Class News
Russell Sunshine '64 on Sri Lanka
Russell Sunshine '64 is the Project Manager for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Invest-in-Peace Project, whose goal is to stimulate private investment in Sri Lanka. A consultant in international development with 35 years of professional experience in 30 countries, mostly in Asia, he renders policy advice to host governments and international organizations. His subject-matter expertise includes host-country management of foreign investment, know-how transfer, technical assistance, international public procurement, democratic transition, institutional development, and human-resource development.
He wrote the following piece for publication in the directory of our 40th reunion.
Two years into a ceasefire between the Sri Lankan Government and the
LTTE rebel army, we're steadily learning that successful peace-building
requires reculturation as much as reconstruction.
Sri Lanka's need for rehabilitation and upgrading of physical
infrastructure — roads and rails, sea and airports, power and telecomms
grids — is chronic and pressing. Ambitious repair programs are already
primed or launched, with generous funding by donor agencies.
But while less visible and quantifiable, other recovery constraints — what
we might label damage to "mental infrastructure" — are proving equally
pervasive. Polarized attitudes and harsh survival skills honed by 20 years
of civil war are now inhibiting Sri Lankan capacities to seize
post-conflict opportunities.
At the pinnacle of national politics, the two opposing parties and their
respective leaders, the Prime Minister and President, are bogged down in
acrimonious squabbles over short-term, partisan, even personal issues,
seemingly unable to find common interest in resuming suspended peace talks
with the LTTE. The upper echelons of Sri Lanka's once proudly non-partisan
civil service have been thoroughly politicized, skewing administrative
decisions, impeding procurement, and inviting corruption.
The LTTE's successful guerrilla leadership seems unsure how to evolve from
military authoritarianism to civil governance. Having set peace
deliberations in motion by accepting the Government's bedrock principle of
a single sovereign state, the rebel warriors appear demonstrably less
confident about how to cooperate in pluralistic forums to achieve their
goal of substantial regional autonomy within that federal envelope.
Other players are equally ill-prepared to collaborate imaginatively on
national rebuilding. In Sri Lanka's private sector, wartime coping has
produced national business leaders who are risk-averse, subsidy-demanding,
protectionist custodians of the status quo, the antithesis of innovative
entrepreneurs. The mass media, while refreshingly outspoken, are glaringly
polarized. Sensationalistic reports of sporadic ceasefire violations sell
more papers than measured analyses of protracted peace negotiations.
Virtually all primary and secondary schools are now segregated by ethnic
community, religion, and language. So today's young people, unlike their
parents, have never learned to cohabit in classrooms and on cricket
pitches.
Focusing on the private-sector dimension of peace-building, our UNDP
Invest-in-Peace Project works to integrate and vitalize Sri Lankan
business communities: sponsoring regular meetings among regional Chambers
of Commerce from both sides of the post-conflict line; bringing local
business leaders into candid dialogue with Colombo-based policy makers and
shapers; boosting those leaders' confidence and competence through
workshops in presentation and lobbying skills; organizing an Osaka Forum
where regional Sri Lankan business leaders can confer face-to-face with
Japanese counterparts on trade and investment opportunities.
Changing attitudes through changing behavior will be a long slog. But
cross-cultural cooperation and private-sector pragmatism can be powerful
engines to help pull Sri Lanka out of its polarized, dispirited swamp.