Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rwqajapakse’s office has ordered the closure of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) by the end of July, according to SCOPP Director General Rajiva Wijesinghe.
“We have not been told of any specific reason for the decision although we have been discussing such a scenario since last week,” Wijesinghe said.
“I don’t want to speculate on the decision neither comment on it or appeal for a reconsideration.”
He added that SCOPP was going ahead with the process of closing down but the future of the SCOPP staff was uncertain since most of them were employed on a contract basis. He said about half of the operational staff had been laid off a few weeks ago and it was still not clear whether they would be absorbed into public service.
Wijesinghe said that despite his assurances two weeks ago that SCOOP would not close down the decision on the future of SCOPP was not in his hands but that of the presidential secretariat.
The All Party Representative Committee (APRC) set up in June, 2006 to work out proposals to solve ethnic conflict in
“APRC has been given one month notice to complete its deliberations and submit a final document,” Wijesinghe told the media Tuesday, June 30.
Other alternatives would be decided if the APRC fails to conclude its activities within the stipulated time, he added.
The SCOPP has been the main force behind co-coordinating the APRC sessions providing translators and interpreters.
Political sources said SCOPP's demise certainly leaves the future of APRC tenuous. The axe is likely to fall on APRC's neck at the end of the month, sources added.
The farcical game of APRC was repeatedly exposed by political commentators in the past. Prof. Kumar David in an opinion column on February 2008 said: "The Interim Report is a sham for two reasons; the Committee set aside its pervious 18 months and 63 meetings of deliberations and trotted out the Presidential diktat pretending it was its own finding, and secondly the APRC is collaborating in a deception game since this interim palliative is all that the government will ever want out of these worthies; the government will sell this interim hogwash to India and the Co-Chairs."
The SCOPP was established on 06 February 2002 with the approval of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Bernard Goonetilake was the first Director General from 2000 to 2004, Jayantha Dhanapala from 2004-2005 and Palitha Kohona from 2006 to 2007. Since 2008 Rajiva Wijesinghe holds the post of Director General.