Ceylon Today Editorial

HOUSING PROBLEM: SERIOUS THINKING NECESSARY
04 October 2016

 

In Resolution 40/202 of 17 December 1985, the UN General Assembly designated the first Monday of October of every year as World Habitat Day. And after 31 years, the 2016 World Habitat Day campaign aims to raise awareness about the need for affordable housing for all in urban areas, towns and cities.

Access to adequate housing is a global challenge growing fast with urbanization. Around one quarter of the world's urban population continues to live in slums and informal settlements. The statistics are similar in Sri Lanka, with the country's majority owning their own homes while the rest is struggling with temporary settlements.

This has become apparent if you would have bothered to read or listen to the news. People who have become victims of natural disasters such as the Aranayake or Meeriyabedda landslides are still struggling as informal communities.

Not just natural disasters are responsible for this, but also man-made tragedies such as the Salawa Army Camp explosion which destroyed over 1,000 homes. Some have been reconstructed, but others remain in their skeletal forms, awaiting their owners' attention. The owners are left helpless as they have no funds to rebuild their own homes which were destroyed due to the ignorance of others.

And then there's the North and the East which were affected by the thirty-three-year-old civil war this country fell victim to. People, who are returning to their homes, find that there's nothing left of their homes. Or sometimes, their land has been taken over by the military forces or the government for their own constructions. In extreme cases, their land has become so damaged by the war that nothing can be built there and no crop will grow there.

According to the United Nations, an increasing number of urban dwellers, especially the poor and vulnerable groups (women, migrants, persons with disabilities and HIV, elders, youth and LGBT) are living in precarious conditions, addressing their housing needs informally, lacking access to basic services and living space, isolated from livelihood opportunities and vulnerable to forced evictions or homelessness.

Every day, as people are born in or move to urban centres in search of opportunities, the demand for housing grows. Globally, a billion new houses are needed by 2025 to accommodate 50 million new urban dwellers per year.

The situation is the same in our island nation as well; our population steadily increasing and the government not having a proper plan to address it, other than fancy statements, of course.

President Maithripala Sirisena issuing a press release on the World Habitat Day said the government plans to cover both urban and rural areas by housing projects that have been planned for the next decade.

"Our government with a thorough understanding of the strong relationship between housing and human development, works ambitiously towards fulfilling of the housing needs of all Sri Lankans," he writes. And as a part of good faith with the United Nations, (we assume of course) President Sirisena will participate as the Chief Guest at day's commemoration ceremonies in Polonnaruwa where they will be opening the Sugala Devi model village in Dimbulagala to the public.

Model villages are all good and but, at the end of the day, what good is it supposed to achieve? More plausible methods could have been looked into as alternatives to building a mere model village such as introducing eco houses and green buildings.

Green buildings or sustainable constructions – a structure and the using of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from sitting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition – is one of the least sought out alternatives in Sri Lanka. And it is high time, we looked into it. Such alternatives will not only solve the habitat problems our country is facing, but also protect our country in the long run against natural disasters and other ecological harms.

But the government is simply not interested in those things. We cannot expect the government that takes years and years to build houses of the people who were victimised by disasters, to look into constructing homes with long term benefits; long benefits that do not end in ten years, but would sustain for even longer.

But then again, no one really pays any attention to our long term future. We only care about our immediate future. That is where we are all wrong. And maybe when the next disaster takes place, we might have run out of time to solve this matter.

Daily News Editorial

Sports as a unifier

04 October 2016

President Maithripala Sirisena has emphasized on the importance of sports that is not only a great leveler but also a catalyst that helps dismantle all ethnic barriers. As such he said the government is duty bound to create a better environment for the upliftment of the sports sector.

Speaking at the Jaffna Duraiappa Stadium which hosted the 42nd National Sport Festival the President said as a result of the ethnic harmony athletes from all parts of the country representing the nine provinces have gathered at the venue. He said Sri Lanka’s sportsmen and sportswomen had displayed their prowess in the international arena on numerous occasions. Sports and music he said are considered universal languages. “The playground is a place where everyone can gather without any barriers. Everything should be done in a united country without any differences. He went onto point out that the nine provinces were drawn, not by the country’s rulers, but the colonial masters in order to facilitate administration requirements”.

The Duraiappa stadium is indeed symbolic because this is where the first shot was fired by Velupiilai Prabhakaran felling Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappa as far back as 1975 signalling the commencement of the Eelam war. It is indeed appropriate that the President extended the olive branch at the venue to the Northern Tamil sportsmen and sportswomen in order to emphasize the importance of sports as a unifying agent.

