Features

All Party Conference: Accelerated Reconciliation Program

Published

3 years ago

2022/12/18

by Rajan Philips

It is not my general purpose to coin new monikers for the President, but it seems appropriate to call President Wickremesinghe’s new All-Party-Conference initiative as Accelerated Reconciliation Program, inasmuch as it brings to mind President Jayewardene’s Accelerated Mahaweli Development Program that was launched 45 years ago. There are obviously more differences than any similarity between the two, but the premise for and the purpose of acceleration are about the same.

The Mahaweli Program was the centre piece of JRJ’s economic liberalization, although, and quite needlessly, the Mahaweli Program involved much over-liberalization involving the wholesale upending of competitive tender and technical supervisory procedures to build dams and power plants under the guise of bilateral grant agreements with several countries. The Rajapaksas later drove truck after truck through the procedural hole created by the Mahaweli Program and President Premadasa’s housing projects, as they set about building ports and roads through bilateral loan agreements with one country.

There is no direct economic dimension to the Accelerated Reconciliation Program of President Wickremesinghe and, hopefully, there will be no occasion for something like confusing FINCO with Trinco. The President is of course is carrying a whole different economic burden, which is not at all to open up the economy as JRJ did, but to lift the already open economy from the debt hole into which it has fallen. Rescuing the economy is a parallel and separate task, one which many would consider to be more ‘urgent’ than ‘reconciliation,’ and one that cannot be unilaterally accelerated, let alone be completed before February 4, 2023, which is the President’s target date for reconciliation.

In fact, there is no acceleration on the economic track, only falling and stalling. The third quarter (July-Sept) numbers show that the GDP grew negative by 11.8%, with Agriculture, Industry and Services declining by 8.7%, 21.2%, and 2.6%, respectively. At the same time, there is stalling in the IMF talks and on debt restructuring with China. The IMF delay is attributed to lack of consensus over restructuring among creditors, and the apparent lack of initiatives to reform money losing state owned enterprises (SOEs). If anyone thought reforming SOEs would be politically simple, they should think again as public opinion seems to be weighed against the selling of “national assets”, according to a recently reported survey by the Social Scientists’ Association.

Reforming SOEs should not be the same as selling out assets, like “selling family silver,” as the aristocratic Harold MacMillan told the grocer’s daughter, Margaret Thatcher. At the same time, opinion surveys could be better designed to probe a little more into people’s thinking rather than capturing what is out there in the public domain as fossilized notions. For example, should the CEB or the CPC be considered an asset or liability, based on their finances, debt burden, employment warehousing, and exorbitant pricing? If the national airline could be handed over to foreign airlines for proper and profitable management, why not the more land based liabilities? Specific to the electricity sector, as well as others, reform measures need not be either/or, but different components could be ‘unbundled’ and ‘reformed’ differently.

For economic reform measures to be successful, the public will have to be properly informed and persuaded. Otherwise, no reform will succeed. The onus is on the President even if he keeps insisting that he cannot be having any reform plan when there is no economy to speak of. With his hands full on the economy, how can the President take on reconciliation and accelerate it for accomplishment by February 4, 2023? That is a reasonable question, rational people can ask. The President will of course respond with his cynical wit that as the economy is going to take 25 years to turnaround, he can do other things like reconciliation during the long interval. Still there is the risk that reconciliation can go south (i.e., down) quickly, if people do not see any lessening of their heavy economic burdens.

All Party Dynamic

All that said, the parliamentary President would seem to have been in his elements at the All Party Conference last Tuesday, going by photographs doing the rounds after the conference. Sharing the podium were the President, flanked by Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena and Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena on his left, and on his right by former President/PM Mahinda Rajapaksa and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa. The symbolism of consensus making at the outset, howsoever it might turn out to be in the end, is remarkably better than anything one can remember from previous conferences. Restricting the conference to parliamentary representatives is also a positively smart move, going by the way JRJ set up the January 1984 APC, which was convened at India’s nudging, to fail disastrously by inviting all and sundry from outside parliament.

Apart from the podium-seated leaders, the Conference would seem to have been attended by almost all party leaders and many MPs, save for the conspicuous no show by the JVP and its quondam comrades – Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila. JVP’s absence is both inexplicable and inexcusable. It could and should have attended the conference, even if to make a statement outlining its objections to the exercise and indicating what alternative mechanism it will provide. To be sure, it is now a question of finding mechanisms and measures to implement something, instead of endlessly trying to produce the perfect devolution package with or without translation gimmicks.

