UNP - please consider the country

"I earnestly request you and your party to join my Government in facing the challenge of protecting our motherland." Thus ends a recent letter from President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the Deputy Leader of the UNP, Karu Jayasuriya.

For the sake of Sri Lanka and its future well-being we hope the UNP and its leadership would seriously consider this request and respond positively to it.

The time has come for a joining of hands among all those who care for Sri lanka and wish to bring about peace and prosperity in the land, on a permanent basis.

The CWC and the Upcountry People's Front have already done so and we hope the UNP - the biggest opposition party - would follow suit in consideration of the national interest.

The need of the hour is a grand coalition of political forces which genuinely cares for the country, its future well-being and its democratic way of life.

Fortunately, the majority of parties are for a negotiated settlement of our conflict while also endorsing military means - if needed - to protect the national interest.

Accordingly, one of the best things which could happen to Sri Lanka at present is for these political parties to unite with the Government in its efforts to revive Sri Lanka's fortunes.

Therefore, we call on the UNP to pay heed to the Government's call for a coming together of political forces at this juncture, with political partes other than the UNP, which have been hitherto outside the Government, strongly considering uniting with the Government too in this hour of the country's need.

No doubt, such a coming together of political forces for the greater good would bring about what may be called a paradigm shift in the way the country has been ruled.

It should amount to a normative change in democratic governance. However, the challenges facing us necessitate such breaks with the past because the adversarial two-party system has only spawned more and more distress and discord for Sri Lanka.

There is need for a radical break with the past, in terms of governance systems, and we do not see anything amiss in a change of approach to governance as long as such changes are forged within a democratic framework.

After all, extraordinary situations call for extraordinary solutions. The time has come for changes of this kind within the steel frame of democracy.

From the time of political independence, Sri Lanka could have been considered as facing discord on two fronts: one is the ethnic plane and the other the Southern polity scenario.

The discord and disunity in the latter arena has been satanically exploited by anti-national groups, such as the LTTE, to keep the country on the boil.

The inability of the major political parties of the South to unite in resolving the ethnic conflict politically, has given the LTTE the opportunity to prolong the country's distress and agony.

For how long more do the major political parties of the South hope to work towards only their short-term interests at the cost of the greater good of the country? Clearly, it is time to unite to offer the hope of a more peaceful Sri Lanka.

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