Mahinda Rajapaksa, Give Peace A Chance !
Dr Ratna Bala
An Appeal to Honourable MP Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa, Give peace a chance and help people live with dignity and respect.
Few years ago in the midst of the war I have made an appeal to you on behalf of tamil Diaspora to have courage and vision to move the country forward. I have humbly requested you to do the right things to unite the people by making them all feel they are proud Sri Lankan citizens. For some reason by the end of war you choose the wrong path, very wrong path to engulf the nation in corruption and destroy the harmony and unity of Sri Lankan people belong to different ethnic culture and history. Although repeatedly promised, couldn’t demonstrate your genuine commitment to resolve ethnic problem. 13A plus, APRC report and LLRC report all went down the drain silently. You have paved the way for international players to achieve their objective and exploit our nation. Although you have taken a long journey in the wrong direction still it’s not late for you to acknowledge your mistakes and co-operate with the new government to help Sri Lankan people find their country in peace and live their lives with Buddhist values of compassion and coexistence with respect, dignity and equality. Here I reproduce my appeal as it is still very relevant at this juncture.
His Excellency Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa,
Thank you for this opportunity. I am speaking on behalf of certain sections of the Tamil Diaspora. This obviously would not reflect the opinions of entire tamil Diaspora community
Mr. President we do not have any reason not to believe that you and your government have every intention and motivation to establish conditions conducive to preservation, expression and development of ethnic identity of minorities in Sri Lanka and treat every citizen as equals regardless of their religion language and culture. We also don’t under estimate the enormous pressure on your shoulders and the hard work lies ahead to find a settlement to this ethnic conflict.
Since independence several proposals have been put forward to resolve the difference between ethnic communities. So far they have failed to produce any constructive results.
We are not experts on settling ethnic conflicts. They say the devil is the detail and we are not aware of every detail of the issues involved. Best ways of settling these issues with the approval of majority of people definitely need every possible help of the experts. We believe you will get all the help available in the world to solve this conflict without much delay.
We could say that Sri Lankan government shifting very hesitantly from politics of control to politics of recognition of its ethnic minorities. Unless this transformation takes place soon with substantial devolution of powers, maintaining unity with all its diversity and having peace will remain a distant illusion.
