You are not alone, Commonwealth Secretary-General tells Sri Lankans

You are not alone, Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland told Sri Lankans on Friday.   

“I know that Sri Lanka continues to feel the weight of political and economic pressure. The pressure can be hard to bear. It can be destabilizing, isolating, and frightening, and I am here because I want every Sri Lankan to know that you are not alone. You are part of this special precious Commonwealth family” she said while addressing the Inaugural Lecture for Geopolitical Cartographers.   

The event was held on the theme of “The role of the Commonwealth in an Era of ‘Polycrisis’ “under the patronage of President Ranil Wickremesinghe, at the Colombo City Centre.   

Speaking further the Secretary-General said as a family we have responsibility for one another. A duty to each other, a shared love and a shared journey and you are not alone like the challenges you face.   

‘I travel all around the commonwealth and the wider world and whilst every country and its direct experience and circumstances are different, they are similar challenges everywhere and you may feel that you are living in a country under pressure, but the reality is that we are all living in a world under pressure. All of us are tightly bound by a tangled knot of crisis-spanning global systems. A world living with the social political and economic consequences of COVID-19,’ she said.   

Speaking at the session President Ranil Wickremesinghe said, ‘The first person to come here and to be invited here is none other than the Secretary General of the Commonwealth. She has been a good friend of Sri Lanka, a good friend of Asia, and Africa and she represents our thinking.   

Recalling the events on the eve of the Independence he said “there’s also another reason for her, the Commonwealth to be here. When we got independence, we first joined the Commonwealth. Our entry to the UN was blocked. It was only in 1955 that we became a member of the United Nations. But from the beginning, we have been with the Commonwealth.”