ISAS Insights

The centralisation of political power, and failure to devolve power to the ethnic minorities, accentuated the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka that led to three decades of internal war. Although the war ended in May 2009, more than three and a half years ago, Sri Lanka has yet to make the transition to ethnic reconciliation and to a political solution. As it has been pointed out by scholars in the field, political stability in pluralistic societies is difficult to maintain without internal power-sharing mechanisms or systems of governance which are responsive to the aspirations of ethnic minorities. The monopoly of political power by representatives of the ethnic Sinhalese majority amounting to over 75 per cent of the country's population was a major contributory factor to the internal war that pitted the government against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).