By Janaka Perera:[COLOMBO, SinhalaNet 2009.02.19 07:54AM] Science and Technology Minister Tissa Vitharana wants a political solution even after the LTTE is crushed.  The minister said this at the annual general meeting of the Wayamba Lanka Human Rights Organization held recently at the Community Centre, Pannala. 

Science and Technology Minister and Head of All Party Representatives Conference (APRC) Tissa Vitharana

"A solution worked out by the government should necessarily carry the consent of the UNP. Because a solution offered without the consent of the two major political parties will not be acceptable both to the Tamils in general and the international community as a whole who are taking an active part in finding a solution to this issue."

What Minister Vitharana is dreaming about is something that will never materialise.  The country's experience of the UNP under Ranil Wickremesinghe all these years is proof that his party will virtually oppose everything the government will propose. The same applies to the 'political solution' whatever it may be. And the international community, particularly India will try to impose its own terms on us to please Tamil Nadu.

Equality should be between individuals and not ethnic groups or communities. And if possible the village council system should be revived.

The term 'political solution' is now a hackneyed term just like 'negotiated settlement' and the 'peace process.'  The minister should first spell out what he means by his so-called political solution.  Let alone a political solution even the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) has become redundant today.

Prof. Tissa Vitharana, Minister of Technology as well as the Head of All Party Representatives Conference (APRC) talking with British High Commissioner HE Dr. Hayes and Deputy High Commissioner .

If the minister thinks that creating ethnic Bantustans in the North and East is going to be the political solution, then he is sadly mistaken.

Sri Lanka's true patriots know the practicable solution this country really needs. It is to prevent the Northern and Eastern Provinces becoming mono-ethnic. Instead they should be made multi-racial. The key to this is an excellent road and railway network that will ensure the island's unitary state, its rapid development and give people the opportunity to buy land settle in any part of the country. In fact they should be fully encouraged to do so. As The World Alliance for Peace in Sri Lanka (WAPS) emphasized recently the model for this should be the multi-ethnic Western Province were all ethnic and religious groups live side by side. WAPS has called on the government to speedily develop the North and East so that the development that the Tigers denied them could be quickly made up.

Recently the World Alliance for Peace (WAPS) in Sri Lanka called for grass-root models including India's Panchayat system to ensure participation genuine public participation in good governance. This is where Delhi too can help if its peace intentions for Sri Lanka are genuine. Devolution to political party officials should not extend beyond the district. If necessary, development funds could be transferred to the North and East from other parts of the island.

WAPs has also recommended a more equitable power sharing arrangement at the Centre where the minorities would be drawn into the decision making process from the policy-making stage to the implementation stage through fair representation in special Parliamentary Sub-Committees and Experts Committees, where they would participate in the nation's day-to-day governance.

There should be absolutely no room for the creation of ethnic enclaves of any kind. No opportunity should be left for racist elements to raise their heads and repeat 'liberation struggles' hereafter. To fully ensure this the State needs to establish military colonies in the two provinces. All Sri Lankans who were permanent residents in the two areas before 1983 and before 1987 should be allowed to return to their towns and villages irrespective of their ethnicity. Administrative problems pertaining to language matters in the State Sector covering these two provinces should be thoroughly ironed out.

It is for this unitary objective that Sri Lanka's soldiers, sailors and airmen sacrificed their life and limb and not for ethnicity-based federalist 'solutions' hatched by constitutional pundits in air-conditioned rooms. In the words of WAPS, the 13th Amendment is "a travesty imposed on a small nation by a regional bully as part of her external policy." These so-called solutions are covert attempts to turn the military victory over the LTTE into a camouflaged defeat.

As one political observer Charles Perera notes there is no need anymore for an APRC which has become a symbol of division. Instead he has suggested the setting up of committee to draw up plans to mix the communities without erasing their cultural identities.

National Freedom Front Leader Wimal Weerawansa in an interview the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday January 27 said that for the first time in 30 years the whole of Sri Lanka had come under one flag. There can be only one national flag not two or three, he stressed.

When elections are held in the North, it will give India and Tamil Nadu an opportunity to understand the true feelings of Sri Lankan Tamils towards the LTTE and other separatists. When Tamil Nadu racists such as Vaiko, Nedumaran, Ramdoss and Thirumavalan urged the Jaffna and Batticaloa Tamils to rise against the Sri Lankan State the latter instead came into the streets to express solidarity with the Sri Lankan Government's anti-Tiger military campaign.

Says Environment and Natural Resources Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka:

"They gave the likes of Vaiko a message. It is that 'Between you and us there is the Indian Ocean. But between us and the Sinhala people in the island's south there are only the barriers of earth put up by Prabhakaran'.".