The 10 UPFA Parliamentarians who were made “senior ministers” by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the start of his second term last month are still awaiting the allocation of office space for their respective ministries.
While a building in the Kollupitiya area, intended to house all 10 senior ministers was identified by the Government recently, its notification on the subject, is yet to arrive. This is according to Prof. Tissa Vitharana, senior minister (scientific affairs).
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| Tissa Vitharana |
“We hope to be given individual offices and office staff,” Prof. Vitharana told the Sunday Times last week in the course of an interview..
Among other eminent UPFA old-timers who were promoted to the newly created senior minister category is Ratnasiri Wickramanayake who was Prime Minister in President Rajapaksa’s first Cabinet. Mr. Wickramanayake is senior minister for good governance and infrastructure facilities.
“The concept of a senior minister is new to Sri Lanka and isn’t quite prevalent here. It has worked in places such as Singapore. I can’t comment on it (now) without knowing how it will work,” said Prof. Vitharana, adding that his mandate is to “cooperate with several ministries on scientific issues.”
“I would be looking into the development of science and technology and promotion of research across several ministries,” he said.
While Prof. Vitharana was Science and Technology Minister in President Rajapaksa’s earlier government, Pavithra Wanniarachchi replaced him as Minister for Technology and Research in the new council of ministers.
“As a country we need to industrialise to add value to our raw material,” Prof. Vitharana said adding that only 1.5 per cent of the country’s export items had high technological inputs. High technology participation comprised of close to 50 per cent of exports from many other Asian countries.
According to him, Sri Lanka lacks modern research facilities. This, in his opinion, impedes economic development. Besides, the national budget allowance for scientific research is inadequate, he added. “There are over 50 research institutions in the country but they are out-dated and none of them are world class,” he said.
Prof. Vitharana said that during his tenure as minister in the earlier government, he tried to take research data from different scientific institutions to rural areas. “Research output is very important for the process of development,” he said.
During the interview, Prof. Vitharana was asked if he had been removed from the active post of being science minister to the obscure position of senior minister because he along with some of his peers were perceived to have been close to President Rajapaksa’s predecessor Chandrika Kumaratunga.
He replied: “This is speculation.”
While he decried former President Kumaratunga’s economic policies which he said were follow-ups of the “UNP’s neo-liberal traditions,” he said he had liked her approach to politics. “I thought I was very happy with her policy on the national question,” he said.
The All-Party Representative Committee (APRC) that Prof. Vitharana had chaired till earlier this year had merely recommended devolution of powers based on certain provisions of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
During the interview, he was asked if the APRC was just an academic exercise, to which he replied that while the APRC was formed at a time when the LTTE was still around and that a new situation had arisen since the end of war, the APRC still recommended a negotiated political solution to the ethnic problem.
He said that political parties such as the JVP withdrew from the APRC mid-way because devolution was being discussed by the APRC in 21 of its meetings. The APRC held 127 meetings, in totality.
According to Prof. Vitharana, the initial idea of meeting different parties through the APRC was to find a “political basis for the new Constitution.”
During his interview, the former APRC chairperson also said that consensus is needed on the Tamil issue. “My hope is that eventually there will be a dialogue between the TNA and President Rajapaksa,” he said.
Since the interview appeared to be open-ended Prof. Vitharana also spoke about the whistle-blower website Wikileaks. “I am very supportive of Wikileaks,” he said when asked if the Sri Lankan Government’s diplomatic ties with the US Government would change following the recent American Embassy (Colombo) cable disclosures by the website.
“Mutual respect” he described as the way forward in relations between the two governments.
While Prof. Vitharana supported the Wikileaks expose of the American establishment, he was asked (during the interview) for his opinion on Sri Lanka’s own human rights issues.
He replied: “there is a heightened interest in democratic rights... community rights... but human rights issues are being used in a partial manner.” |
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