An open letter to UNP Leader

DR. MICHAEL Fernando, Lecturer, Aesthetic Studies Faculty, University of Peradeniya wrote an open letter to UNP leader and President candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe in response to a letter received by him from the UNP. Here are excerpts from the letter:

"I decided it is better to respond to your letter addressed to me dated October 14, 2005, through the press rather than writing to you privately.

I agree with your statement that the coming Presidential election will be a decisive factor in our future.

But your letter on the election is an attempt to portray a simplistic and false picture of a choice between economic prosperity and peace on the one side and endless conflict, a stagnating economy and deteriorating living standards on the other.

According to you the blame for the country's present crisis should go to the Opposition that formed alliances from time to time and seized power from you.

How can this be true? Was it not the UNP that ruled this country for eight years from 1948 to 1956, five years from 1965 to 1970 and 17 years from 1977 to 1994 and thereafter two years under your leadership, adding up to a total of 32 years out of 57 since the country regained independence?

Your letter states that UNP took steps to bring this country into the 21st century as a developed nation by launching giant development projects since 1977. But Mr. Wickremesinghe, this is not our experience.

Your party dragged this country to the brink of an economic precipice from 1977 to 1994. Our society faced social and cultural ruin as a result. Your description of the UNP's economic policy since 1977 as a massive development programme does not reflect your sincerity.

I urge you to learn from Joseph Estiglitz the disastrous effects of the economic policy pursued by your government.

He is the joint winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics, Chairman of President Clinton's Economic Advisory Council, former World Bank Chief Economist and later Columbia University Professor. (I request you to read his 'Globalisation and its Discontents' published in 2002).

As Prof. Estiglitz points out the country experienced cultural ruination as a result of your party obediently accepting the economic policies approved by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

As he sees it, these institutions formulated such policies not because they intended to destroy or exploit the Third World but because of their faith in outdated economic concepts.

We are aware that the 1977-1994 government in which you were a minister and Prime Minister followed the same outdated economic policies and brought misery upon the ordinary masses by depriving them of relief measures and opportunities to secure employment.

It was the good fortune of the people of this country that your government's defeat stopped the process towards the brink of an economic precipice to which you were dragging the nation by completely opening the Capital Account and removing state controls on foreign investments and as well as sending money overseas.

Your manifesto "People's Agenda" makes it clear that you have still not given up the idea of pushing this country towards economic ruination by completing opening the economy.

As Prof. Estiglitz quite logically explains the economic miracle of East Asian countries was made possible by a strategy of standing up on their own feet and directing their economy by themselves within a capitalist framework.

Your government's defeat in 1994 was not only a case of the people rejecting your shortsighted policies but also saving Sri Lanka from a major disaster at least temporarily.

This country was able to withstand the inflation and economic crisis that spread throughout South Asia in the 1990s owing to the farsighted economic policy that the PA Government followed at the time.

Although you have been repeatedly saying that when you regained power you inherited a bankrupt economy from the PA regime, if you are a sincere and honest politician you should not conceal that the fact that this country was saved from an economic disaster.

Is not the talk about giant development scheme an attempt to deceive the people ? In the last paragraph of your letter you are requesting that we support you and your party to take the country forward. But should the people of this country make you President ?

Whenever this question is raised I feel thoroughly scared. I shiver when I recall the conditions that prevailed in this between 1977-1994.

I experienced the atmosphere that prevailed then not as a young man but as an adult. I will never forget the terrifying events I faced then. The government that came to power in 1977 was baptised with blood and fire. Your government commenced operations by attacking not only political rivals but also innocent Tamils.

In 1980 hundreds and thousands of workers were sacked and driven into the streets with their families for exercising their legitimate trade union rights.

I can still visualise how your party thugs brutally assaulted intellectuals, artistes and other members of the laity and clergy for protesting peacefully against the economic, social and cultural policies of the government in which you were a minister.

The hoodlums led by a minister of your government criminally sabotaged District Development Council elections in Jaffna.

