STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Some of the “confidence building” measures incorporated into this process included the release of a number of prisoners and the lifting of the embargo on 28 of the 42 items which had hitherto been barred from the North. [...] While many of the chapters in this volume are thematic, some are concerned with the broad range of rights pertaining to specific groups of people: the rights of workers, of minorities, of the displaced and returned asylum-seekers, of children, and of women. [...] 1.2 Devaluation of Democracy: The Executive Presidency The establishment of the executive presidency under the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka, which concentrated great powers in the executive president, also contributed in great measure to the decline of participatory democracy in the country. [...] Chief perpetrators among the latter grouping were the LTTE and the ultra-nationalist Sinhala group, the JVP.2 The ascendence of armed non-state actors has, for the most part, been attributed to the anti-democratic nature of the state. [...] The TULF, which polled only 6.4% of the votes, obtained 18 seats and qualified to lead the opposition in parliaments It has been pointed out that if those results were projected under the PR system currently in operation, the UNP would have obtained only 84 seats, the SLFP 51 seats and the TULF 14 seats.7 The system of PR adopted on the initiative of the UNP government in 1978 did have the effect.