Unravelling the constitutional settlement: devolution, democracy and patronage in eastern Sri Lanka

Like other conflict-torn societies, Sri Lankans have long sought to build peace through constitutional re-design with devolution of power and minority protections. However, the preoccupation with legal norms and institutions runs counter to the widely-held conviction that politicians routinely transgress norms and twist institutions. It is thus imperative to study the lived political realities of power-sharing arrangements, rather than their intended design. The 1987 Thirteenth Amendment devolved state power to the provinces to assuage Tamil separatism. The limited academic work that exists on the Provincial Council system outlines its shortcomings and failures, but there is little scholarship of the councils as a political arena in their own right. This article discusses the politics around the Eastern Provincial Council, especially the brief but unique period between 2015 and 2017 when it was run by Tamil and Muslim parties. More specifically, the empirical material pivots on three Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim Ministers in the Eastern Province and two lower-ranking Muslim politicians. The Provincial Council has very different meaning, legitimacy and utility to these diverse political figures. I argue that we must consider these diverse ethno-nationalist manifestations of provincial politics to understand what the Provincial Council system entails in Sri Lanka.