transitional Justice Process: Too Little,Too Late?

ABSTRACT

Three years after Sri Lanka committed to a comprehensive transitional justice (TJ) process through the co-sponsoring of UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1, progress on the TJ front has not been satisfactory. In fact, delays in decision-making have hindered progress on transitional justice. First, the nation-wide consultations that were supposed to precede the establishment of the proposed TJ mechanisms lasted for nearly a year. This prevented swift progress at a time when political conditions for TJ were arguably most favourable. In addition, decisions were made to implement the 2015 reform agenda in a way that would not give priority to TJ as a whole and would further delay the implementation of its most controversial measures. These delays have been constructed or exploited by those—including within government—who do not support the TJ agenda. In fact, since 2015, the President as well as ministers have made statements that cast doubt on their commitment to TJ. The government’s lack of genuine interest in TJ was further evidenced by its failure to present a comprehensive plan for the implementation of UNHRC Resolution 30/1 and carry out a public outreach campaign based on such a plan.