2006, hive of activities

2006 heralded a novel era under a new leadership and administration in Sri Lanka. Top political leadership was transferred from the hands of city politicians to the village, and President Mahinda Rajapaksa, soon after his swearing-in ceremony, presented a new budget to support his political and development action plan, Mahinda Chintana which focused on peace and development.

Are allocation of funds was made to accelerate the manufacture based economy while giving concessions to local industries and farmer community. Under the new economic plan, low interest rate loan schemes to small and medium entrepreneurs and fertilizer subsidy to farmers are a few among them.

The new government considered poverty as a prolonged and major issue, and the poverty alleviation program, Samurdi was enhanced with new programs and political vigour to address the abject poverty in the rural and urban areas.

Malnutrition among expecting mothers and school children were also given priority, and steps were taken to provide every needy mother with a bag of nutritional, and students of selected schools too were provided with mid-day meal and fresh milk under this program.

Political consensus among different political parties was considered vital in finding a lasting peace to the country, and in an effort to resolve the National conflict, the President invited all political parties to sit together and discuss the national issue in broader angle.

As a result of the discussions held by the All Party Conference (APC), politicians understood the need of consensus among the parties, and despite their petty difference, they changed themselves, and as a result, first time in the political history in this country, the main two rival parties, Sri Lanka Freedom Party and United National Party built political consensus and entered a Memorandum of Understanding in order to find a solution to the national issue.

State corruption was also a national tragedy continued for years, and allegations were levelled against previous top politicians and their close officials. Among them, the irregularities that believed to be taken place in certain arms procurement had become controversial. In 2006, the government appointed special Commissions to probe into such malpractices, and the proceeding are still going on in this regard to bring the culprit to book.

In the same time, to prevent such corruption further under this government, a state-owned Company was set up to deal with arms procurement, saving millions of rupees. This money was earlier gone to private arms traders who made billions of rupees.

The Defence Ministry took new initiative first time in the history to manufacture certain guns, fast sea craft and even expensive unmanned aerial vehicles. This dawned a new era of local manufacturing giving pride of place to the skills and talents of local engineers.

Peace was top on agenda under the Mahinda Chintana and the Government through Norwegian peace brokers convinced the LTTE to come to the negotiation table, and as a result, the Government peace delegation and the LTTE met twice in Geneva. Though the two parties were unable to come to a development stage, the Government initiative to beak the deadlock and take the LTTE was considered a great achievement.

While politicians were talking peace, the Government did not take action to shrink the morale of the security forces, as it was the order of the day in the past. Orders were given to security forces to retaliate in self-defence, combat weapon smuggling, prevent bringing LTTE military installations forward the defence line. The Navy destroyed more than 10 LTTE vessels carrying illegal arms during last year, and these actions forced the LYYE to come to negotiation table.

The LTTE used Sampur as their launching pad to attack Trincomalee Naval base and he harbour for a long time, and for the strategic geographical value of Sampur, the Security forces had to repulse the Tigers from Sampur, which could be considered as one of the major military victory of the forces against the LTTE.

Though the security forces had to use military power to repulse the Tigers from Mavil Aru, the Security forces launched the operation in order to save the paddy lands of over 15,000 people.

In the development arena, the launch of the construction of the proposed Weerawila airport is noteworthy as it would be the first airport to be constructed in the province. It is again significant because, it would be the second international airport in the country, and after the completion of its work by 2009, the long felt need of a second airport would be fulfilled, the incoming aircraft had to be diverted to India in an emergency earlier.

Maganeguma and Gamaneguma, both in arm in arm focused attention to develop the road network throughout the country to facilitate better transport sector for the masses. New roads are being under construction under this program and allocations were made to repair the other roads.

Under Gamaneguma, various community development projects have been identified to uplift the living conditions of people living in he periphery.

After the LTTE started mass scale killing of innocent people and attacks on civilian villages, the Government wanted a competent organization to attend to the needs of such victims and take immediate action to put the day to day life back on tracks. To fulfil this need, the Government launched Jatika Saviya program to help the needy people in the North and the East.

This started soon after the LTTE claymore attack on a civilian bus in Kabethigollewa this year. People in Jaffna and Batticoloa are also equally be benefited under the various provisions of Jatika Saviya.

Amidst all these development activities, continuing Tsunami reconstruction was also not forgotten. According to reports, around 90 percent of the reconstruction work have been completed, and majority of victims, if there is no practical problem, have been provided with decent houses during the last two years.

International community is a vital organ of the ongoing peace process, and the foreign policy adopted by the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government was friendly and cooperative. The President visits to USA, Britain and India and the discussions he had with the top leaders on the bilateral relations and the peace process brought many result without any fanfare.

As a left wing Government, to obtain such privileges and support from countries such as USA and UK could be considered as the political prudence of President Rajapaksa.

To continue these activities successfully, President Rajapaksa as the Minister of Finance presented his second budget last November further in concurrence with the Mahinda Chintana action plan.

His budget allocated more than 55 percent of funds on rural infrastructure development which would further upgrade the economic and social conditions in the provinces - compensating the village that had been neglected for years.

These are a few major achievements and contributions by the Government during 2006.

However, they have clearly outnumbered the activities compared to that of the work done by any Government during a single year in the past.