By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Feb 23 1999 (IPS)

Sri Lanka’s top business leaders have decided to ascertain the people’s views on issues of national concern, including the long-drawn bloody ethnic conflict and ways to end it, through a survey to be launched next month.

Grouped together since last October as the ‘National Committee for Peace and Economic Development”, they are trying to find a workable solution to the civil war raging in the island’s north and east for 16 years.

The Committee is, however, tightlipped about details on the progress made or the survey apart since all members feel that too much publicity may be detrimental to the often-sensitive discussions that take place.

Leading sociologist Prof Siripala Hettige of Colombo University who has been asked to coordinate the survey, said it will be a data-base for politicians, planners and policy makers. “Often (political parties) don’t have a clue as to what the people want and their basic needs,” he said.

Sources close to the business group said that the March survey could take a minimum of between six weeks and three months to complete and involves a wider section of the population than previous sample surveys.

“Sri Lankan national surveys generally have (a sample size of) between 2,000 and 3,000 interviews but this survey is expected to involve more than 12,000 interviews and would be much more business comprehensive,” one source said.

Last week, Committee coordinating chairman Lalith Kotelawala said they would be calling a second meeting of all political parties and other groups on Mar. 4 to pursue a bipartisan approach on solving the national question.

“The meeting has been called to focus on creating an environment that is conducive to a bipartisan approach towards national issues,” he said in a statement. One of its main aims is to bring together the ruling People’s Alliance and the main opposition United National Party and formulate joint proposals to end the conflict.

The Committee was launched last October with a statement issued by the heads of Sri Lanka’s six top chambers of commerce and industry that blamed political parties for the current stalemate in the peace negotiations and the economic mess.

Their confrontational politics, they said, was hurting the economy. Though resilient through the war years, the economy had shown signs of a slowdown in recent months, mainly due to an escalating defence budget and a global downturn that has hit certain sectors hard.

At least 75,000 people have died in the ethnic conflict since 1983 while the country has lost billions of rupees in destroyed property and missed opportunities due to lower foreign investment and reduced numbers of foreign tourists.

Sri Lanka’s economy now relies on a mix of garments and tea exports, and remittances from some 750,000 Sri Lankans working in the Arab Gulf countries.

A new study by the semi-government think tank, the Institute of Policy Studies, shows that the country’s protracted ethnic conflict has, so far, cost the equivalent of 18 months of gross domestic product (GDP). The study is to be published shortly.

“The approximate cost of the war amounts to 160 percent of the GDP at 1996 levels. That means we have lost one whole year and a half of GDP,” economist Dr Saman Kelegama, executive director of the Institute said at a seminar on the cost of the war earlier in February.

At the all-party meeting called by business leaders on Oct. 22 last year, Committee chairman Kotelawala said that 60 billion rupees (902 million dollars) was being spent on the war while “we have no food for the hungry, no shelter for the homeless and no future to offer generations to come.”

He said there were no political intentions or hidden agendas behind the group’s efforts. “Being the members of the trade and the business community, we genuinely feel the pulse of the country’s economy and we understand that to create a healthy environment for the economy, the ongoing war should be stopped and a political settlement must be found to solve the ethnic crisis,” Kotelawala added.

Sources close to the Committee said that Prof Hettige, who is head of the Department of Anthropological and Sociological Studies, has been asked to supervise the survey because of his wide experience in conducting national surveys with Colombo University researchers.

Last October at the same time that the Committee was set up, a Hettige-led opinion poll found that most Sinhalese, the majority community in Sri Lanka, believed there could be no military solution to the ethnic crisis.

The poll repudiated the widely-held view that the Sinhalese were generally opposed to making peace with the Tamil minority and saw military action as the only way out.

The March survey is expected to cover all Sri Lankans. The Sinhalese, represent about 74 percent of the population of 18 million. Tamils are the largest minority (18 percent), followed by Muslims (some 6 percent) and other smaller groups like the Burghers of Portuguese descent.

Excerpt: