APC must broaden devolution - LSSP

COLOMBO: The L.S.S.P. welcomed the convening of the all party conference as a forward step to a political solution to the crisis that has seized the Sri Lankan State for the last 30 years.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s publicised policy positions made known to the country at the time of his elections expressed his commitment to take the country forward to a political solution acceptable to the majority of the people.

The APC however, has had its drawbacks. Its inability to create a politically congenial atmosphere as could draw into its ambit. Tamil Parties in Parliament has converted it to a forum for southern political debate in which parties have so far shown no readiness to move to positions of consensus.

This is despite the undeniable fact that in the last three decades the major political parties have moved to and accepted the political principal and concept of devolution of political power aimed that investing the territorial periphery with sufficient governmental and administrative power as would give to the periphery a degree of self-determination within a united Sri Lanka.

This was the perspective accepted by the APC of 1984 where the LSSP itself proposed the devolution of political power as a breakthrough to the interminable debate between those who were struck in the controversies involving the federal and unitary concepts of the late 19th century.