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| Sunday, 20 June 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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80th birth anniversary of President Ranasinghe Premadasa : The path to the future by B. Sirisena Cooray, Chairman, Premadasa Centre
It was a completely different way of looking at the world and living in it, a way which would be incomprehensible for today's 'me first' generation. Premadasa was a man with a dream, a vision and a message. He was a man who worked tirelessly, all his life, to realize that dream and to communicate that message. His life was a life of struggle for the uplift of the poor and the powerless people of this country to ensure that they will have an even chance. Poverty and the poor Premadasa came from Colombo Central, a place that was marginalised and perhaps, even feared by the elite. For him, poverty was not something you read about, but something you saw and experienced all around you. He did not have to get a degree from a foreign university to understand poverty and the poor. From the time of his birth, they were his world; he felt their pain, their suffering and their anger. Alleviating that poverty and its attendant ills became the cause he dedicated his life to - from the days of the Sucharitha Movement through the Municipal Council to the Parliament, as Prime Minister and President. Colombo Central was not only poor, it was also multi-ethnic and multi-religious. Premadasa knew the importance of unity among people of different ethnic and religious groups, he also knew the dangers of division along ethnic and religious lines. That was why he, unlike his predecessors, did not allow even a trace of Sinhala chauvinism in the policies, programmes and propaganda of his administration, even after the LTTE resumed the war in 1990. As a result, he managed to win the confidence of the democratic Tamil and Muslim leaders and to isolate the LTTE politically. He thus took the first important steps in creating an inclusive and unifying Sri Lankan nationalism as opposed to the excluding and divisive Sinhala Buddhist nationalism of the past. The presence of all the Tamil and Muslim parties (except the LTTE) at the 1992 UNP Congress - the last one to be held under the leadership of President Premadasa - was a result of his policy of equality and brotherhood towards all minorities. President Premadasa did not regard himself as a military expert; he simply allowed the experts to fight the war. But he also took the first important steps in changing the nature of the war from a war against the Tamil people to a war against the LTTE. He allowed the ICRC to operate and took action against human rights violations by the military. He carried out many development projects in the North and East, from housing and the improvement of infrastructure facilities to Janasaviya and the setting up of garment factories. A Presidential Mobile Service was held in Vavuniya. He also maintained a constant dialogue with minority parties and tried to come up with a political solution to the ethnic problem through the APC. This combination of military, political and development efforts made possible the liberation of the East, Vavuniya and Mannar. The Sinhala chauvinists condemned him for 'selling out'; but the Tigers knew that he was their most dangerous enemy, someone capable of wining the trust of the Tamil people. That was why he was killed on May 1, 1993. Self respect As Premadasa himself said when he accepted the presidential nomination of the UNP in 1988, he wanted to be the voice of the voiceless millions and the instrument of their liberation. This was no idle statement, but the principle by which he lived and governed. He knew that real, sustainable development of the country could come only through the uplift of the poor and the powerless. So he gave houses to the homeless, lands to the landless, jobs for the unemployed, opportunities to the neglected and the marginalised. He gave a life chance, a new sense of self respect and dignity to the poor. He knew that neither growth nor democracy would be sustainable without an urgent struggle against poverty. For a section of the old and the new elite, President Premadasa seemed like an outsider who was trying to replace them with other outsiders like himself. For those who believed in an economic strategy which was market friendly but unfriendly towards people, his development vision was equally unacceptable. They hated him because they felt that he was turning their world upside down. This hatred was the driving force behind the attempt to impeach him. Political enemies This was why when the LTTE killed him, his political enemies in the South rejoiced openly, lighting crackers. Irrespective of their colour (blue, red, green or yellow) they lost no time in ensuring that the dangerous Premadasa experiment was abandoned and things got back to what they always were. Eleven years later, we can clearly see the results of this multi-party 'restorationist coup'. Today, the economy is weaker, the people are poorer and the country is more divided. We are more insecure than we were during the time of the Premadasa Presidency. In the North and the South, one can hear the ominous rumblings of popular discontent and anger. There is a dangerous sense of drift, a feeling that the country is both leaderless and rudderless. If the rulers and the elite do not commence the re-implementation of the main Premadasa policies and programmes, this country may well degenerate into what it was during the time Ranasinghe Premadasa inherited it - a candle burning at both ends. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
Ranasinghe Premadasa belonged to an age which is no more. It was an age
in which men lived not just for themselves, but for ideas and causes far
larger than themselves. It was a world in which men questioned the way
things were, searched for answers, found inspiration in causes, dedicated
one's life to these, lived for them and often died for them.
