Peace in our time and the way forward

J. B. Muller

President Rajapaksa's speech in Parliament has to be welcomed as a pivotal turning-point in the history of our beloved Motherland. He has unequivocally destroyed the dichotomy of 'majority' versus 'minorities' when he said that there are only two kinds of people: those who love the Motherland and those mercifully few who work against her. How right he is for he is the very first Head of State to recognize that all who are born on this soil are its sons and daughters.

As a member of the Burgher socio-cultural community I endorse the motto of the Dutch-Burgher Union which states: "Eendracht maakt Macht" (in Dutch), which means "Unity is Strength." Indeed, it is, for all the people of Sri Lanka, for all its diverse and heterogeneous communities, distinctive albeit related to each other through ties of blood, kinship and shared Sri Lankan values.

Today, in my hearing the country's First Citizen endorsed such a concept and commended it to all its loyal citizens. This also went to reinforce my feeling that President Rajapaksa is unswervingly committed to building a united nation when I participated in 'Deyata Kirula" which brought together 24 distinctive segments of the island's population, each displaying a facet of its culture.

If anything, this was a dramatic statement sent to the country and the world that Sri Lanka had reached a defining moment in its post-independence history. For the first time it was acknowledged in both word and deed that all her sons and daughters were fully co-equal citizens of one nation under one flag marching forward to one drum-beat!

Terrorist organization

What all this means and implies is that President Rajapaksa is showing the new direction and providing the enlightened leadership to the sea-change that he has inaugurated. That initiative has also been immeasurably strengthened by the victory won against the most vicious terrorist organization in the world on a day that will go down in history, Sunday, May 17, 2009. Here, he and his military commanders flew in the face of international opposition and its gloomy predictions to defeat terrorism militarily, wiping-out its leaders and remaining cadres. This unparalleled victory would now contribute to the dismantling of the terrorist organization's international support network because it would free innocent Tamils who were constrained, under pain of death, to contribute to terrorist coffers.

He went further and invited all of them to come back home and help him rebuild the war-shattered regions of the island. He also invited all other Sri Lankans in the worldwide Diaspora to come back and help him create a new and renewed nation.

The continuous flow of news and information to and from the island through telecommunications, radio and the Internet should convince the worldwide Diaspora that President Rajapaksa is sincere in his intentions, his words, and his deeds as we enter a wholly new era.

Building peace

'Peace' isn't merely a word or the absence of conflict. It is made up of positive actions - hard and smart work - to ensure the elimination of confrontation and violence in human society.

On the one hand, it means stamping out the merest manifestation of violence through a continuous serious of actions calculated to ensure the maintenance of Law and Order, equity and justice in society and the removing of those factors that hinder or act as impediments to law, order, equity and justice in the manner in which people are managed and administered with their consent and participation - not as passive spectators but as active players in day-to-day affairs that impinge on their life and well-being.

Then, the conditions and infrastructure should be systematically put in place to ensure that people could pursue their vocations and professions without threat or duress from any quarter. Civilized human beings need shelter, water, sanitation, power, roads, communications, food and productive employment on a continuous basis.

The old and out-of-date has to be renewed and made new. Common amenities should be provided, maintained and extended according to need and/or demand. Education, medical services, transport and the entire host of services needed by modern society must be provided, filling the shattered shells of what once was and none of these things should be provided as if a favour was being done. In the provision of life-support systems, the dignity and self-respect of the beneficiaries should at all times be maintained and respected.

Overall, the citizens of the country until recently designated 'minorities' should now be brought into the mainstream of the country's politics. The largest such group are the Tamils and all their grievances should be addressed, especially education, employment opportunities, the use of the Tamil language without unfair discrimination. They and the other segments should be guaranteed equal protection of the Law in practice throughout the land.

Additionally, because it would be impractical for every social, cultural or religious 'minority' to be represented in Parliament, the President should appoint an additional Secretary attached to the Presidential Secretariat to be in charge of these 'other' segments of the population. Further, the Chief Minister of every provincial council should also have an additional secretary to which these 'other' segments could make representations about their grievances-particularly discrimination and marginalization by the administrative bureaucracy, the police or the courts. This would assuage those feelings of being of no account and help these citizens genuinely feel that the Head of State and his government is sensitive to their real, felt needs in the crucial areas of civil and political rights and human rights violations.

Laying foundation

The task might be onerous and time consuming but land mines and improvised explosive devices must be cleared before people are allowed to re-occupy their former homes. If these have been damaged or destroyed, they should be repaired or rebuilt as expeditiously as possible.

The aftermath of the tsunami provides a good example of involving these people in the reconstruction process where they are assisted to rebuild their homes.

Those who were cultivating should be assisted to re-cultivate their fields and helped with seed, fertilizer, pest and disease control followed by the harvesting and marketing of their produce at fair prices.

This would be a golden opportunity to eliminate those who exploited them previously as each and every settler could be persuaded to become a member of a re-structured new local co-operative.

As a matter of fact, a completely revamped co-operative structure could prove to be the economic salvation for these people. Such co-operatives could disburse credit and provide all the essential services necessary to ensure that these people would not be exploited by loan sharks and other exploitative elements waiting in the sidelines like sharks.

When these people are helped, step-by-step to restructure their lives and futures, the battle for their heads, their hearts, and their hands is a foregone conclusion. Words are fine but deeds count for 99 percent of the strategy to get these people solidly behind the reconstruction and rehabilitation effort.

