Several missed opportunities of achieving communal harmony

(Excerpted from The Sri Lanka Peace Process: An Inside View by GL Peiris)

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Although the die had been cast, the event was a pusillanimous attempt, even the purpose of which was shrouded in doubt and conjecture.

This was a tentative legislative step in the form of the District Developments Councils Act of 1980. The legislation was preceded by the appointment of a Presidential Commission, which was presided over by Mr. Victor Tennekoon QC, a former Chief Justice and Attorney General, and comprised a membership of four Sinhalese, three Tamils, and three Muslims.

At the initial stage itself, lack of courage was demonstrated in the reluctance to include in the Terms of Reference any allusion to the ethnic conflict. This gave rise to an irreconcilable difference of opinion among the members as to the nature and scope of their mandate. Hardline opinion within the government precluded direct reference to the ethnic dimension. But some of the members of the Commission, including Professor A. J. Wilson, a close confidant of President J. R. Jayewardene and son-in-law of the leader of the Federal Party, Mr. S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, had secured informal agreement with the President that the government would be well disposed to consideration of broader issues having a bearing on the ethnic conflict, should these be addressed in the contents of the report. This was, however, strongly resisted by the majority of the members who were inclined to adopt a narrow, technical interpretation of the Terms of Reference.