From law and order to social peace

Many a well-intentioned citizen and reader would have been heartened on seeing our front-page picture yesterday of some of our Tamil Nadu based displaced persons returning to Sri Lanka and being received warmly by representatives of the state. The latter took the form of no less a person than Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, among others.

It is our hope that this process of our displaced returning to their motherland would gather pace in the days, weeks and months ahead. For, concrete evidence that the displaced are coming back voluntarily and happily in huge numbers would be a sure sign that normalcy is fast being restored in this country. And establishing normalcy in the full sense of the term is of utmost importance because, as we said yesterday in this commentary, that all-important transition needs to be made from law and order to peace.

There is a crucial distinction here. Law and order is of paramount importance and a number one priority, but law and order is not entirely synonymous with social peace and harmony. Durable law and order is an essential condition for fostering peace, but the latter concept covers law and order and much more. Law and order is holding in Sri Lanka, despite some occasional setbacks, but peace in the fullest sense of the term is in the process of being established and this effort needs to be speeded-up in the days ahead.

Social peace is a complex, multifaceted process and this is why fostering it would not prove to be as easy as restoring law and order. Law and order could be brought into being by the state through the latter using its legitimate coercive capability to compel the public to adhere to the Rule of Law. The state anywhere is obliged to do this and it should not come as a surprise if some compulsion is used in this direction. But fostering peace is a matter of uniting the people of a country into a cohesive collectivity on the basis of brotherhood and understanding and this is a long-drawn, complex and uphill task.

Nevertheless, it must be undertaken and persisted with and one could be glad that the necessary institutional mechanisms for the task are fast being put in place by the Sri Lankan state. For instance, the state has launched a national action plan for fostering human rights and this is a step in the right direction. Our gains could be expected to increase with the state taking steps to raise awareness internationally on this human rights action plan. It is also encouraging to learn that an office has been set-up under the purview of the Presidential Advisor on Reconciliation to step-up the reconciliation process in the country.

All these and more measures are in addition to the institutional set-up already in place to bring about normalcy and peace. We could say that it is only when a durable peace is established that complete normalcy would be brought into being. We believe it is necessary to draw attention to the considerable gains being made by the state in establishing a Trilingual Sri Lanka and the good work already being done by the Ministry of National Languages and Integration under Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara. We had occasion to highlight the good being achieved by the Trilingual Sri Lanka project, through a letter we published in our Op-Ed page yesterday, which, among other things, drew attention to the considerable work being put in, in this direction by Presidential Advisor Sunimal Fernando.

Thus, a sizeable amount of work is certainly being put in to make that all important transition from law-and-order to peace and it is important that the achievements of the state in the direction of peace are highlighted. We call on the state to persist in this endeavour while resolving law and order issues that may crop-up because, as pointed out by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, anti-Lanka moves are continuing in some quarters. For instance, efforts are continuing to defame the image of our Security Forces and to arraign Sri Lanka on nebulous human rights charges in the 'councils of the world'. Efforts to trigger internal unrest are also not dying out. These anti-Lanka tendencies must be defused, even while proceeding on the road of reconciliation.