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The government also announced that the A9 Highway that connects the Jaffna Peninsula with the rest of the country would open for the transport of commercial items. The two announcements are likely to strengthen the north's economy and provide livelihood opportunities to thousands of people.

For many years, fishing in the north was tightly restricted due to security concerns. Visitors to Jaffna could see barbed wire fences along the beach, which restricted coastal communities’ access to the sea. This was a cost of war borne by the civilian population.

There were also strict regulations regarding fishing schedules and boat sizes. This was because the LTTE used the northern seas for smuggling arms and launching guerilla attacks on the Sri Lankan armed forces. There were many instances when the Sea Tigers, the naval arm of the LTTE, mingled their suicide boats with fishing boats and destroyed the navy’s sea crafts.

To make matters worse for the fishing community, the road link between the north and the rest of the country remained closed. For most of the past two decades, the A9 Highway connecting the Jaffna Peninsula with the mainland and markets in the south were closed as a large section of the road ran through LTTE-controlled territory. This denied the people of the north an economical way of transporting perishable goods.

These circumstances, inevitably, denied many people the right to pursue their occupations, crippling the economy of the northern communities. The resulting impoverishment is visible in the rundown appearance of towns in the Jaffna Peninsula, which was once a prosperous area.

To open the seas for fishing, the government then would have had to balance the concerns of security forces in order to win the hearts and minds of people in the north. One of the stark realities of the post-war phase has been the continuation of tight security measures throughout the country. Reports of sporadic anti-LTTE operations and discoveries of their arms caches and hit squads have pressed the population to demand continuation of security measures.

The positive role that an electoral process can play in moderating the harshness of governance and making government decision makers take action in the people's interests is evident in the government's decision to totally remove security controls on fishing in the North.

Opening the seas to the fisher community in the north and the A9 Highway to commercial traffic has occurred soon after the government's decision to hold local government elections for the Jaffna and Vavuniya town areas. These elections are important, as the people of the north do not have proper representation at this time.

The government has also stated that its future dealings will be with the elected representatives who emerge from the forthcoming electoral process. The government's decisions with regard to fishing and transport are likely to impress the electorate with its efforts to normalize life after the war and strengthen the appeal of political parties, which it has bundled in an alliance to contest the forthcoming local elections.

The value of holding regular elections is especially evident in plural societies of diverse and ethnically mixed populations. To win an election in such a society, contesting political parties have to appeal to all sections of that society, as every vote can make the difference between victory and defeat, especially in a closely contested election.

Even in a country where one community is a dominant majority, as in Sri Lanka, it is not safe for political parties to think they can win an election by relying solely on the votes of the majority community, as that majority vote can split for a variety of reasons, not least economic ones. This gives some degree of power to those sections of the population that are minorities and compel moderation in governance.

Democracy in Sri Lanka has been popularly and properly identified with the holding of free and fair elections at regular intervals. The ability and right of the people to elect their representatives, and to change them, has imparted a high degree of legitimacy to governance in Sri Lanka.

One reason the international community has been deferential to Sri Lanka's decisions regarding war and peace is because the government is democratically elected. Decisions taken by democratically elected leaders have the stamp of moral authority, which is difficult to attack.

The democratic strength of Sri Lanka’s political system, and the moderation it brings to governance, must not be lost by any subversion of the electoral system, including restrictions on any political party from campaigning freely and without fear in the north.

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(Dr. Jehan Perera is executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, an independent advocacy organization. He studied economics at Harvard College and holds a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. ©Copyright Jehan Perera.)