GL alleges blatant abuse of state machinery for election purposes

By Rathindra Kuruwita

None of the actions and initiatives of the Ranil Wickremesinghe government is sincere and the state machinery is being blatantly misused for election purposes, MP Prof G.L Peiris said on Thursday.He told the Sunday Island that in recent months the government has established an independent Commission for Truth, Unity and Reconciliation and Community Advisory Committees (CAC).

“Usually, governments make these big gestures in the first 100 days of being elected. This is the honeymoon period of the government and there is ample time for the administration to see these initiatives through. However, the current administration is launching new grand initiatives left, right and centre in the last 100 days. It is obvious that this is an attempt to mislead people,” he said.

Prof Peiris said that the government is attempting to win various ethnic vote blocs by giving concessions. Recently the government declared it will increase the daily wage of estate workers to Rs.1,700, however within 24 hours the planters threatened to take the government to court, stating that they were not consulted before taking this decision.

“Just like that, the discussion on Truth, Unity and Reconciliation is to lure the voters from the north and east. On the other hand, the government has not held local or provincial council elections. Who will the government discuss truth and reconciliation with? This should be done with the representatives of the people.

“The provincial council election has not been held for around six years and the local council election was to be held last year. When the government tried to postpone local government elections, we went to court. The court ordered the government to release the funds that had already been earmarked from the budget. However, the government even ignored court orders,” he said.

The MP said that the government has held several meetings with political party representatives about reconciliation and finding a political solution to the problems in the north and east. These meetings yielded no results.

In 2010, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was appointed to investigate the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the ceasefire agreement made operational on February 27, 2002, the lessons that should be learnt from those events and the institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities.

This was followed by the Maxwell Paranagama and Udalagama Commission.

“If anything, we must study these commission reports, identify the gaps and clearly state how we should address these,” he said.

Meanwhile the CAC, appointed to oversee the Urumaya Land Ownership Programme, the Urban Home Ownership Programme, the “Kandukara Dasakaya” Development Programme, the Agriculture Modernization Programme and the Rice Distribution Programme, is most likely to be manned by Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and United National Party (UNP) activists, he said.

“Some of them can even be people who had given nominations for the local government elections. Each CAC has been allocated 10 million rupees. Key decisions of the CAC will be taken by the provincial governors who are directly appointed by the president. So it is evident that these will be highly politicized structures,” he said.