On February 4 we celebrate 77 years of Independence…

In three days we will celebrate the 77th year of our Independence. We Lankans can hold our heads up with some pride. During the past 77 years, democracy in our land has gone from strength to strength. Our countrymen and women have been able to withstand two attempts to overthrow the elected governments of our country by armed forces. We have thwarted an attempted military coup and put behind us a near three-decade long attempt to bifurcate the country on ethnic lines.
What has perhaps been our greatest achievement however, has been the willingness of the common people to block efforts of a handful of racists, communalists and religious megalomaniacs to use ethnicity and religion as a means to create permanent divisions along these lines.
One of the best examples of people not succumbing to these temptations, was the manner in which the people voted at the recently concluded elections -across religious and ethnic lines..

For the first time since independence the Tamil people of the north, the up-country Tamils and the Muslim community elected representatives from a national party rather than from political parties representing parochial interests. The Sinhala people too moved away from those who played on racial and religious differences to capture power.
Coming especially in the wake of ethnic war, it indicates we may finally be on the way to identifying ourselves as Sri Lankans rather than from different communities. We hope this will be a lesson to those who still attempt to divide us claiming to be the saviours of a particular race or religion.
Today we have in power a political party which on two occasions attempted to take power via the power of the bullet and failed. To the eternal credit of our political and democratic system, this self-same political party reformed itself and was elected to power at both the last presidential and general election.
Few countries can boast of such an achievement.
Two year’s ago our country was facing bankruptcy. We have not totally repaid our international debt, but financial organisations accept that the country is now on the way to recovery.
Another achievement is that despite the economic catastrophe, we managed to continue many welfare state measures. Even today, despite the economic meltdown, Lanka’s children are provided free education from kindergarten to university. Health facilities too are free to the population.
Our country also gave the world its first female Prime Minister. The last election also saw a record in women’s representation, with 21 female MPs elected -the highest in Sri Lanka’s parliamentary history.
While all of this is good, World Bank studies reveal poverty is projected to remain above 25 percent in the next few years. Wages have not kept up with rapidly rising costs of living and deprived sections of the community are finding it difficult to provide their families with even two basic meals a day.
During the election campaign our president and members of his political party promised to bring down the cost of living to affordable levels. Unfortunately this has not happened. The President also charged that certain agreements signed by previous regimes with India and China were detrimental to Lankan interests.
Nothing has been done to change this situation. In fact the present rulers are going ahead with the same programmes. The present government also promised to renegotiate certain clauses of the IMF agreement which burdened the poor.
This did not happen either. It appears that the government has bowed to the IMF, India and China at the expense of those who elected them into power. This will not be the first time governments have promised much but failed to deliver.
Rather than twisting words to escape broken promises of a promised utopia, the government needs to either walk the talk. It needs to state clearly how much the public can expect within a time-frame and seek understanding for that which government cannot do despite earlier promises.
A failure to do this could see us going back to an era of strikes, government crack downs and an era of shortages. Let us especially, not lose the faith which brought our people together during the recent past.