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Peace and economy

While Tuesday's meeting between Government officials and the LTTE in the Vanni showed that the peace process was on track, the rise in fuel prices, though marginal, served as a reminder of the major problems the nation must confront on the economic and social front.

The first direct meeting between Government officials and LTTE representatives in the Vanni on Tuesday took the peace process a step further contradicting doubts felt by some that the planned direct talks may be delayed. The first direct talks were originally expected to be held in Thailand sometime in June.

While those talks are still in the pipeline despite some delays over secondary issues, direct talks, at a lower level, between Government officials and LTTE representatives have now already taken place in Sri Lanka itself.

This must be seen as an indication of the possibilities that are inherent in the peace process. The very complexity of the process, with such a multitude of issues - major and minor - to be tackled, some urgently and simultaneously, such as the A9 public transport issue, requires several kinds of interactions to take place between the opposing sides at different levels.

In fact these interactions that have begun extend from the fully official and governmental, both civilian and military, to the semi-official such as government-facilitated visits by business delegations - to the non-governmental, between various social service and civic action groups in the North and South.

Last Monday the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust organised a 'Peace Train' which took interested school groups and peace activists from Colombo to Vavuniya and back. In Vavuniya they were hosted and feted by peace groups in the North in a valuable exercise of civilian reconciliation and confidence-building.

Economic pressures

While the relative calm in the country and developments in the peace process bodes well for economic stability and growth in the future, the current economic predicament continues to bring immense pressure to bear on the general population.

Pre-occupied as it must necessarily be with the macro-economic outlook and progress, the Government also has to devote some attention to immediate problems arising from worsening economic pressures.

Last week's price rise in the cost of fuel, though small, is but part of a general trend of increases in prices of most essential items.

The Sri Lankan people, especially the poor, have, by now, enough experience of the vagaries of the capitalist market economy to understand the inevitability of such economic turbulence. At the same time, however, they must bear the burden.

Along with its focus on the peace process and on long term economic development, the Government has the challenge to work equally hard in the area of social welfare in order that the vast numbers of Sri Lankan poor are cushioned as far as is possible from the most severe social effects of these immediate economic problems. Even as they are fine-tuned, existing socio-economic support infrastructure need to be well-resourced in order that the vast numbers of under-privileged continue to benefit from them even in the face of economic travails.

Otherwise, all long term plans for stability and prosperity may get sidetracked by more immediate tensions arising from social suffering of the worst kind.

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