We will get to this later on, but let me here reiterate the point that the JVP shot itself in the foot by not attending the conference. It still has plenty of time to rethink its position and attend future sessions, because for the JVP to be seen as a viable national political force it must be seen where relatively positive political action is going on. By staying away the JVP is losing the opportunity to a create positive impact of its own.

The JVP aside, there are three palpable sources of influence and implication that are shaping and driving the reconciliation initiative. First, there is the President as the prime mover who is taking, I dare say, positive advantage of his current circumstances to find maximum common ground among the Sinhalese MPs in parliament, involving both the government (SLPP) and opposition MPs. There are many irreconcilable differences between them, but they seem to have stumbled on a minimum common ground to lend initial support to the President’s reconciliation initiative.

Second, are the Tamil and Muslim MPs in parliament, who have their own differences and priorities, and their own experiential misgivings with President Wickremesinghe. The minority side of the Sri Lankan national question is no longer the monopoly of any single minority group. The Sri Lankan Tamils are not the principal or dominant minority group anymore. The hitherto ‘silent minorities,’ the Muslims and the upcountry Tamils, have now become forces in their own right to reckon with.

The three groups have their internal differences, and they have not been co-operative in the past and have often worked at cross purposes. However, MPs belonging to different entities within each group would also seem to have found common ground and overlapping interests in working with the President in his current reconciliation initiative. The multi-polarity of the minority side could also play a positive role in dealing with contentious issues by facilitating otherwise unreachable compromises. Examples would be not to insist on a north-east re-merger, and concede to the upcountry Tamils a ‘condominium’ unit of their own in the Central Province.

The third source of influence is the broader Sinhalese political community, which in the past have been manipulated by political leaders in parliament. Although it has often been suggested that Sinhalese political leaders have been forced by the Sinhalese people to act against the Tamils, there is sufficient empirical and electoral evidence to suggest the opposite. The question now is how the new consensus or ‘political contract’ that President Wickremesinghe is trying to forge in parliament will resonate in the broader Sinhalese political community.

The Times of India news story (December 14, sourcing the Press Trust of India) has noted that “there were no immediate comments from pro-Sinhala majority nationalist parties on Tuesday’s talks.” Indeed, the Sri Lankan media has shown rather lukewarm interest in the APC and the President’s reconciliation. The few that have appeared still keep dredging up the old 50-50 (even though it was not totally wrong), the so called colonial legacy (which can be argued more the other way), and India’s alleged imposition of 13A (that is only one of many ways of looking at it). Even a bylined piece after the APC focused on the statements of a rather marginal attendee at the APC, and ignored the summary of speeches in the statement put out by the President’s Media Division (PMD) after the conference.

The PMD’s statement is a rather extensive and somewhat edited ‘minutes’ of the conference. What is striking about the proceedings is the apparent tone set by everyone who spoke at the conference. There was hardly anything by way intransigent rhetoric that has been a characteristic of past efforts. The intervenors sounded more practical than political and focused on what could and should be done in the immediate short term. The emphasis was on acting along parallel tracks and accomplishing what is possible before the President’s independence day deadline.

There was acknowledgement over issues where immediate action is possible, viz., land, release of prisoners and missing persons. The two government ministers (Ali Sabry and Wijayadasa Rajapakshe) who are handling these issues were at hand to speak to them. There was also the call to hold Provincial Council elections as soon as possible without having to wait for constitutional changes. While major constitutional changes are impossible before independence day, a general outline of them could be finalized by early next year.

In sum, the APC talks last week were more productive and practically focused than what transpired in times past. That does not mean that every track that has been opened is well laid to reach its destination. The whole thing can backfire without any warning; like any further economic shocks, forget the accelerated reconciliation program. That said the initiative taken by the President is commendable, and for all the disagreements some of us vigorously articulate, it is all in order to wish him success in this instance.

All News Advertisement

Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

16 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wasting wars: Some war-displaced people in Lebanon. BBC

It may be some time before the full impact of food inflation is felt in the West. Until such time the world would continue to keep itself in suspense over whether the Trump administration is in earnest when it seeks to convey the impression that it is backing a negotiated solution in West Asia.

As is usually the case, consumer stress would be one of the final determinants of political change. To the degree to which the average US consumer somehow ‘muddles through’ and puts the food on the table, to the same extent would the Republican sections of the US public in particular be tolerant of the Trump administration’s inconsistent handling of the West Asian war and the main issues stemming from it. That is, there would be no grave popular disaffection and a demand for political change in the short term.

However, the indications are that the Trump administration’s support base is suffering some erosion in the wake of the current economic crisis. While reports indicate that Democratic sections are firming-up their opposition to the political centre, Republican support for Trump is also showing signs of waning, we are given to understand.

