Visionary plan for Lanka

IT IS now abundantly clear that President Mahinda Rajapakse's policy framework to rebuild and rejuvenate Sri Lanka is wide-ranging, comprehensive and deeply cognisant of the ills assailing the country.

So much was clear from the President's address at the launching of the second session of the sixth Parliament last morning.

In this address, the President clarified the principal challenges facing his administration and the country. Foremost among these is, of course, the peace process and the establishment of national reconciliation and harmony.

On this score, President Rajapakse could not have been more unambiguous and clear. The Rajapakse administration is for a negotiated political solution to the vexed ethnic conflict and this solution would be sought through a direct negotiatory process with the LTTE.

However, unlike in the past, where the negotiations featured mainly two parties - the Government and the LTTE - the negotiatory process under the current administration would be widely inclusive and feature the participation of all important stakeholders to the conflict.

It would be sensitive to the legitimate aspirations of all our communities. It would be an honourable and consensual peace which would be respected by all and feature a substantial degree of power devolution.

The President clarified that the ceasefire would continue but be revised to help prevent current irregularities.

Special attention would be paid to Muslim concerns and the emerging Sri Lanka would be made a home of all our communities. Anyone would be enabled to live anywhere in this land with none of its regions being seen as the preserve of this or that group.

All in all, Sri Lanka was projected as a widely inclusive polity where consensual decision-making would take hold. In other words, a living and growing democracy where the opinions of all would matter.

While pragmatism would be the chief approach in the conduct of economic policy, there was a welcome focus by President Rajapakse on the rural sector where the bulk of Lanka's poverty-stricken sections reside.

In other words, the President is highlighting the need for pro-poor growth and the bulk of local opinion would agree that there could be no development in Sri Lanka without this focus on the rural poor who man the country's pivotal agricultural sector.

This is an important corrective to the theories of development which have reigned so far which have placed a lop-sided emphasis on economic growth at the expense of equity.

Ideally, growth should accompany equity and we are glad that the President is gearing to break the yoke of rural poverty - an aim which has so far proved notoriously elusive.

Accordingly, we warmly welcome President Rajapakse's plans to not only strengthen the Samurdhi movement but provide every poor family with Rs. 200 per month for the purchase of milk food.

Likewise, his aim of building 25 new houses for every village besides expanding rural infrastructure facilities under his 'Jaya Lanka' project, strikes us as most commendable.

Coupled with these plans is a mid-day meal for school children and the expansion of the teaching of the English language in the public school system. These projects point to the futuristic vision of investing in people and getting the best out of them.

All these and more of the President's visionary plans for a Sri Lanka reborn would yield fruit only if the whole of Sri Lanka works hard and honestly in the days ahead. Short-term gains would need to be sacrificed for long-term ones. Let us succeed this time round, is our hope.