Magnificent discharge of Presidential prerogatives
A. R. M. T. B. Ratnayake
It is three decades since we were unexpectedly forced to accept the
novel role of presidential rule and during that space of time, we have
seen four past Presidents who tried on their own way to hammer out an
approach to the problem of the LTTE terror; the most urgent job faced by
them. Their approaches neither bolstered national interest nor yielded
tangible success as that of what we see today.
When President Jayewardene, the architect and the first incumbent of
the office of presidency, after a long journey of negotiations with the
LTTE, arbitrarily signed a Peace Accord with India and invited an Indian
Peace Keeping Force to handle the LTTE menace, our people fluctuated
between hope and despair, up and down, while some of the militants on
this side resorted even to destroy our national assets; their usual form
of decent.
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President Mahinda Rajapaksa |
President Premadasa sent away the IPKF before they could accomplish
the task that was so laboriously entrusted to them and befriended with
the LTTE with supplies of arms, money and so on. The LTTE in turn became
unmanageably strong militarily and also with the blessing of the merger
of the Northern and Eastern Provinces by his predecessor. President
Premadasa was killed by the same murderers that he helped.
President Wijetunga had little time to do anything but he boldly
labelled the LTTE as terrorists, contrary to his predecessors who
hesitated to call them so.
Thus our historians are left with only stories of failures to be
recorded in the space of the past thirty years. Of course, they have
figures of major resources allocated to such exercises, and investments
made in the procurement of arms and technological means to combat
terrorism.
They will also be no little surprised to learn of the number of
people killed and the national assets destroyed by the terrorists during
this period. Although President Chandrika Bandaranaike had the best
will, given the increasing complexity of the issue she was not able to
abandon the traditional approach and design a way out. Thus did the
problem pass onto her successor.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa assumed the office of Presidency, at a
moment when the country was in dire need of a competent leadership, a
leader who could alone supply the vitalizing force to stir the people in
to action, and to design an effective approach to salvage the nation
from the deadly terrorists. He has rightly accepted that the President
alone is ultimately accountable for the lives of all men and all women
of this country, born and unborn, as their ultimate custodian.
When an issue is too important for his Cabinet members or someone
else in authority to handle, it usually goes to the President for a
decision. But what happens in Sri Lanka is different. Even if a simple
matter like an application for transfer is not favourably considered,
the affected party’s next step is to appeal to the President.
Although the President may so design his office and so delegate his
authority as to keep such matters away from him, in the society any
dissatisfaction is directed towards the President.
Further, a nation is judged as good or bad primarily through the
availability of morally and otherwise competent leadership.
The President is the final backdrop of domestic tranquillity and
principal guardian of national security and prosperity. When President
Rajapaksa assumed office upon taking and subscribing the Oath, in
accordance with the Constitution, he did it with the firm determination
to uphold and defend the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka as a
unitary state.
It was the top priority of the President. He has discharged his
presidential prerogatives with absolute effectiveness and has ultimately
fulfilled his pledge. Now we have a country where every citizen can feel
his traditional warmth of brotherhood.
President Rajapaksa was faced with so many complex issues, where the
solutions were remote, so dependent on the undependable and so tinged
with political disaster. No one else faced such multiple
responsibilities in so many different and conflicting areas.
For every course he examined, there was opposition, as usual, from
the other camp. Nevertheless, he surrounded himself with men who
possessed the capacity to help him to evolve a strategy to meet the
challenges before him and selected the path that he thought was the most
effective.
He first secured a comfortable lead in Parliament, attracting large
fractions of members from the opposition, it is indeed an astonishingly
wonderful ability possessed by the President. No President determined to
tackle the most crying issue before the nation could do otherwise than
accommodating all those needed to maintain a majority in the
legislature.
The measure was indeed not perfect but the President knew that the
alternatives would surely be disastrous. These partners therefore had to
be rewarded with patronage to be sure that he would not be deprived of a
stable government to fulfil his pledges to the people.
He was convinced that the approaches of his predecessors were crude
and inadequate although they may have tried them with the best of will.
They drew the vehicle just the same way as millions of people drive
vehicles without having the faintest idea of how an internal combustion
engine works.
Today we are, at last, able to see unprecedented success, because,
the President designed his strategy in consultation with those that knew
the working of the engine well. If anything went wrong he had able and
experienced mechanics to whom he could hand the problem over and get the
defect corrected.
Unfortunately when the President enlisted the support of his
resourceful brother, who had excellent knowledge of how a military
engine worked, those in the other political camp hastened to call it a
brothers’ company. Of course, now they may be feeling sorry about their
foolish and unfounded utterances, particularly with regard to a matter
of national importance.
Our brave soldiers successfully carried out the mission that was
handed over to them by the President, their Commander-in-Chief. Whether
in a city in the South or on a land-mined road or a terrorist infected
jungle in the North, members of our forces had been the front-line
soldier in defense of the nation.
What President Rajapaksa was faced with was a problem that looked
un-surmountable even in the eyes of experts of conflict solution. Yet
the hopes pinned on him by the people were enormous.
It is indeed the result of his ability to direct his prerogatives in
the correct direction, and to structure his Government machine
accordingly. These measures may or may not be ideal in peace. In war the
first essential is planning ahead.
Even his strongest opponents now admit it in private that he has done
the job extremely well and has secured for us a country in which we can
move freely and without risk and one that everyone can call his or hers. |