Gangs of thugs who reached Jaffna by a special train from the North Western Province (Wayamba) and set fire to the priceless Jaffna Library after beating innocent Tamil civilians. A local poet described this crime as "murdering the Buddha".

In 1983 some of your cabinet colleagues launched another anti-Tamil operation at the Peradeniya University in May.

All Tamil students and lecturers were assaulted and chased away from the campus grounds. Your party friends in Peradeniya burnt the report of the Commission of Inquiry into this incident as it contained the names of the culprits.

After these sporadic incidents your government launched the full-scale anti-Tamil operation of July 1983.

Since my vocabulary is not rich enough to describe this massacre and since this incident brought the entire nation into international disrepute I need not comment on this any further.

Not stopping there, the UNP made the very same crime - its own creation - an excuse to ban the JVP and imprison other leftwing leaders, thereby paving the way for an unprecedented reign of terror in the country.

The people of this country know very well who caused thugs to attack the residences of judges who gave judgements that displeased your government.

Do you expect us to believe that the members of your government were ignorant of the mass killings, bloodshed and arson that were committed at a time when your Party's leader was the President and you were a minister of his Government ?

Can you prove that you and your party has entered a peaceful democratic path and turned your back towards past misdeeds?

There is no possibility for the citizens of this country as civilised people to join your campaign unless you and your party publicly accept responsibility for the misdeeds committed in 1977-1994 and give a pledge never to resort to such acts in future.

It is a positive development that you were able to achieve a ceasefire in the civil war that your own government engineered. As you yourself have declared, you have taken forward the peace process started by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.

Although it stopped halfway, we wish to thank you for taking the process towards a decisive stage. Yet you cannot escape from the responsibility of turning into an armed rebellion the democratic struggle that the Tamil people waged to win their rights. It is your party's deliberate or reckless policies that caused the outbreak of an insurgency, which developed into powerful and terrifying force.

At the same it was not possible to understand your government's policy of flirting with the LTTE periodically.

After the establishment of Provincial Councils under the Indo-Lanka Accord your government provided financial and military assistance to the LTTE for use against militant groups that had entered the democratic process.

In the light of all these developments, I too have to make some requests to you if I am to consider your request.

Explain your solution to the prevailing crisis, which is a creation of the economic and political policies that you and your party pursued for the past 32 years.

Accept the advice of economists and social scientists who see the different economic policy that the Asian region and other developing and developed nations have adopted as the most suitable for Sri Lanka and warn that an unbridled open economy could lead to an economic disaster.

Drop the policy of subservience to and singing praises of organisations like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that engage in international economic terrorism and instead agree to follow a moderate policy that brought global fame to Sri Lanka.

There's no doubt that the ceasefire and help from a powerful alliance is needed to secure peace in our country. As you have been saying on every political platform it is necessary to secure the cooperation of political parties in the South for this task.

We knew its importance for a long time. But is not what you preach now totally different from what you did by tearing and burning the draft constitution that was introduced in Parliament in 2000 following an agreement between your party and the then Government?

Also did you not conceal from the Executive President your decision to sign the ceasefire agreement with the LTTE leader?

Accept publicly the wrong acts you committed if you do not want your promises to sound hollow. If you fail in this matter can we believe that you are sincere in requesting the need for a common understanding in the South on the present crisis ?

You have committed great sins by destroying the country's libraries and other institutions that symbolise the nation's cultural and intellectual heritage. If you have given up this policy as a first step confess all the crimes that you have committed.

Ask forgiveness from those who were made to suffer (I am sure that you are aware that the present President on behalf of her government and the Sinhala people apologised for the horrible crimes that your government committed).

There are only two choices before us today.

Are we going to entrust this country's future to a person whose hands are stained by human blood and who pursues a policy of pushing the island's economy and culture to the brink of ruin?

Or are we going to hand over the country to the clean hands of a person who constantly fought for economic independence, workers' rights and steadfastly opposed murder and crimes such as the burning of libraries. We have no alternative but make the second choice. It is a choice we will make gladly. This is my response to your letter.