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by Rashomi Silva

Sri Lanka has a proud history of democratic tradition in the South Asian region and apart from India, Sri Lanka is the only country that has not gone into a situation of toppling a democratically elected government by means of a coup in the post independent period, Port Development and Rehabilitation Minister and the Muslim Congress leader Rauff Hakeem said last Saturday.

The Minster was speaking at the General Annual meeting of the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum held in Colombo.

"In this region we pride ourselves apart from India as the only country that has not plunged into a situation of overthrowing a democratically established government by means of a coup. It has happened in every other country."

He said we witnessed one such attempt in the 60s to overthrow a democratically elected government through a coup but the conspiracy was discovered in time and the matter were sorted out.

"Subsequently, we had serious convulsions within the civil society and that had resulted in all the violence we have seen but the state survived despite the violence. We cannot ignore violence and that is why the peace process was initiated."

Explaining how the ongoing peace process differs from the earlier peace attempts, Hakeem said the government had entered the peace process with the help of a facilitator. With the assistance from the facilitator and the international community the government entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the LTTE and established a permanent Ceasefire Agreement. "All of this is a departure from the earlier attempts of peace making in this country."

The peace process has entered an important phase, he observed. "Every day we see an interesting scenario developing."

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