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Thursday, 23 February 2012

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New ground-breaking initiative in North

For many in this country today, February has turned out to be the 'cruelest' month of the year. This is on account of the fact that it was on February 22, 2002, that the controversial Ceasefire Agreement was signed and sealed between the then UNP-led administration and the LTTE leadership. We need hardly labour the point that the CFA in its implementation left very much to be desired and proved a perilously botched experiment in peace-making.

Much has been said and written about the CFA and it is all too obvious that it was a huge disappointment. The LLRC report gives what could be considered a highly authoritative evaluation of the process which went into the making of the CFA and what is most obvious about it is that the document was brought out in demented haste. It was a classic instance of haste making waste and the inference is inescapable that the parties to the CFA in the South were dictated to by the principal figures of the North and their foreign backers.

The Southern architects of the 'accord' apparently gave the impression that they were 'led by their noses.'

Be that as it may, we did not have any peace whatsoever in the months following the signing of the CFA, for which purpose the then Prime Minister was not in a position to visit the North. The 'ground situation' was so fraught with risks that even briefly visiting the North at that time was out of the question. The 'peace' which was to have been achieved was clearly a one-sided affair.

The present stands in stark contrast to those highly uncertain times. Today it is possible for the Head of State of this country and other state functionaries and notables to fearlessly visit the North-East because a great degree of stability has been achieved in the region. The security situation, in other words, has changed tremendously for the better and normalcy has been achieved a great deal. All this and more was made possible by the state's momentous military triumph over the LTTE of May 2009.

But winning in the battlefield is one thing and establishing durable social peace and stability another.

It is the latter challenge to which the state must address itself now and prove more than capable of handling. This is not only a question of ushering material prosperity in the North but also of winning hearts and minds and the latter enterprise is no easy challenge.

The right-thinking of this country could be glad that the state is more sensitive than ever to the need to build and sustain communal harmony. There is a growing awareness among governing circles in particular that the sensitivities of our communities need to be respected. These positives must be firmly built on because, as we have time and again pointed out, there could be no development without nation-building and communal amity is the basis of nation-building.

However, there is no denying that socio-economic development should go hand in hand with this process of establishing and consolidating communal amity. From this point of view it is very commendable of the state to initiate development ventures in the North in collaboration with UN agencies, INGOs and other relevant sectors. As we indicated in our lead story on page one yesterday, these sections have launched arrangements to put into effect what is referred to as a joint Action Plan of Assistance for the Northern Province this year.

This is a highly pragmatic and down to earth approach to development, which we hope, would be thoroughly implemented. Apparently, the initiative would aim at meeting most of the basic needs of the Northern people. Meeting these needs on an equitable basis is one of the most effective ways of sealing the stability that has been achieved in the province.

The CFA was an abysmal failure also because it went over the heads of the ordinary people and was signed between two sets of leaders who were generally divorced from the citizenry. Equitable development would prove a sound catalyst to the consolidation of social stability and involve the people in peace-building.

War and peace:  ‘the aviation perspective’

On July 27, 2011, the flight bringing first aid to famine stricken Somalia landed in Mogadishu. It carried 10 tonnes of plumpy nuts enough to offer 3,500 children suffering from starvation a respite from death. According to the Economist, famine is declared when 30 percent of the children are actually malnourished,

Full Story

Socio-economic Scene

How traditional rice survives

According to the Mahavamsa, which tends to be reticent on the subject of food, the legendary King Vijaya ate rice given to him by the Yakkhini Kuveni and cooked by his followers. It has been the staple diet of the people of this island for all our recorded history and earlier. Rice seems first to have been cultivated in the Yangtze valley of China about 10,000 years ago.

Full Story

D. R. Wijewardene’s 126th birth anniversary:

Great patriot who rendered yeoman service for Independence

The secret of D. R. Wijewardene as a powerful newspaper proprietor was due to his high degree of discipline, dedication, devotion, commitment combined with loftiness of his character and versatility of his intellect. Further, no field of human endeavour was left untouched by the swaying amplitude of his imagination, encompassing sweep of his thought, felicity of his words and the indefatigable zeal of his actions. No wonder, he left an indelible impression in most of what he touched with rare dynamism and exemplary zeal,

Full Story

 

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