An impetus for unity

SIX months after the tsunami, the focus is firmly on the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the affected districts. Unfortunately, many people in the South seem to have conveniently forgotten the fact that Northern and Eastern districts also suffered heavily.

The people living in these regions are Sri Lankans, our own brethren and the Government has a duty to ensure their welfare, even though some of them are in LTTE-controlled areas.

This is why a Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS) was needed to involve the LTTE in tsunami reconstruction.

The P-TOMS was unnecessarily mired in controversy, mainly as a result of agitations and propaganda by extremist elements who had very little idea of its contents in the first place.

Elsewhere on these pages, we carry a Presidential Secretariat media release which clarifies most of these misconceptions. Now there are signs that many pessimists are seeing the P-TOMS in a positive light.

Indeed, the dark clouds which hovered around the P-TOMS immediately after its signing are beginning to move away.

A number of parties including the National Unity Alliance (NUA) and the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) which earlier threatened to leave the Government have decided to stay in the coalition.

It would not be incorrect to say that support for P-TOMS is growing. This is an ideal 'birthday gift' to President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who took a brave decision to go ahead with the P-TOMS despite vociferous protests by extremist elements.

As President Kumaratunga has repeatedly pointed out, the P-TOMS could pave the way for reviving the peace process, which will ultimately benefit all communities.

No one in his right senses would wish to see another war. None of those who protest against the P-TOMS in the streets of Colombo is likely to venture to the North-East if another war begins.

It will be another massacre of the innocents - the sons and daughters of simple villagers in the hinterland will be the victims.

This is why we must look past the P-TOMS at the wider picture. As the President pointed out to Muslim Parliamentarians recently, they must consider the P-TOMS in its totality and the gains that may be made by the Muslim community as a whole through full participation in it. This applies equally well to the other communities.

Communal amity is the need of the hour. The tsunami affected all communities equally.

We must rise from the devastation caused by the tsunami as one people, one nation. Divisive politics and communal sentiments will not help us achieve that aim.

If we exclude the Tamil community in the LTTE-controlled areas from the reconstruction process, they will have every reason to believe that the Government and Southerners do not want to help them.

That will sow the seeds of separation in their minds. That is the last thing that any right thinking citizen wants to happen. In this context, the P-TOMS would lead to unity, rather than division.