On reflection it was the failure to implement fully the half-baked Indo-Lanka Accord that led to these UNHRC resolutions on the country. Earlier there was a cease fire with the intervention of India in 1987 that resulted in the Indo-Lanka Accord to resolve the conflict between the state and the Tamil speaking minorities. The accord was reflected in the 13th Amendment to the constitution and as it was not implemented properly the civil-war resumed again and countless atrocities were committed between 1987 and 2009 in and out of the war zones by both sides involved in the battle had caused untold miseries on the civilians, apart from destruction of properties and damages caused. That led to the intervention of many friendly nations to silence the guns in 2009 to end the civil-war and eliminated the separatists, who were either killed or captured to bring more miseries to the people living in the previous war zones.
Thus concerned over excess human rights violation during the final stages of the war the same friendly nations referred the matter to the UN to result in UNHRC passing resolutions against Sri Lanka; whereas the government went about with their exclusive governance flouting these resolutions. With negative peace years prevailing miseries continued for the battle fatigued people left in the previous zones. That caused a wind of change to force another intervention from friendly nations in 2015; that resulted in people voting in a common president and a unity government, its performance was appalling to say the least with the President and Government pulling in different directions; that still left the cause of conflict and all war related issues remained unresolved. Further it took little or no actions to address issues in the UNHRC resolutions and the people were fed up with the unity government.
Sri Lanka as Ceylon was a colony of Briton and ironically, after seven decades there are still lessons to learn from its colonial masters, if the island nation is to return to prosperity. But it will be long hard uphill task for the New President to make it happen, unless all Sri Lankan are prepared to work as a team, by helping the Head of State to implement the 13th Amendment to the constitution in full putting country before self as the British have done to achieve ‘Brexit’, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). Perhaps the President will initiate a process to iron out issues already expressed by him on full implementation of the said amendment by meeting all the representatives of the Tamil speaking minorities living in the Northern and Eastern provinces and thereafter on implementation of 13+ inform the country, to push the ethnic issue into history books once and for all in order to unite people.
As the political parties gets ready for the next General Election, probably in April, it is time for the voters to wake-up and review what their elected representatives have achieved in the past five years, between the last general election held in 2015 and the next due this year. Regrettably, the performance of the elected representatives on the whole have been appalling to say the least; feed up the people expressed their feelings for a real change and opted to vote in an administrator as the President, who has planned to hold General Election with a view to form a new government with 2/3 majority in parliament to provide good governance to all citizens.
With all the going at the United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC) against Sri Lanka, after the new President notified that the country would remove itself from the co-sponsorship role and would deal with all the said issues covered in UNHRC resolutions under his leadership to provide home grown solutions for a holistic rule to meet aspirations of all communities. It is now up to the people to return quality representatives to represent them in parliament, to help the administrator turned President to bring the country back to prosperity or continue to obscure in petty politics of corrupt leaders, witnessed most part of last seven decades after country gained independence.
Northern Breeze 