The above developments are probably why Trump is on record as having given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ‘dressing down’ recently on his seeming intransigence on the question of giving negotiations a chance in West Asia. The show of displeasure could be really aimed by Trump at containing the impatience of the American public.

However, the current ground situation in the Middle East, particularly the uncontained bloodshed, is likely to impress on the thinking sections of the world that more than temporary political change is needed in West Asia and the US.

A well thought out political solution that addresses all the contentious issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict is what enlightened opinion would demand, and very rightly. Right now, the ‘peace efforts’ initiated by the Trump administration give the impression of being piecemeal solutions at best.

There have been, of course, numerous initiatives in the past aimed at bringing permanent peace to the Middle East. These failed mainly because they did not address in full the root causes of the conflict.

At bottom the Middle East conflict is mainly about race and religious hate bred by socio-economic and material inequalities. For instance, if the Palestinian people were not displaced and deprived of land occupied by them at the time of the founding of the Israeli state, ethnic enmities would not have grown to the current unmanageable proportions.

When addressing the above questions, though, it must be remembered that the Israelis too were a displaced people who were entitled to land and a state of their own in the Middle East. Basically, out of these seemingly irreconcilable and conflicting demands have grown the Middle East imbroglio.

Middle East peace is considerably about reconciling these demands and arriving at a solution that would ensure the creation of two states that would opt for peaceful co-existence thereafter.

As long as the US does not see the need for a non-partisan solution that addresses the needs of both ethnicities and religions and goes all-out, as it were, to have it implemented, the Middle East would continue to bleed.

However, staunching the blood flow through the creation of two states would be only half the job done, though a very important part of it. More pernicious, pervasive and difficult to remedy are the inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatreds that have been unleashed over the decades.

However, if substantial, long-lasting peace is to be fostered in the region the latter ‘demons’ would need to be exorcised from the hearts and minds of the communities concerned. No doubt an uphill task but one that must be undertaken by those who wish the region well.

The UN would need to put its ‘best foot forward’ in such undertakings but it is time that it dawned on the international community and other caring quarters that Middle East peace, and all other such uphill challenges, require proactive peacemaking on the part of all civilized sections for their effective management. That is, public involvement in peacemaking too is a must.

Since hatreds are harboured in the human consciousness the enmities embedded in the latter need to be managed and defused judiciously alongside other undertakings in a peace process. In the case of West Asia, such enmities could be even spread globe-wide besides being multi-dimensional. For instance, it ought to be thought-provoking that Iran is insistent on a peace initiative that would also include Lebanon.

Besides security considerations it is also ethnic and religious affiliations that account for Iran making this demand. For instance, the Shias are a numerically important religious community in Lebanon and they provide a significant number of Hizbollah fighters, who are in a vital sense carrying out a ‘proxy war’ for Iran. It also needs to be factored in that Iran is a Shia-majority country.

Thus trans-border religious affiliations could add to the complexities and enormity of ethno-religious conflicts. However, the task of managing centuries-long enmities needs to be launched and prodded on with by peacemakers since a downing of arms alone would not guarantee substantive peace.

It is not realized sufficiently that the process of ending hatreds begins with mutual apologies by antagonists to a conflict for the harm inflicted on each other. This would be anathema in some ears but there is no getting away from the requirement. It is the vital first step to permanent peace anywhere.

In fact there could be no reconciliation worth speaking of without such mutual apologies. It is a point worth re-iterating in these times when even the government of Sri Lanka is voicing the need for national reconciliation. Well, without the words, ‘I am sorry’, there could be no permanent end to enmities – they would do well to remember.

The above requirements may not go down very well with governments, but they resonate in the hearts and minds of most people, since they are inheritors of religious traditions of some kind.

This is a principal reason why peacemaking works well when publics too are involved in them. The effectiveness of such campaigns increases several fold when they have a Mahatma Gandhi or a Jawaharlal Nehru at their helm. A strong proactive involvement by the public in peace could lead to the emergence of such leaders at some point in these campaigns.

Features

Dialog Brings Sri Lanka’s Largest Digital Vesak Experience to Matara

Published

16 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

From left to right: Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, and Lasantha Theverapperuma experience the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered VR tours.

Official Digital Partner of the 2026 ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone

Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka’s #1 connectivity provider, collaborated with the Ministry of Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs to bring one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most technologically advanced Vesak experiences to the ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone. The three-day celebration, in Matara attracted more than hundred thousand visitors, who engaged with a series of innovative digital activities powered by Dialog 5G Ultra, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, digital pandols and a Data Dansala. The opening ceremony was attended by Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development and Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Minister of Women and Child Affairs, along with distinguished guests and Dialog’s senior management.

