Following is the full message:
Let’s make this New Year a Happy New Year!
People of Sri Lanka begin this New Year confronted with many challenges. The traditional greetings of ‘Happy New Year’ would not make the New Year a happy one. We could make this year a happy one only if we identify challenges before us correctly and access a new political path that could overcome these challenges. The Sri Lankan people should be intelligent enough, at least during this New Year, to take correct and new political decisions. They should be courageous and bold enough to take such decisions. Then only the New Year would be a real New and Happy Year!
Throughout history, new years begun with various greetings did not bring happiness to majority of the people in our land. Instead, masses were deceived and oppressed. They were left with only sorrow and suffering. Now the year 2011 too has come before the masses not with omens of an ‘auspicious future’ but with ominous black clouds and rumblings of discontent. This is the reality. The People of Sri Lanka are setting foot to the New Year while the cost of living is sky rocketing; when the masses are being burdened with increased electricity charges; when coconut, which had been an export crop, too has to be imported and at a time when all hopes of increased wages and incomes have been shattered. We are reaching the New Year when the economy of the country has been totally sacrificed for the new liberalist policy of imperialism and when the government has decided to get another loan of US$500 million from the World Bank increasing the amount of debt of the country and making us a Nation of debtors.
Furthermore, the death knell for the free education is being rung to drive the future generations towards darkness. The free health services are being disintegrated. The natural resources and crucial economic centers in the country are being ‘donated’ to world powers. The forces that raise their voices against such treachery and to protect their rights are being suppressed, denying them of the capitalist democracy either.
On the other hand, instead of making use of the situation that was created with the end of the war to build genuine national unity, attempts are being made by the authorities to kindle communalism to protect their power. The communalism that was ignited through the ‘official language’ then is being kindled today via the ‘national anthem.’ Finding solutions even for the basic needs of the people in the North and the East has been arbitrarily ignored. As such, fundamental rights of these masses too have been violated.
How could a new year that dawns under such circumstances be an ‘auspices or a happy new year? Hence, instead of waiting for the New Year to be a happy one we should resolve to make it a Happy New Year. It could be done not by limiting ourselves for mere greetings but by accessing a political path that builds a new society by changing the unjust, unrighteous social system that is responsible for all crises and ills that are before us.
The New Year that has dawned compels us to take lessons from the 63 years that have passed since the so-called independence and take a new decision for a new political struggle to build a new society that ends the politics of rotation or changing faces or colours. Hence, it is necessary to come forward with awareness and to struggle to build a new resplendent society by driving away, with all its rubbish, the old social system that is in crisis and has failed to provide any victory for the masses. We call upon all to resolve to make this a real Happy New Year!
Political Bureau,
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.