The co-operative system has been recommended here because the ordinary people of the country are quite familiar with the way co-operatives work and with the Rochdale Principles on which that structure was constructed.

The difference here is that all the people would be members, all contributing to its equity. Initially, perhaps, the Government itself may have to purchase each member's share certificate on the proviso that in an year's time that the price of the share would be redeemed by the member paying back the initial seed money invested in his/her membership.

The management could be handled by the large cadre of unemployed graduates. Financial checks and balances and a stringent audit carried out at regular intervals should be able to eliminate any manifestation of corruption. The vigilance of the members should ensure the smooth running of the new co-operatives.

Simultaneous to the massive reconstruction effort, the surviving terrorists should be ferreted out-not for torture and imprisonment but for rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Such elements could be incorporated into the Security Forces where strict discipline prevails. Here, under controlled conditions these boys and girls could be taught useful vocational skills or encouraged to study and qualify.

It would be counter-productive to take, these elements into custody, brutalize them and then eliminate them. That would send the message that the Government is unforgiving and not true to the sacrosanct common values held dear by all Sri Lankans.

Generating investment

It should be made incumbent upon the private sector to proactively invest in the reconstruction and rehabilitation process from now on. Government should call upon all the chambers of commerce and industry and similar business associations to put up plans for its consideration. In order to systematize the generation of investment resources, government should create a new authority under the aegis of the Finance Ministry, similar to the BOI/BII to channel investment to the most crucial sectors.

This authority would also supervise and regulate the process in co-operation with the private sector in order to maintain transparency and also act as a check-and-balance on the 'Old Boy' axis that often indulges in the 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' type of cronyism.

Reviving domestic economy

There is enough empirical evidence to show that smallholders and peasant producers generate the greatest quantity of agricultural and other produce (i.e. fisheries) throughout the country. However, this neglected sector could be better organized and systematized under modern management and the use of technology notably computers and telecommunications.

This entire sector could be brought under the co-operative umbrella and systematically reorganized towards a more rational approach to production, reducing post-harvest losses, ensuring proper storage, better farmgate prices, providing refrigerated transport by both road and rail and other across-the-board improvements.

This would also cut back on the use of scarce resources, facilitate the availability of cheaper credit and bring prosperity to a dilapidated sector of the domestic economy.

Poverty breeds discontent. Discontent leads to insurgency and the use of violence. Countering this at grass-root level by systematically reorganizing the domestic economy by utilizing the widespread co-operative structure is the way to go.

Sri Lanka isn't a capitalist country with an affluent Middle Class to entrepreneur in agriculture. In such a scenario, the co-operative model is the most suitable as the poor could all become members. This also puts the members in control and eliminates outside interference to a minimum.

The successful systems of collective/co-operative agricultural production practiced in Israel for several generations now is a good example where we could learn useful lessons and avoid costly mistakes. Poverty, a countrywide phenomenon, could be gradually rolled back and the lessons learned in the process could also be utilized as the system expands and grows. The outcome could be contented producers and happier consumers. Prosperity is an excellent foundation for sustaining a viable peace - North, East, West and South.

Consolidating the gains

President Rajapaksa, as one of the most astute politicians this country has ever produced, has a vision of the 'Big picture' ever before him.

Ever since he was elected he has been trying to formulate a coherent and cohesive strategy to build peace, prosperity and ensure progress for the people-all the people bar none.

He can now begin the task of winning the peace by building on his strengths, eliminating the enervating weaknesses in the system, taking advantage of the opportunities presented to him, and whittling away at the threats, domestic as well as international.

With the people of Sri Lanka solidly behind him he can move forward unhindered. He showed the world that he was not deterred by veiled threats or pressure. He also now knows who Sri Lanka's real, honest-to-goodness friends are in the international community.

This does not mean that he has to get angry with anyone; it means that he has to persuade those who swallowed LTTE and Tamil Diaspora propaganda that he was right all the way and all the time.

While he is doing all this, he needs to also pay attention to the dissemination of correct information. This is an area that has been woefully inadequate. What is needed is not the spouting of blatant propaganda; rather, the distribution of news and information to counter the huge disinformation campaign mounted worldwide by LTTE sympathizers and other misled elements out there.

He should also know that there are persons, men and women, loyal and law-abiding citizens, whose Mother Tongue is English, who could disseminate information in the idiom of the overseas consumers and create the right image of Sri Lanka. Credibility is everything and this is what needs be built up - not mere duplicitous adulation by opportunists.

Political leaders

Until the last Independence Day I felt like the other 7.35 million 'other' citizens of this country who have been discriminated against and marginalized since independence in 1948.

It isn't a figment of my imagination as the attitudes engendered in this country by successive political leaders discriminated against one community or another, one religion or another, one language or another, and the cumulative effect of these attitudes was the bloody tearing apart of this country along the lines of race or caste, language or religion.

The soil of this beautiful land has been stained with the blood and tears of thousands who perished in riots, pogroms, insurgencies or the just concluded 33-year old war. Enough is enough as we all take hold of President Rajapaksa's vision of a new Sri Lanka rising phoenix-like form the smouldering ashes of confrontation and conflict. He has the courage of his convictions and has stepped forward to heal the hurting Land.

We, the Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors, Malays, Burghers, Veddhas and all the others should link arms and march in lock-step with him to create a land like no other.