Can Swiss-style federalism help power-sharing efforts in Sri Lanka?

For decades, the Tamil minority has looked towards federal states as a model for governance. This autumn, a delegation of Sri Lankan lawmakers and political decision-makers visited Switzerland to gain insight into the country’s political system. Will Sri Lanka’s left-wing government now push ahead with power-sharing?  

By Benjamin von Wyl

It is fascinating to see how everything is organized from the bottom up in Switzerland, says Chandima Hettiaratchi. “When a decision is made, the people are consulted,” he explains. “If a local council wants to build a road but the people don’t want it, then it won’t be built. The mandate comes from the people.” 

Hettiaratchi is one of 12 politicians from Sri Lanka who visited Switzerland in September. The study trip, which was co-organized by the Swiss foreign ministry, included visits to Geneva, Bern and smaller towns such as Murten. A key focus of the visit was Swiss federalism and the interaction between different political levels in Switzerland. 

In Sri Lanka, many decisions are made in the capital, Colombo. And while representatives of the Tamil minority have long called for a federal system, many members of the Sinhalese majority see this as divisive. 

Conflict between Tamils ​​and Sinhalese 

Sri Lanka’s history is marred by ethnic tensions that go back to the British colonial era. In colonial Ceylon, Britain favoured placing members of the Tamil minority in positions of responsibility, thereby sowing the seeds for conflict with the Sinhalese majority. 

After independence in 1948, the Sinhalese government passed a law that denied citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Tamils of Indian origin. Sinhala was soon declared the sole national language. While some representatives of the Sinhalese majority had advocated a federalist system during British colonial rule, this now became the aspiration of the Tamil minority. 

Tensions between the predominantly Hindu Tamils and the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese culminated in a bloody civil war, which claimed over 100,000 lives between 1983 and 2009. The Tamil Tigers rebel group fought against the Sinhalese central government for an independent state in the north and east of the island. The war only ended with the complete military victory over the Tamil Tigers.  

Discussion about the Swiss model since 1985  

Over the years, the Swiss federalist model has regularly been cited as a possible path for reconciliation. Thus, in 1985, the Marga Institute in Colombo held a conference on federalism, where a Swiss parliamentarian and officials spoke. “The seminar was qualified as a great success by all the participants,” the Swiss news agency SDA reported at the time, albeit adding that the Sri Lankan government had only allowed the event to take place behind closed doors and without local media coverage.  

In May 2002, during a ceasefire brokered by Norway, the Tamil Tigers’ political chief made a clandestine visit to Bern. There, he no longer advocated for a separate Tamil state but for “federalism and power-sharing between the centre and the regions”, according to the Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche at the time.  

In autumn 2002, the Swiss foreign ministry met officially with representatives of the Tamil Tigers. One year later, as a seemingly viable agreement was emerging in Norway, Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey hosted a meeting with Sri Lankan government representatives and Tamil rebel leaders. There she declared, as reported by AP news agency, that “part of our political identity” should also “infuse Sri Lanka”, but warned against viewing Swiss federalism as a cure-all. 

The peace process at the time fell through, however, and the war dragged on until 2009. Members of the Rajapaksa family, who espoused clearly anti-federalist positions, repeatedly dominated Sri Lankan politics until 2024.  

New left-wing government pledges non-racist policies 

In 2024, the left-wing National People’s Power (NPP) won a broad majority in the elections. More than 100 new politicians from this alliance thus entered parliament. 

Among them is Hettiaratchi, who took part in the study trip to Switzerland. “Almost all previous governments based their policies on racism,” he says. Meanwhile, the NPP came to power on a pledge against such ideas, and won majorities across the country, he adds. “We will create a united country in which everyone retains their culture, language and differences.” 

In reality, the NPP holds eight of the 19 seats in the north and east of the country, so not actually a majority. 

Another significant factor is the central role played within the NPP by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a party with roots in a Sinhalese nationalist left-wing guerrilla movement. When a Chinese delegation visited Sri Lanka shortly after the 2024 elections, the JVP and the Chinese Communist Party reaffirmed their “long-standing political friendship”. The Chinese delegation also met with NPP general secretary Nihal Abeysinghe.  

Abeysinghe, too, was part of the trip to Switzerland. He appreciated the “non-confrontational nature” of the Swiss system, while realising that its slowness can be a disadvantage. He would also like to see a more consensus-oriented approach in Sri Lanka. “What we need to promote in Sri Lanka is co-existence in a multilingual society, where people also learn each other’s languages,” he concluded.  

His NPP colleague Hettiaratchi, meanwhile, talks about the newly introduced “participatory ideas” in his region. Next year, the politician promises, “once boundary demarcation issues have been resolved”, the “process of holding provincial elections” across Sri Lanka will begin. The last elections at this level were held over ten years ago. 

Hettiaratchi wants to “gradually lead the people towards greater participation” until a new constitution is created in a “major public debate involving NGOs, churches, mosques and temples”. 

Tamils call for federal constitution 

Pathmanathan Sathiyalingham also wants a new constitution. A Tamil doctor who worked in the conflict region during the war, he now represents ITAK, the largest Tamil party today, in parliament. He was one of three opposition Tamil politicians who visited Switzerland. 

Sathiyalingham appreciated seeing Swiss federalism in practice. “Municipalities have their own police force. In Sri Lanka, the provinces were never given sovereignty over the local police,” he explains. Provincial administrations can be stripped of their powers at any moment under the Sri Lankan constitution. “This has already happened several times.” 

For a federal constitution to come about, as Sathiyalingham wishes, trust must first be built within the Sri Lankan population – and between the different ethnic groups. “Those who went to Switzerland saw that federalism does not mean division,” he says. During evening conversations, the participants on the trip compared different federal systems. “I then also told them: ‘Don’t forget what you’ve learnt when you leave Switzerland’,” he adds. 

Sathiyalingham believes that the NPP representatives who travelled to Switzerland have a duty to educate the other members of their party alliance and the general public about how federalist systems work. “Up to now, the Sinhalese have believed that federalism divides the country.” To ensure that the visit has a lasting impact, he has asked “the Swiss representatives and the embassy in Sri Lanka to continue the dialogue”. 

The visit to Switzerland this autumn was not the first for Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam. The Tamil politician took part in a similar trip in the early 2000s. Since then, he has advocated for federalist models for Sri Lanka, in particular along Canadian lines. “The Swiss model is nothing new to me. My party and I have been quite enthusiastic about it for a long time,” says the sole member of parliament from the All Ceylon Tamil Congress. Ponnambalam is au fait with the different models of federalism. “We take the principle of subsidiarity and power-sharing in Switzerland to heart, but we appreciate the Canadian idea, in which Quebec is recognised as a nation. We would like to have a plurinational state,” he sums up. 

A success for the Swiss foreign ministry  

Ponnambalam also emphasises the poor reputation that federalism still has among the Sinhalese. Unlike previous governments, the current one states that it has no “anti-Tamil intentions”, he says. “The NPP recognises that all previous governments over the last 76 years pursued anti-Tamil agendas, and this is why anti-Tamil laws exist.” Only time will tell, the politician adds, whether anything will truly change – whether the laws will be modified and whether the government can convince the Sinhalese population that “federalism is not secession”. This is up to the government. On this point, the Sinhalese population would not believe him, a Tamil politician, he concludes.    

The Swiss foreign ministry reports that the study trip was “successful and effective” and helped to build “mutual understanding across party lines”. Switzerland will continue to support national reconciliation in Sri Lanka, it says. 

-This article was originally featured on swissinfo.ch