Eran elaborates on good governance

Deputy Minister of State Enterprise Development Eran Wickramaratne stressed that for governance to be good, it needs to be democratic.

He was delivering the keynote address during the Code4Good Sri Lanka forum in Colombo recently, an initiative which strives to make a positive social impact on communities within the country.

Deputy Minister Wickramaratne was elaborating on the government's endeavour to establish and sustain good governance within Sri Lanka.

He said that the process by which political leaders are appointed should be legitimate and credible.

"There are leaders being appointed at every level. I remember the time when the story was that of stuffing ballot boxes. That phenomenon has been largely eliminated. But in my view we still haven't used ICT in the electoral process. Maybe the time will come when we will be voting from home. Hopefully, all Sri Lankans living abroad too can be involved in the democratic process," he said.

Deputy Minister Wickramaratne said that the balance of legislators should represent the different and diverse interests of the island nation's population.

"A government can't comprise those representing the majority of the population. All segments of the population, including the minorities, need to be adequately represented and their views voiced."

The Deputy Minister said that another prominent aspect of democratic governance was to ensure that those appointed as legislators acted with responsibility and commitment.

"Democracy is a dynamic and continuous process, not something that should be invoked every four or five years when there is an election. A process of reasoning and responding should happen all the time. Until a couple of years ago, democracy was limited to elections; but that's changing rapidly," he said.

"The overall idea of Code4Good is to bring tech teams together for social causes. Just because somebody has a technical education, it shouldn't mean they are removed from civic responsibilities. Whatever their field of study, everyone has something to contribute in making society better. I am pleased to see the manifestation of that today," Wickramaratne said.