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The need for new thinking

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's call for fresh thinking in dealing with national problems, couldn't have been more timely.

One is reminded of the prophetic saying that new wine cannot be poured into old wineskins, for, the latter would split in two on coming into contact with the effervescent, new refreshment. New wine, we were reminded, should be poured into new wineskins, for the safe preservation of both the wine and the containers. Likewise, problems thrown-up by contemporary Sri Lanka cannot be resolved within a framework of conventional thinking. New ideas are required to grapple with new problems.

Speaking at a felicitation ceremony organised by the Colombo University Alumni Organisation, Premier Wickremesinghe was quoted saying in reference to Lanka's contemporary ills that, "We have to think afresh and establish a new model, if we are to move ahead."

Nowhere is this need for new thinking more pronounced than in the contemporary political field where disaffection on the part of a section of the Tamil minority has taken a violent form. As a result of governments failing to resolve the ethnic conflict on the basis of conventional political thinking, Sri Lanka was saddled with a bloody rebellion for nearly twenty years.

Right now, a cessation of hostilities agreement between the Government and the LTTE is holding, but much remains to be done before a stable peace is established in Sri Lanka.

The moot question is, could Sri Lanka traverse the road to a just and durable peace without, for instance, adopting a new constitutional order, which would ensure a degree of political power to her minorities, while preserving her unitary status and territorial integrity?

This is the foremost challenge facing Sri Lanka and her rulers. Obviously, this great challenge of our times cannot be met, if sections of our people reject the position that the legitimate needs of the minorities have to be satisfied within a constitutional framework that recognizes their collective rights.

Likewise, new economic thinking needs to be generated to meet the challenges of globalisation. We now know for a fact that globalization is no equalizer. Economic globalization has helped, in fact, in widening the income gap among countries and within them.

There is no question of our turning our backs on economic dynamism and the spread of entrepreneurship, but ways must be devised to narrow the income gap among social classes. In other words, new thinking is very much in need to combine economic growth with equality - the ideal which is still sought after by national societies.

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