A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, July 5, 2018
Winning trust and confidence internationally and locally
The war ended nine years ago but the country has still to address issues
of healing and transition meaningfully or effectively. This may be
disappointing but it is not too surprising. Dealing with the past is
never easy. In Colombia, where a peace accord between the government and
rebels was signed in 2016, and ended a five decade long civil war which
had led to more than 200,000 deaths, a presidential election was held
last month. The government candidate from the party of the president who
had signed the peace accord lost and the opposition candidate from the
party of a hardline president who fought the war against the rebels won.
This has thrown the internationally, backed peace process into doubt
even though the former president and rebel leader were awarded the Nobel
peace prize.
To meet international commitments, the Sri Lankan government has
formulated a post-war reconciliation process with international support.
While the government is progressing with technical details of
mechanisms it hopes to introduce, much of the task of building public
consensus to support such mechanisms and the process itself is being
left to civil society organisations. However, civil society has neither
the resources nor the media coverage to work on a national scale in the
absence of governmental leadership. There needs to be governmental
leadership.
At the present time the government is giving space to civil society, and
also space to nationalist groups, to carry out their activities, but
the government leadership itself is restrained in taking the message to
the people or giving public leadership to the campaign for reform. The
challenge today is to communicate to the people and explain to them what
needs to be done. At the present time the public has little knowledge
of the process, or opportunity to participate in debate, and therefore
there is no real acceptance of the process. The failure to communicate
on the part of the government is partly due to the disunity within the
government which is composed of two formerly rival political parties.
EXPLOITING FEARS
Like in Colombia, the opposition is utilizing the democratic space that
the government provides to widen the pre-existing rifts between the
religious and ethnic communities by stoking up nationalist fears. The
government’s main achievements are in the realm of an improved framework
of good governance and human rights. This has obtained appreciation by
the international community. The European Union, during the third
meeting of the Working Group on Governance, Rule of Law and Human Rights
under the European Union-Sri Lanka Joint Commission in May this year,
commended efforts by the Sri Lankan government for its progress in
protecting and enhancing human rights.
The political problem for the government, however, is that progress in
setting up a system of good governance are no readily visible or
understood as such by the general population. Mass sentiment is more
easily swayed by nationalist rhetoric that points to the dangers of
compromising on national security. The general population is also
desirous of material development that is visible such as highways or
punitive actions whereby prominent political leaders are sent to prison
for corruption. Therefore, there is a need for a strong communication
strategy which includes counter messaging campaigns.
The government’s approach to governance so far has been to take a more
hands-off than hands-on approach. The government has been commended by
the EU for setting the framework for good governance by passing new
laws. However, the problem with this approach is that it does not take
into account the Sri Lankan political ethos of demonstrating an ethos of
care and political patronage. People want to feel that their leaders
care for them and therefor expect to see them come to them and solve
their problems. President Ranasinghe Premadasa understood this well when
he commenced the Gam Udawa village reawakening scheme and went and
personally spent days with the people in their localities. He also gave
emphasis to the problem-solving mechanism of the mobile presidential
secretariat that gave on-the-spot solutions to the problems of the
people.
The need to demonstrate an ethos of care and political patronage at the
local level is well known by politicians who campaign for the votes of
the people and who cannot rely on their reputations alone to bring in
the votes. It is often the case that though local level politicians do
not have much in the way of their education level or integrity they are
nevertheless capable of winning the hearts and minds of their local
electorates. This is in contrast to those who have much better education
and integrity, but who fail to go to the people to directly engage with
them and help them to deal with their problems instead preferring to
remain in the decision-making centres of the capital.
WINNING TRUST
Cognisant of the need to provide the people with tangible benefits in
the run up to the national elections that are falling due within the
next 18 months, and mindful of the electoral debacle at the local
government elections held in February this year, the government has
recently started implementing three major accelerated development
projects. They have been called Enterprise Sri Lanka, Gamperaliya and
Grama Shakthi and are meants to develop rural infrastructure, give soft
loans to small and medium businesses in the rural areas and commence 15
large development projects to develop both urban and rural communities.
It is important that the government leadership itself gets involved in
the process of implementing these activities and engage directly with
the people whom it is intended to benefit, rather than leave it to lower
level politicians and government officials alone to undertake those
tasks.
Recently the National Peace Council intervened to secure a pipe borne
water supply to a Tamil community located in a tea plantation area in
the Southern Province. This was done with the participation of Buddhist
and other religious clergy of the area who have formed an inter
religious committee through which they foster positive relationships
between themselves and with the multi ethnic and multi religious
communities amongst whom they live. The reason for their intervention in
this particular case was the failure of the state to provide an
impoverished Tamil community with their basic needs.
A Buddhist nun who was part of the group said that her concern was the
wellbeing of the people amongst whom she lived. It mattered to her that
the local community did not have access to motorable roads and to clean
water supply. She said that the former president had promised this to
the people. She said the government had made plans to provide this to
the people but before they could deliver on their promise the former
president lost the presidential elections and lost the power to govern.
With that loss, the plans of the government were not implemented, and
she was sad about that. The new government has brought in new laws,
political freedom and a new framework of governance that provides for
better governance, but the good nun’s heart lay with the previous
government leaders who were going to do something for the people amongst
whom she lived.
I was in Brussels last week and met with EU officials among others. One
of them recounted how Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had visited
Brussels during the time of the campaign to get back the GSP+ tariff
concession that the previous government had lost due to their violations
of internationals covenants and human rights. The EU official said that
it was not easy for any country to get back GSP+ once they lost it. But
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s competent and comprehensive
understanding of governance issues and human rights and what needed to
be done had won for him the admiration and trust of the EU
parliamentarians and officials with whom he engaged with. This ability
to inspire trust and confidence needs to be taken from the international
and capital city realm of high finance and cosmopolitan life to the
grassroots of Sri Lanka by the government.