Parties call for better balancing act in 2009 from Govt

By Uditha Jayasinghe and Gagani Weerakoon
With the dawn of the New Year, political parties expressed the desire for the government to concentrate on the economic front and balance it with the war effort.

The UNP called for the people to fight the tides of corruption and join them in convincing the government to balance the war effort with the economic crisis insisting that winning the war cannot solve the economic problems that the people are grappling with.

Speaking to The Bottom Line UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake insisted that the government must stop selling the war as it has been consistently doing for the past few years and concentrate of ending it in 2009. He cautioned that the country would not be able to deal with the dual challenges of fighting a war and maintaining economic growth, especially in the face of the global recession.

“We are not undermining the victories that have been achieved against the LTTE. Rather what we are stressing is that economic stability is essential to maintain these victories and ensure that they are not relinquished to a fresh spate of violence,” he said.

Meanwhile the JVP insisted that they want the government to concentrate solely on military operations without focusing on power devolution.

JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva said the year 2009 will be the year of ‘struggle’ to achieve new victories in favour of the general public.

 “The government is definitely going for power devolution and we will not let that happen at any cost. The 2009 will be the year against devolving power. It should be the year to ensure democracy which is now being diluted,” he added.

 Silva also noted that government should stop misusing military operations and victories achieved by military forces by sacrificing their lives.

 “Now the government is gaining political advantages under the pretext of war abut has let the economy to sink. It has failed in every aspect by not being focused on anything properly. The government should stop corruption and misusing public funds in the name of war,” he said. He also said that JVP is hoping to introduce a new economic policy in 2009 and will work towards mobilising people towards that endeavour.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) urged the government to establish a stable environment in 2009 as it would have to face several elections and emphasised on the need to implement the 17th Amendment to ensure free and fair elections. SLMC Secretary General Hassan Ali noted that for the minorities the main focus is the successful completion of All Party Representatives Committee (APRC) so that a political solution would finally be presented by the government.

“These are the two important steps that we want to see the government focused on in 2009. Even though they insist that the east has been “liberated” we have seen that is not true for the Muslim people. To date we have lost over 65000 acres of land. This is not an indicative of a “free” east. Therefore we urge the government to seek a political solution that would see the end to the conflict because we do not believe that a military solution will solve this issue permanently.”

For the JHU the main concern is that the conflict is seen to an end without any “distractions.” Terming the economy as being “second rung” to the conflict JHU Theoretician Champika Ranawaka was adamant that the demilitarisation of the North should be the core of the government policy in 2009. Terming the policy as the three Ds he noted that demilitarisation should be followed by democratisation and development.

“The government should not go for half baked measures such as bailing out failed financial institutions but should focus on a long term green economy. Fossil fuel based development is not sustainable in the long term. So far the there has been little interest from the government in this regard and we earnestly hope that this will change.”

TNA MPs were not available for comment.