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
(Full Story)
Search This Blog
Back to 500BC.
==========================
Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, August 7, 2017
TINA……….Again
The recent plethora of events proves conclusively what many of us have been saying for longer than we care to remember: there is no alternative to the practice of the highest of moral and ethical codes and an unequivocal adherence to principle in governance.
Nothing less will suffice.
What
has emerged from the, oftentimes overstated, pages of what have
hitherto been treated as scurrilous scandal-sheets, is increasingly
displaying, not merely the ring of truth, but proving to be
understatements in quite a few instances. It is undeniable that that the
level of probity has to increase as the rank of those governing us goes
up. Instead, it appears that the level of arrogance and expressions of
entitlement verging on the absolute have begun to emerge with increasing
frequency among those with pretensions to leadership positions, if not
roles
If
the above sounds like “Pie in the sky (when you die)” let me, once
more, reiterate the fact that the qualities I have described are not
“airy fairy” concepts dreamt up by some writer of children’s bedtime
stories. They constitute the very lifeblood of any civilized and
democratic system of governance. If that sounds like its written in
stone, so be it because that has proven to be absolute fact in the
matter of governance of the kind that we all believe should be the
foundation on which any civilized society is built.
Particularly
in the case of a country whose economy is organized on the capitalist
model, the checks and balances that an ethical and moral code and the
exercise of principle is a sine qua non for justice and equity to
prevail and for the very survival of civilized society. The rule of law
to which at least lip service is paid by the vast majority of Sri
Lankans cannot exist unless the three elements I have described earlier
exist. Why
do I say this? Because the basis of capitalist society is the
exploitation of the many by the few and it is only the constraints
placed by structures based on the three elements I have described that
prevents something worse than the law of the jungle prevailing. The
reader needs to think about these concepts and not be distracted by the
philosophical gobbledegook spouted by those practicing fraud on a scale
never witnessed in Sri Lanka even in the dark days of “Empire.” Then, I
am certain, there will be very little room for the slightest doubt about
our current predicament and what needs to be done in the matter of a
complete house-cleaning in “The Land Like No Other.”
What
has made matters so much worse in the post-2015 period has been the
absolute abuse of Sri Lankans’ trust and the arrogance that has
accompanied it. After all, those who risked life and limb to throw the
Rajapaksa Rabble out of power did not do so to simply ensure that the
masks changed but the players practiced the same deceit and dishonesty.
To make matters even more intolerable, our rulers have chosen to treat
us as a bunch of cattle without any grey matter.
The
icing on the cake has been the increasing evidence of collusion by the
current lot with their predecessors in the matter of covering up the
sins of the Rajapaksa Regime in what is becoming increasingly evident as
a quid pro quo arrangement. In fact, some of us had, much earlier begun
to smell this particular rat but were naïve enough to believe that this
was a mere hiccup on the way to good governance, giving it the
opportunity to right the ship and create a society where equity and
justice prevailed. Sad to say, we under-estimated the new lot’s capacity for fiscal criminality.
If
all of those politicians who epitomize venality get away with treating
us with monumental contempt and we let them, we will have no one to
blame but ourselves for the inevitable precipitous slide deeper into the
abyss that the Rajapaksa Regime constructed so efficiently over the
period of a decade.