The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has called for a Satyagraha in protest against the recent Supreme Court judgment that the amalgamation of the Northern and the Eastern Provinces is null and void. Anyone who cares to go through the path-breaking judgment (the full text of which was published in The Island of Oct. 17), will see that it is flawless and convincing. What has been negated is not the merger as such but the modus operandi adopted by the late President J. R. Jayewardene in effecting it. All the problems that the judgment is said to have given rise to, are political in nature—not legal at all.

It is not only the TNA parliamentarians who have problems with the judgment at issue but some government MPs as well. No sooner had the judgment been delivered than a group of ruling party MPs did frown on its timing. Is it that they expect the highest court of the land to work according to their time table? Three citizens from the Eastern Province invoked the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over an alleged violation of their fundamental rights by the merger. The Court heard their case and delivered its judgment. It happened to be in the run up to the talks to be held between the government and the LTTE in Geneva. What else could the Court have done?

We don’t intend to question the TNA’s right to engage in protests. (But, one is naturally offended by the abuse of the term, Satyagraha, as one considers it an affront to Mahatma posthumously in that it is aimed at furthering the interests of the LTTE, which is practising the very antithesis of Gandhiji’s ahimsa.) However, by calling for a merger, the TNA is asking the government to put the cart before the horse. As is evident from the Supreme Court judgment, a merger of the two provinces is possible only if the conditions specified in the Provincial Councils Act No. 42 of 1987 are satisfied. They are the surrender of weapons by the guerrillas and the complete cessation of hostilities apart from the endorsement thereof by the people at a referendum. The rule of law must be respected and there cannot be any short cuts to a merger.

It is too dangerous a proposition to leave the merger of provinces to Presidents. There is a campaign against the executive presidency because of the immunity it gives a ruler to act according to his or her whims and fancies. The incumbent President shouldn’t be pressured to undermine democracy and violate the Constitution by repeating the late President J. R. Jayewardene’s illegal method of amalgamation. Violation of the Constitution is, it should be recalled, an impeachable offence.

The merger is far more complex than the TNA is trying to have us believe. The Eastern Province Muslims are demanding a separate Muslim Administrative Unit in the form of the so-called Southeastern Council, in case of autonomy being given to the LTTE in a merged North and East. Announcing its decision to launch a Satyagraha, the TNA has told the press that the North and the East are ‘the land of historical habitation of the Tamil speaking people.’ Who are the ‘Tamil speaking people’? If the opinion of the LTTE is anything to go by, then that broad category includes the Muslims. Then the question is why the LTTE drove away tens of thousands of Muslims from the North as part of its ethnic cleansing campaign. Doesn’t the LTTE’s ‘Tamil speaking’ theory apply to the North? On the other hand, if the LTTE (whose views the TNA echoes) thinks the North and the East are ‘the land of historical habitation of the Tamil speaking people’, then it cannot deny Muslims the right to ask for a council encompassing a part of that land, can it? The proposed Muslim unit will be noncontiguous and that, too, is bound to lead to unforeseen problems, should a situation be created for its establishment.

The Eastern Tigers led by the former LTTE military commander Karuna Amman are campaigning for a separate Eastern Province. That outfit has proved that it is as ruthless as the Wanni Tigers. They who have manifestly matched the Wanni Tigers’ terror—including suicide bombing—cannot be written off because of their spoiler capability as regards the peace process. The Eastern Tigers are very likely to resist an attempt to force the merger on the East.

The international community has undertaken to control the destiny of Sri Lanka’s democracy. Its leader President Bush, who is on a crusade to democratise the world, has admitted that the US has got into a Vietnam kind of situation in Iraq in trying to re-establish democracy in that land. The US-led forces are on a similar mission in Afghanistan. While doing so much for democracy, it is doubtful whether the international community will be able to endorse any attempt to merge two provinces here in contravention of the law and the will of the Eastern Province people. The will of the people is the lynchpin of any democracy, isn’t it? We would like to hear from the Co-chairs on the TNA’s/LTTE’s campaign for a merger without proper process and procedure being followed.

Peace processes are essential but they must not be allowed to take precedence over the Constitution and democracy.