Move bravely into the future

AT a time when there is understandable concern among many over the future of Sri Lanka, the pronouncement by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga that the Government is prepared to take stern and firm action against those elements which may try to sabotage the P-TOMS initiative, is likely to have a profoundly reassuring impact on the public.

It is words such as these that the people of this country who have been through a lot, in terms of turmoil and suffering, are longing to hear from governmental leaders.

What makes this pronouncement doubly significant is that it was also impressed on the Armed Forces Chiefs and the IGP.

The Armed Forces and the Police are duty-bound to back the State and since the P-TOMS agreement has now been declared to be legal by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, it would be a perfectly legitimate exercise for the law-enforcers to ensure that the P-TOMS is implemented without a hitch.

In other words, the law-enforcers should guard against any harm befalling the P-TOMS, which is, rightly, seen as a springboard for the resumption of the stalled peace process.

This spirit of courage in President Kumaratunga deserves commendation because for far too long, Lankan political leaders have shown weak resolve in the face of extremist opposition to particularly efforts at resolving the ethnic conflict justly by peaceful means.

This is, indeed, a decisive moment in the post-independence history of Sri Lanka. The country has traversed the path of war and destruction for over 20 years and all that it has reaped is sorrow and economic impoverishment.

Today as never before, we are savouring the timeless wisdom in the words that, "hatred never ceases by hatred", but by compassion and love.

We are also compelled to admit as fully valid the holy injunction that one must love one's neighbour as oneself if true peace and harmony is to be experienced on earth.

It could be said that the country is stumbling on these nuggets of perennial wisdom through a process of trial and error.

These truths are part of Sri Lanka's spiritual heritage', of course, but many have chosen to ignore them on account of the increasing importance mankind has been attaching to material acquisitions and the things of the flesh, over the years.

In Sri Lanka, a conflict has been raging over the decades on account of the inability of its principal communities to share the national cake on an equitable basis.

Unfortunately, some in the body-politic have been seeking to exercise a stranglehold over the resources and assets of the State to the exclusion of the rest and this selfish, acquisitive instinct helped plunge the country into war.

It is these hegemonic forces which are today resisting the working out of an equitable solution to our conflict. Needless to say, these forces must be defeated because with them around, a negotiated solution to our conflict would always be denounced as "foul".

These hardline elements are, of course, fully entitled to demonstrate their dissent but it must be done in a democratic manner. The State cannot allow these forces to take the law into their own hands and this is the reason why the President's words are welcome.