President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday defended the Government’s foreign policy, saying some people forgot the era when permission had to be sought to visit parts of the north. “It is their foreign policy which divided the country,” he told a ceremony at Godagama, Matara to mark the opening of the Galle-Matara stretch of the Southern Expressway.
The President arrived at Godagama from Galle in a Land Rover driven by his son and Parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa. “Some say it is due to the failings of our foreign policy that we are in this situation. But we need to tell them, it is because of their foreign policy there was an airdrop of dhal, a foreign army came to the country and our armed forces were confined to barracks. The country remained divided due to the ceasefire agreement they had entered into,” the President said.
He said some people were scoffing at the progress of the country and trying to undermine the Government’s development programme and yet others were using foreign influence to stop the development.
