Confronting international challenges

Next to enabling the local public to meet an anticipated rise in living costs, the government confronts the urgent challenge of putting the record straight further on the nebulous allegations stemming from the Darusman report and of implementing continuously the principal recommendations of the LLRC report. Currently debated UNHRC-linked issues underscore the importance of these tasks.

The state has been addressing these challenges over the past few months but the urgency of making further palpable and concrete progress on these questions should be beginning to impress itself on the state, now that it is clear that Sri Lanka would be figuring at the UNHRC sessions, beginning February 27. Accordingly, it would be in the fitness of things if Sri Lanka persists strongly on the road of reconciliation and makes it abundantly clear that the LLRC recommendations are being made the bedrock of national unity.

Needless to say, the best debating team from Sri Lanka would need to be in Geneva to not only further expose the groundless nature of the plethora of 'credible allegations' put forward by sections of the West but to also expose the double standards and connected anomalies the critics of Sri Lanka have been consistently adopting in this context. The baseless nature of the case against Sri Lanka must be decisively and conclusively proved. The critics of Sri Lanka need to be resoundingly rebuffed and this exercise must be carried out with expert precision.

Meanwhile, the process of winning support for Sri Lanka worldwide must continue and very vibrantly so. As we have time and again pointed out, this is a moment Third World organizations, such as, the Non-aligned Movement must seize. Here is a case of a founding member of NAM and a very important Third World country being pressurized needlessly by some sections of the international community, whose track records as regards issues, such as, human rights protection would not stand up to scrutiny at all, and its allies are yet to take up its case strongly in the 'Councils of the World.'

This should not be the case and it is up to the Lankan state to continue to galvanize Third World support in its favour.

External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris has figured prominently in strengthening Sri Lanka's ties with the states of the African continent and this is the right way to go. More efforts in the direction of consolidating international support for Sri Lanka are desirable and this exercise must be proceeded with without a break. In fact, the time could not be more opportune for Third World organizations, such as NAM, to make their presence felt on the world stage once again. For, the global economic balance has moved decisively in favour of the Eastern hemisphere and the voice of the developing world could in no way be ignored.

Besides, it is open to question whether the West has the required economic clout to back its seeming political power.

The Eurozone crisis, for instance, is a sure indication that the West is in one of its worst moments, materially speaking, since the outbreak of the Great Recession of the thirties of the century past. Now is the time the developing world could pull its weight behind the cause of International Law and justice and it should lose no time in doing so.

Sri Lanka and her allies need to be clear about the attempt by sections of the West to subject her to discriminatory treatment. The state enjoys the sovereign right of defending herself against internal aggression and this must be continually highlighted. Whereas allies of the West are being allowed to exercise this right unchecked, against perceived terror, Sri Lanka's legitimate use of this right is being frowned upon.

Clearly, the shifting global power balance must be used judiciously by Sri Lanka. It must be used to sustain the tenets of International Law very strongly and thereby check the tendency for the mighty of the world to steadily undermine the foundations of global justice.