Opinion:

President’s courage to bear responsibility

By Ashley WEERASOORIYA

It seems sometimes that there was less or at least too little willingness on the part of certain previous Presidents and Prime Ministers to accept real responsibility - for themselves or for their decisions, or for their soundness and success of real achievements.

In the past some presidents and prime ministers were unwilling to be responsible even for their own acts and utterances. And are disposed to shift responsibility even for their own sins, and shortcomings to circumstances altogether outside themselves.

And yet if Sri Lanka is to survive as a nation where the Sinhalese, Muslims, Burgers ,Tamils and all other races could live in harmony, there has to be soundness & security.

Someone has to take responsibility, some one has to make decisions not only for today, but for the future of our next generations.

Someone has to be there like our Presiden, Mahinda Rajapaksa who is brave enough to carry the weight and the worry, to see that there is safety and solvency. Someone has to face the facts.But not everyone is willing to do. Because every honour or office, every privilege or right carries with it real responsibility.

Courage is needed to bear responsibility.
It takes courage to make right decisions.
Decisions which will make or break our nation.

But the Greenies and Reds who are less willing to carry any real decisive weight seem to feel that they have unlimited licence to distort true facts criticize and even the Armed Forces victories.

These unlimited criticisms by unpatriotic opposition led to misjudge the situation of our country by other nations, yet now even those countries beginning to realize the government is done its best that those rumours were not true.

The hour is a priceless one, in which we are facing the truth. It is true that we are free to choose “Peace Only” but we are then not free from the consequences, that comes from choosing.

We will not be free from the operation of law of the terrorists.

And yet from their green or red comfortable positions of having little or no responsibility and of having the advantage of second sight these greenies and reds always harshly judge the good works of our President whose vision is not only confined to this generation but for the future generations as well.

After all some men are wiser than others because they do not think only of today and pass the responsibility to the next generation.

The Defence Secretary’s statements are equally commendable indeed, he and the President are fully aware that terrorists on many occasions deceived successive governments saying that they want peace and willing to negotiate only to betray us and attack our forces and innocent civilians. The President is clever enough not to get caught in the trap once again.

Certain things are good for man. Others are bad.This is true morally physically and spiritually and yet with all the experience in the past with the terrorists we kept repeating the same mistakes in a sense hitting our heads against a wall built by the terrorists wondering why the wall remains while our heads are hurting.

Naturally the President is different from previous Presidents and Prime Ministers we had before. He does not want to hit the head against the same wall.

To be deceived by terrorists, betrayed by our own friends are insupportable.

Despite the difficulties, the masses are bracing together to support the government. They have realize d the world trend and the sky rocketing inflation and are aware that the President’s primary responsibility is to safeguard the human territorial integrity and lead Sri Lanka to safe waters.

Time passes, distance widens but time alone does not draw people closer. There is a law of health, a law of happiness, a law of peace progress upon which this government is working harder to achieve.

There is no reason to doubt all such good intentions of our President and support him and strengthen his hands. He is a hard man and one who could accomplish his mission yet he is humane and simple, a “People’s President” who could show after all that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The government cannot safely set aside a perfect, life during a war. These governments, I believe never sacrifice what the future may hold, for some immediate political gain or power.

There is no reason to doubt all such good intensions of the government. But when in the world are we going to begin to live as if we understood that this is life? This is our time, our day our generation.

This is the life in which the work of this life is to be done. It cannot be passed on to the next generation.

The President is fully aware of all this.

Sri Lanka can become very small and cramped if there is any place we can’t go freely, any street we can’t walk on, and if we can’t mingle with the crowd, for fear of the terrorists. This is a very important fact that green(s) and red(s) haven’t thought of.

Finally unlike the greenies, Reds and the terrorists, the President is a fair man. Unlike them the President has not cluttered up his actions or political life with things that are sure to damage the lifeline of our nation, distress the spirit and cause a complexity of personal and national problems.