Sports, as the President was wont to say, is a bridge builder, its spirit and lessons not just confined to the playing field, but that which penetrate the hearts and minds of all those engaged in it. This is why arch rivals in the world cup soccer matches who give no quarter to their opponents from the rival countries, at the end of the game, not only hug and embrace each other, but also don each others’ jerseys, being members of the same team in the club circuit. This bond sometimes lasts for a lifetime and in Sri Lanka too, sports should be fostered and developed to the level that go beyond the camaraderie on the playing field to embrace a large message of harmony and reconciliation among all participants. In fact Sri Lankans should be indebted to the sporting prowess of the members hailing from the minority community. These feats may in fact be repeated in the future as well when members of the minority community may play their part in putting Sri Lanka on the international sporting map. To begin with, Sri Lanka has the honour of producing the highest wicket taker in test cricket in the form of one Muttaiah Muralitharan. The rousing reception accorded to him in the staunch Sinhala Buddhist heartland of Galle, where the feat was achieved, no doubt is still etched in the minds of many, irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. It was a day for celebration of all Sri Lankans from Dondra Head to Point Pedro. If only this spirit could be nurtured and continued with, Sri Lankans no doubt would have no difficulty in shedding all differences based on community, caste and creed, was the view of many observers at the time. Among the current crop of cricketers in the national team too there is a welcome mix of religious and ethnic diversity, with the captain no less coming from a minority community. It was refreshing indeed to see all members of the team visit the Sri Dalada Maligawa to pay homage to the Sacred Tooth Relic in the aftermath of the series whitewash against Australia.

It is also regretful that when sports is playing the role of unifier of the communities, as hoped for by the President, there are element always ready to muddy the atmosphere. The other day former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was shown on television making an incendiary speech clearly aimed at appealing to the baser instincts of the nationalist elements. In a speech clearly intended to rouse anti-Tamil feeling Rajapaksa said they of the Sinhala race cannot be pushed to the wall but will hit back with a vengeance. He was of course responding to the Northern Province Chief Minister’s demonstration where certain statements were alleged to have been made which had apparently rubbed the JO on the wrong side. Wigneswaran, for his part, claims that his comments and remarks had been misinterpreted by racist elements in the South. In the melee the government is entertaining suspicion that Wigneswaran’s antics were staged managed at the instance of a prominent JO parliamentarian who is closely related to the Chief Minister. The All Ceylon Hindu Congress meanwhile has risen to the defence of Wigneswaran pointing out that the CM had clearly stated that he is not acting against Sinhalese or Buddhists or any other race or religion. It is clear that the Joint Opposition has seized upon Wigneswaran’s protest to peddle its racist propaganda and set the platform for a take off in time for things to snowball at the Local Government elections tentatively set for March. The Government meanwhile will leave no stone unturned to ascertain, if indeed, there is more to it than meet the eye in the Wigneswaran antics, and if as alleged, things are being engineered by the JO firebrand who is a kinsman of the Chief Minister.

The Island Editorial

SAARC caught in crossfire

04 October 2016

 

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has been a casualty of the Kashmir conflict. The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration has drawn heavy fire from the de facto Opposition for ‘boycotting’ the Islamabad SAARC Summit. Its decision has come as no surprise, given its foreign policy clad in the Modi jacket, so to speak. Former Foreign Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris has asked it to attend the event when new dates are announced. One cannot but agree with him.

In handling the country’s international relations, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government acts in such a way that one wonders whether it has mistaken subservience for diplomacy. It is practising the very obverse of its predecessor’s foreign policy. The Rajapaksa government unnecessarily antagonised India and the West and the incumbent administration has isolated Sri Lanka from her friends in its bid to ingratiate itself with India and the western nations. The country has been the loser under both regimes.

It is a supreme irony that India has had to thwart a UN attempt to send a UNHRC team to Kashmir to study the human rights situation there. This, New Delhi has done, after siding with the US-led forces to adopt a UNHRC resolution to probe Sri Lanka’s alleged accountability issues. When India departed from its policy of desisting from voting for country specific UNHRC resolutions to back the US-sponsored one against Sri Lanka, observers warned that the UNHRC would want to get involved in Kashmir as well. India is now hoist with its own petard. It is, however, lucky that is strong enough to withstand UN pressure; it is also a strategic partner of the US, which has arrogated to itself the right to decide how the human rights violators should be dealt with.

Now that India has endorsed the UNHRC action against Sri Lanka by way of bringing about reconciliation, shouldn’t it be urged to let UN intervene to resolve the Kashmir conflict?

It behoves the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to desist from being party to plots being hatched to isolate Pakistan internationally. The boycott of the Islamabad SAARC Summit is aimed at painting a black picture of Pakistan and preparing the way for conferring pariah status conferred on it as a state sponsoring terrorism. Sri Lanka must not join forces with the nations hostile to Pakistan, which has always been one of its trustworthy allies.

But for the unstinted support this country received from Pakistan it would still have been plagued by terrorism. It may be recalled that the newfound allies of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government once refused to help the Chandrika Kumaratunga government to fight terrorism at a critical juncture; they offered ships to evacuate about 40,000 troops trapped in the Jaffna peninsula in 2000 with the LTTE poised to go for the kill. It was Pakistan which rushed big guns here and helped stop the marauding Tigers in their tracks. Else, Prabhakaran would perhaps have realised his Eelam dream by recapturing the Jaffna peninsula and demoralising the armed forces. All Sri Lankans who are enjoying the dividends of peace, especially those whose children were abducted by the LTTE on a daily basis and turned into cannon fodder and suicide bombers, must be grateful to the countries which unwaveringly helped crush the LTTE terror.

Times have changed and Sri Lanka cannot live in the past. It must maintain healthy relations with India. However, there is absolutely no need for the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to practise what may be called slipper-licking diplomacy to please any foreign government at the expense of Sri Lanka’s traditional allies. It ought to learn from how the late Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike safely steered the country through far worse regional crises than the present one in Kashmir without antagonising any of its neighbours.