{"id":83067,"date":"2018-11-12T00:22:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T06:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=83067"},"modified":"2018-11-11T04:40:48","modified_gmt":"2018-11-11T11:40:48","slug":"mahinda-rajapaksa-as-a-balanced-internationalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/11\/12\/mahinda-rajapaksa-as-a-balanced-internationalist\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahinda\u00a0Rajapaksa\u00a0as a balanced internationalist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Palitha Kohona<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has always been firstly a patriot. His priority has been Sri Lanka and its essential interests.<\/p>\n

As a politician he proactively reflected the wishes of the people who elected him. This is abundantly clear in the way he conducted Sri Lanka’s international relations during his tenure as President.<\/p>\n

This is the reason why he chose to confront the entrenched terrorist group, the Tamil Tigers, whose primary objective was to dismember the country, contrary to the highly vocal counsel to the contrary from different quarters, mainly from diplomats and NGOs. The Tamil Tigers who controlled significant parts of the country at the time, possessed frightful military capabilities, including feared naval and elementary air arms and were described by the CIA as the most sophisticated terrorist group in the world. Their pioneering use of suicide bombers had instilled a sense of uncertainty and \u00a0fear throughout the country. He succeeded, and eliminated them from Sri Lanka and brought thirty years of brutal terror to an end. Once the conflict within the country was ended, he was willing to share the expertise and experience of his battle hardened military with other friendly countries confronting terrorist challenges. He was also willing to provide military forces to the the United Nations which has always been short of well trained military personnel for its peace keeping operations.<\/p>\n

His emphasis has always been Sri Lanka and all his initiatives were taken with the objective of advancing Sri Lanka’s interests, including the interests of its labour force. The well being of the people of his country was his first priority. He sought \u00a0financial assistance from China because China was the only available source of financing for the massive development projects he had planned for post conflict Sri Lanka. Chinese assistance was sought only after unsuccessful overtures had been made to other friendly countries. But at no stage did he compromise the nation’s sovereignty or integrity. Similarly, he was not going to create situations inimical to the interests of other countries in the region while seeking assistance from China. In many instances, he invited other friendly countries to participate in Sri Lanka’s development efforts prior to seeking Chinese assistance.<\/p>\n

By nature he has also been an internationalist who, as executive President, insisted on maintaining warm relations with all countries. He visited many countries with a view to consolidating Sri Lanka’s network of friends. During his tenure as President, he visited the US every year. While he made friends easily, they were never at the expense of the country’s essential interests. His engaging nature made it easy for him to make friends even at the personal level. As Prime Minister, he could be expected to follow a policy that emphasises the primacy of Sri Lanka’s interests while maintaining warm relations with all friendly countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Palitha Kohona Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has always been firstly a patriot. His priority has been Sri Lanka and its essential interests. As a politician he proactively reflected the wishes of the people who elected him. This is abundantly clear in the way he conducted Sri Lanka’s international relations during his tenure as President. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}