One of the key attractions at the venue was the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered Virtual Reality (VR) experience, which attracted more than 35,000 participants. The activation enabled devotees to virtually visit and pay homage to sacred Buddhist sites, including the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi in India and the Atamasthana in Anuradhapura, directly from the Vesak zone in Matara.

Visitors receive complimentary mobile data through Dialog’s QR-powered Data Dansala.

Dialog also conducted an AI Digital Vesak Greeting Card Competition from 21 May to 01 June 2026, attracting numerous entries from across the country. The shortlisted designs were showcased across 20 large LED screens throughout the venue and across Matara City, and were also made available for download via mobile devices. Further, through the use of AI, traditional Jathaka Katha were reimagined in a digital format, demonstrating how technology can be used to preserve and enhance cultural and religious heritage. Together, these initiatives blended traditional Vesak celebrations with emerging technologies, offering visitors a unique and immersive way to engage with Vesak traditions.

Extending the spirit of Vesak through connectivity, Dialog conducted a special Data Dansala powered by its QR Reload platform, enabling visitors to receive complimentary mobile data by scanning QR codes placed across the venue. In addition to the Matara National Vesak Zone, similar Data Dansala activations were also conducted at the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones in Colombo.Visitors also had the opportunity to create personalised Vesak-themed digital photos through an AI Photo Booth, generating AI-enhanced portraits using their own photographs and adding a contemporary digital element to the Vesak celebrations.

Visitors watch AI-generated Jathaka Katha

Commenting on the initiative, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development, said, “The 2026 Dakshina Prabha Vesak Festival marked the first time AI-powered digital innovations were incorporated into a National Vesak Festival in Sri Lanka. Presenting Buddhist stories and teachings through technology created a new and engaging way for visitors to connect with these traditions. We thank Dialog for supporting this initiative and for working closely with us to bring our vision to life. Their contribution played an important role in making this first-of-its-kind event a reality.”

Lasantha Theverapperuma, Group Chief Marketing Officer of Dialog Axiata PLC said, “We thank the Government of Sri Lanka for the opportunity to support the 2026 Dakshina Prabha National Vesak Festival and for embracing technology as part of this year’s celebrations. As the Official Digital Partner, we were privileged to contribute through our Dialog 5G Ultra and AI capabilities, creating new ways for visitors to engage with Vesak traditions while preserving their cultural significance for future generations.”

Beyond supporting the National Vesak Zone in Matara, Dialog also enhanced the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones through a range of digital activations during the Vesak season. The company additionally continued its sustainability initiatives, including the Thirasara Aloka Poojawa, which illuminated rural places of worship through solar-powered lighting solutions.

Features

Beauty, elegance and talent…for women

Published

16 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Universal Woman is an international pageant focused on “beauty, elegance, and talent” for women, positioning itself as a platform to shape global ambassadors. The 2026 edition will be held in Cambodia, and Sri Lanka will be there, as well.

According to reports coming my way, contestants, at the international event, will work with industry trailblazers, under international standards.

Sri Lankan supermodel, runway and pageant trainer Chulpadmendra Kumarapathirana, is the National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026.

With over two decades in the industry, Chula was crowned Miss Sri Lanka 2006, and has since shaped the next generation of titleholders through her Colombo-based Chulpadmendra Catwalk Studio, widely regarded as one of the country’s leading modelling academies.

The team behind Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026

A former host of Derana Miss Sri Lanka for Miss World 2008 and a judge for Miss Universe Sri Lanka 2025, Chula now serves as National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026, leading the franchise’s search for Sri Lanka’s delegate to the international final in Cambodia.

Applications for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 are being taken, via WhatsApp: 077 659 4994, says Chula.

The judging panel for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 includes Senaka De Silva, Pageant Aesthetic Advisor & Chairperson of the Judging Panel, Angela Seneviratne, Caroline Jurie, Rozelle Plunkett, and Suraj Mapa.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 officially began its journey with a first round of auditions, held in Colombo, marking the start of an exciting new chapter in Sri Lanka’s pageant industry.

Launching the first round of auditions

The platform aims to empower women while selecting an intelligent, confident, and inspiring representative to compete at the Universal Woman International Pageant 2026 in Cambodia, this September.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka now moves forward with the vision of creating one of the country’s most prestigious and empowering pageants while preparing to crown a queen who will proudly represent Sri Lanka on the international stage.