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| Thursday, 11 December 2003 |
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Patriotic people must unite to save country - President by Lionel Yodhasinghe Patriotic people from all walks of life should forget their petty differences and unite at least for a short time at this crucial juncture in a bid to save the country, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga said. Addressing a gathering of small time businessmen and university academics at her office in Colombo yesterday, the President said that talks between the President and the Prime Minister on achieving consensus to address the crucial problems including the peace process were not successful. "There are provisions under the Constitution to take even all the ministries and run the government but as a person committed towards democracy I handed over all powers to the UNF Government expecting them to implement their plans. But they abused the powers of some ministries like Defence which threatened the national security. They ignored the LTTE's smuggling of mass scale weapons, child conscription and harassing the innocent people, especially Muslims in the East", she said. She said that she was compelled to take over the Defence Ministry to stop such actions further as she has a duty by people to do so. President Kumaratunga said that the UNF Government makes allegations against her that the taking over of three ministries had stalled the peace talks. But still they have time to work towards it as peace talks are scheduled to be held in mid January 2004. The peace talks was suspended last March and only the UNF's talks of peace continued instead. They have still enough time to negotiate with the concerned parties and begin the talks next January, she said. She said that budget for 2004 has not given any relief neither to the common man nor to the small time entrepreneur. Many incentives have been given to big time foreign and local BOI companies. The local industrialists have to face heavy competition with the multinationals in the face of globalisation today. To rectify this situation, the SLFP in its new manifesto has proposed a package of relief to small time local businessmen, farmers and other small entrepreneurs, she said. Reduction of tax, duty waive and even an amendment of some commercial laws have been proposed in this manifesto to end a helping hand to businessmen. She said that all of us need lasting peace first to gain prosperity, and except a few extremist groups, the bounden duty of others today is to pressure all politicians to commit themselves to unity of irrespective their party politics, work for a common goal to resolve the prevailing social and political quandary. |
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