A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, July 13, 2017
Sri Lanka: No baffling confusion on nation building
The Government needs to appoint qualified, high calibre personnel, who are very much available in the land, and not political rejects and other such like, to represent Sri Lanka abroad as ambassadors and attend to all the affairs that need official attention.
( July 13, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Almost
fifty percent of all politicians, as they are far too uneducated,
lacking in intellectual depth and foresight on national destiny and
uncaring of it, are incapable of understanding the complicated problems
confronting the Nation, which have been left as an unenviable legacy by
the corrupt regime of the Rajapaksas. The other fifty percent seem to be
so self-absorbed that they are more interested in power and privileges
that they too are blinded by present enjoyment, even though the people
are made to face present and future calamity due to the government’s bad
governance, negligence and the ministerial and bureaucratic
administration’s incompetence and inefficiency.
It is shocking that the government has made itself a ruling clique that
is taking the people for granted. They are not connected to the people.
They seem to be hoping to hang on to power in spite of their forgetting
the promise given to the people to punish those lambskin wearing wolves
clothing and posing as patriots, who have swindled the wealth of the
people and banked the money abroad. They are also ignoring the rascals
in their own midst, as the scale of robbery and corruption is supposed
to be a few percentages less. They are foolishly banking on the 62% of
the vote that brought them to power. They do not observe that the people
are getting increasingly disappointed by the day, not only about the
major issues and problems facing the country, but because these problems
are getting more complicated due to the ineptitude, indecisiveness and
blatant favoritism that Government ministers indulge in. They are unable
to uphold law and order as they are beholden to their erstwhile friends
who are indeed national fiends; some ministers do not have the ability
to act justly and fairly. The way they act and direct their subordinates
disqualify them from governing. Thereby, they show that they are also
clumsy and gawky individuals foisted on the people who have a right to a
better deal.
Leaving people frustrated
In the meantime, the people are getting harassed in their day to day
dealings with government departments, provincial councils and pradeshiya
sabhas. Those who are to serve the people – the clerks and officials
may be under-qualified chaps who may have been politically recruited.
They do not seem to know their job and are incompetent. They seem to
have a queer mentality, thinking they are there to forestall the people
and send them from pillar to post and not to serve them. They seem to
think that the people who come to them are possible cheats, intent on
outwitting them. Getting things done in a government department has
become an unending annoyance to the people ever since the brown sahibs
took over. They do not think that people come to the bureaus of the
government to get things done properly and according to law. They do not
facilitate matters for the people; they complicate them and lead people
to frustration and disgust.
The general opinion among the people is absolutely powerless and
helpless – except at the polling booth – that to get anything done, even
legitimately, you have to know somebody working in a particular office
or know someone who knows someone in that office. If that someone that
you know happens to be a minister you can even rob an elephant and keep
it in your backyard, barge into a ministry and create mayhem, or destroy
a house of prayer and worship or break any law and go scot free. That
is because, in this Country, whichever party governs, the ministers are
not only above the law, they can bend the law, kick the law and make the
law an ass, thereby making even a minister one who begets asses. One
can be sure that all of it will also end up as a negative vote to the
government at any election that may come, if the Government does not
look sharp.
Stop gallivanting
Decent governments – we haven’t had one for sixty years – do not need
water canons, baton charges and gunshots to govern. What is necessary is
for each and every member of the government to be honest. People should
not elect thugs and louts, even though they have gone to Law College
and scraped through, to govern. Governing should be by wise people, not
swindling rogues. Any peoples’ government needs to put before the people
its long term and short term policies and programmes of government.
Both main parties have been messy in this regard, making their manifesto
declarations a wordy, meaningless one, intended for propaganda purposes
and to fool the people, and one they never pay attention to after the
election. Even a former PM has admitted to that.
The Government needs to appoint qualified, high calibre personnel, who
are very much available in the land, and not political rejects and other
such like, to represent Sri Lanka abroad as ambassadors and attend to
all the affairs that need official attention. After all, they are well
paid, well assisted and are accredited with great ceremony just for
that. Then there will be no need for ministers and MPs to leave the
country and gallivant to all the five continents on the slightest
pretext. They should attend to their duty at home.
It is because of their inability to do so that what needs to be done is
left undone, gets neglected and hundreds of telephone calls and
documents ranging from documentary evidence of acts of parliament,
property deeds, Grama Sevaka’s certificates, water-electricity-telephone
bills, identity cards, to get a just and fair consideration of a
citizen’s request. People begin to question, ‘What the hell is this?’
President Premadasa, who could be met by the people at ‘Sucharitha’ at 4
o’clock in the morning, answered all letters and tried to see that the
government bureaucracy assisted the people without harassing them
unnecessarily.
Make FCID strong, permanent
If the President, Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers do not
have the capacity to understand that due to the present debt crisis the
country faces, it is not right, just and fair to import luxurious
vehicles for the ministers when the people are facing many a problem in
their day to day living, then the Cabinet does not have persons of
common sense who know the sentiments and the feelings of the people, and
the meaning of the democratic option they made at the last presidential
and parliamentary elections. Importing seems to be postponed for a more
opportune time!
In this context it needs to be asked as to what happened to the many
Mercedes Benzes that were imported for the CHOGM event only a few years
ago. What has happened to the luxury vehicles used by the President,
Prime Minister and Ministers and their deputies of the ousted regime?
Did they take them home? If they did, why not get them to account for
those vehicles? Or, is the ruling government indifferent to these
matters and soft-peddling on them, and acting in collusion to protect
fellow political wrong-doers? The Government needs to not only not
abolish but to have a permanent and strongly empowered FCID to monitor
and fight corruption; it should be strengthened to bring the wrong-doers
to book and punish public criminal activities, and thereby clean up the
structures of government. Failure on these matters shows that the
Government itself is tolerating corruption because of corrupt elements
in its own ranks.
Follow up public declarations
Besides, the members of the government need to speak in one voice and
communicate a common policy to the people. Let the people be listened to
and heard. Let your policies be tailored to the democratic options of
the people, and not to a vociferous minority with their naked wish of
bringing back and reinstalling the ousted far more corrupt regime, to
disregard the people and continue to indulge in corruption and ruin the
future of this country
Before giving good direction to the country, the President and Prime
Minister should show a strong bond of solidarity and hold out a common
vision to the people. The Government needs clear thinking to do a
thorough clean up and restate its policies, not in ambiguous and
partisan political strategies but in flawless bi-partisan statements
that make policies clear and show they are all prioritizing the Nation
before their respective political parties. That is how it should be,
always. Then it needs to meet the people and in unity communicate the
message to all of them. Ask all the people to be truly patriotic and
think of all of Sri Lanka first; and not just power-seeking egotistical
individuals, parties, provinces and parts of it. No doubt support will
follow if government members do exemplify what they proclaim to the
people. They have a right to and need a sane, just and stable government
that indeed governs. There will then be no baffling confusion over
Nation Building.