President Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday stressed that the country will not have a future if it does not focus on security.
“None of the Armed Forces want to go to war or to fight anywhere. You are living in a different world from what we were born. When we were born, there was no tussle for Indian Ocean and at one stage no one wanted it. Today it is not so,” the President stressed.
Addressing the General Convocation of the Kotelawala Defence University yesterday evening President Wickremesinghe said that the security skills and strategic skills should be utilised, if the country wants to survive.
“We are looking at an economy which is highly competitive and export oriented and we can’t have an export oriented industry unless we have freedom of navigation”
The President was of the view that the future of the country depends on its ability to get goods across.
He elaborated how economy collapsed in 2021 when people could not move and goods could not be transported either by land or sea. He said that the total economies of the world broke down “Even today some of the economies in the world are recovering,”he said.
“The environment we are in, is not controlled by us and action of other people will impact on us in Sri Lanka,” he said.
He said that country should have to use its political, diplomatic and military skills to ensure that it right of navigation by sea or air is not interrupted by any way.
He said that all these skills were not required in the 70s most of people did not focus on India Ocean.The President said that the Kotelawala Defence University should focus on improving the strategic studies.
He said that he has already given instruction to Legal Draftsman to redraft a new law to establish a new institute for Strategic Studies. He said that discussion are going on with the Foreign Minister for the restructure of Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute.
He said that there will be four institutes which also focus on conducting strategic studies in the country.President Wickremesinghe said that he had asked the Finance Ministry and the Defence Ministry to look at starting another campus of the KDU mainly for civil subjects to be started in Kurunegala, the constituency represented by former Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawala in 1931.
The people of Kurunegala should get the benefits and I have already asked the Treasury to allocate money to upgrade the hospital in Kurunegala into teaching hospital status.
He added that the middle level officers will also receive post graduate education either through the KDU and the National Defence College.
One of the objectives of a Defence University is to ensure that the top leadership and the middle leadership are all educated and their level of leadership is increased.
He said that he met President of Rwanda last Monday on the sidelines of COP27 meeting held in Egypt. “The Rwandan President commended the services of KDU for giving training to their cadets,”he said.
“The KDU has made a mark on our life.I remember in 1981 when former Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawala in his last days of life handing over his Estate to the university,” he said.
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