Weeratunga gets passionate about what sets President Rajapaksa apart from other leaders

By Marisa Wikramanayake
Lalith Weeratunga, longstanding civil servant and Secretary to the country’s Chief Executive, yesterday turned passionate at a public forum when explaining what set President Mahinda Rajapaksa apart from other leaders.
“President Mahinda Rajapaksa is decisive, transparent and always prioritises people’s interest and consults the public,” Weeratunga said in his comments at the concluding panel discussion of the first-ever synchronised forum for business and professional leaders in four hotels in the city.
The Secretary to the President also recalled four different agreements and treaties that had been decided upon in the past in secret without the public’s knowledge or approval and sometimes without presidential approval as well.
“But President Rajapaksa has always made sure that the people know what he plans to do,” he said. “That is the way you do things in a democracy. In fact, I use the archives a lot and I often send people to find certain things for me and I have found four instances of when there were decisions made on which the public were not consulted, all during the regimes of previous governments.”
The four occasions he listed were the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, the Ceasefire Agreement signed in 2002, the Interim Self-Governing Authority or ISGA that was proposed in October 2003, which would have given the LTTE the ability to self-govern a separatist state and the P-TOMS agreement signed after the 2004 tsunami.
The Secretary to the President, referring to President Rajapaksa’s speech during the Momentum forum where he said he would do as he said he would and that he would always consult the public on what he planned to do, stated that it meant there was no need to fear that the public would not be consulted on any major decisions and that due process was being followed.
In response to the panel discussion moderator’s question about what set President Rajapaksa apart from other previous leaders, Weeratunga said: “President Rajapaksa is decisive. Whenever he has to make a decision, he makes it. Previous governments and leaders, I cannot name them, but I can tell you that he is more decisive than they were.”
Momentum was organised by the Professionals for a Stable Sri Lanka as the first synchronised forum in Asia held across four venues – the Galadari Hotel, the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel and Hilton Colombo Residence – and had an audience of over 2,000 delegates from the business community and public and private sector who had a chance to debate and discuss the way forward with a focus on peace, political stability and continuity in development.