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Keeping our schools safe

Many a newspaper reader is likely to have gone back in time to the nightmarish Lanka of the late Eighties on learning of plans by some subversive elements to inveigle school children into street protests against aspects of the current peace effort. The news is that academic sessions in some schools have already been disrupted by these parties whose obvious intention is to use these schoolchildren as cannon fodder in their anti-government agitations.

In the turbulent late Eighties and early Nineties, when murder and mayhem was unleashed virtually over the length and breadth of Southern Sri Lanka schoolchildren were used in demonstrations against the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 by subversive elements which are today attempting to rehabilitate themselves in mainstream democratic politics. These demonstrations were at that time roundly condemned by those who nourished within themselves a sense of caring for our young and those who sought to promote the national interest and our tradition of democratic politics. It is with the same sense of moral outrage that we condemn current efforts to incite schoolchildren into joining political demonstrations, the nature of which they know nothing. It is plain to see that young, impressionable minds are being callously exploited to advance political agendas which would dangerously undermine the national interest.

We call on these opportunistic political elements to keep schools and the young out of their political machinations and programs of internal destabilization. For besides misleading the young and subverting their innocence, these groups would be wrecking their academic careers and their futures.

These attempts to revert to a brand of politics which unleashed barbarism and naked terror in Sri Lanka is indeed saddening. In those bad old days of the late Eighties, when terror and coercion was used to disrupt the then government's program of work, Sri Lanka steadily slumped into the condition of a "Killing Field". This made every Sri Lankan a loser. Rather than fish ravenously in troubled waters, political actors need to make full use of the democratic space which has opened out today to promote their causes. There is no alternative to using the democratic methods of persuasive debate and discourse, to win public support for one's cause. A reversion to coercive tactics would only spread misery and open the path to political strife.

Prolonged amnesia seems to be combining with political opportunism and short sightedness to lead some sections of the opposition astray. The peace process has made some satisfactory progress. Rather than help the Government in the task of consolidating it, these elements seems to be intent on taking Lanka back to a dark era of strife and socio-political instability. It is clear that such tactics would only back-fire disastrously. We urge these sections to rethink their oppositional strategies and to use the democratic fora available to them to advance their causes.

Meanwhile, it is encouraging to note that the Government is losing no time in working out arrangements to meet any possible emergencies. The Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs Dr. Karunasena Kodituwakku, we are told, has alerted the Interior Ministry of the plans of subversion involving schoolchildren. The Education Minister was also expected to summon all Divisional Education Directors to inform them of the measures which should be taken to defeat the machinations in the making.

At the school level, parent-teacher committees and other institutional arrangements could be activated to ensure the safety of students. While parents and elders would be required to keep a sharp eye on their children, security measures at schools, should be effective enough to ensure that trouble-seeking outsiders do not infiltrate school premises.

The Government also needs to take the initiative in keeping the public informed of the merits of its peace effort. It would be dangerous to permit a knowledge vacuum which could be exploited by the agents of subversion and destabilization. Even the student population needs to be kept informed about what the Government is about. More dynamism needs to be injected into the peace effort.

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