The Governor of the Northern Province Dr. Suren Raghavan, an academic was sworn in before President Maithripala Sirisena on 07th January 2019; earlier an adviser to the President and director of the Presidential Media Unit. Today as the Governor has all responsibilities of the Northern Province, where by not holding elections is without a Chief Minister and Provincial Representatives.
After the end of the civil war the province needs funds to rebuild damaged infrastructure and successive provincial governments have being unable to finance the reconstruction of destroyed factories and damaged infrastructure to create employment.
Whereas despite declining regional disparity Western province continues to contribute most to the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) contributing 42% of the GDP while the second highest the Southern Province only represents 10.8% of the GDP while Uva and Northern provinces representing the least with 5% and 3.6% respectively.
The unitary state system of seven decades has resulted in uneven development across the island nation with the Western Province dominating over the other 8 provinces all of whom have trouble attracting capitals.
This unbalanced development has resulted in calls for the abolishing of the unitary system and federalism proposed as a method for sharing power by the Tamil minority who are underrepresented despite being the majority in the Northern Province.
Bitter truth is federalism has long been advocated as a means of resolving the ethnic issues that lead the country to a civil war between the government and Tamil Nationalist militants; several past heads of states have accepted federalism as a solution to the island’s issues, however they failed to implement a federal system.
In this backdrop, Dr. Suren Raghavan, the Governor has in a short period managed to build a bridge between the province and the center successfully. The people in Northern Province are thus blessed to have a Governor who understand their language and are already feeling the difference.
Northern Breeze 