Sri Lanka will not allow itself to be drawn into an attempt to retain a declining global hegemony, said Sri Lanka’s ambassador in Russia Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka said.
Jayatilleka added that Sri Lanka was concerned as there are very clear policy prescriptions made from certain capitals of the world.
“But since we live in the time where there are voices which tell your President what should be done in your country, we are not surprised that there are those who try to tell us and our elected President what we should do in our country. There are some who actually have media conferences and tell our elected President, what he should do and when he should do it. These are the same voices. Sri Lanka will not allow itself to be drawn in to an attempt to retain a declining global hegemony,” Dr Jayatilleka said, briefing top Russian officials in Moscow on the political developments in Sri Lanka.
Dr. Jayatilleka made it clear that the Executive was supreme under the Sri Lankan Constitution.
He reiterated that some friends of Sri Lanka raise their voices saying that views of the elected representatives should be heard but these voices forget that the highest elected representative in the country is the executive President who would be elected by the country as a whole and can take the office if he or she has over fifty percent of the vote. He expressed his gratitude to Russia, which “has never told us what to do in our own country. Russia always respected us, and helped us protect our national independence, our national sovereignty, our territorial integrity, and our unity.”
Addressing the Russian officials, he said: “This re-allying is actually the re-convergence of our President and the new Prime-Minister. This is the re-convergence of the broadest political forces which among other things have the same strong friendly views towards the Russian Federation and the President of Russia. And those who have been displaced are those who have residues of Russophobia and Sinophobia.”
Excerpts from his speech: “From your own experience you know that there were certain tendencies that prevailed in Russia in the 1990s, which were going in a certain direction but the Russian people decided to make a course correction and to return to the path that is mostly suited to the national and the state interests of Russia.
We have been going through a similar experience ourselves. And now there is a moment of political complexity, even political tension, political struggle between these two tendencies that you experienced in the 1990s and at the dawn of the twenty first century. We are seeing in Sri Lanka today certain efforts on the part of certain players, which remind us of what happened during the so-called coloured revolutions, and the so-called Arab spring.
The President visited Russia last year and had a very successful meeting with President Putin, whom he had made it publicly known was his favourite world leader. I am very convinced that anything that has been retarding the pace of our agreements and bilateral cooperation will now be removed, and once this crisis is settled, we can move forward in accordance with agreements we have signed at a much faster pace, and with greater political cohesion.”
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