A TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE? A PRELIMINARY COMMENT ON THE NMSJ’S ROAD MAP

by Asanga Welikala 

- on 07/28/2014 

There was a remarkable image in the news recently. It was from the meeting of the Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera’s National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ) at which a ‘road map’ for the abolition of the executive presidency was launched on 24th July 2014. Seated on the front row were Ranil Wickramasinghe, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, Rajavarothayam Sampanthan, Sarath Fonseka, Shirani Bandaranayake and Sunil Handunetti. To the extent these individuals represent the spectrum of Sri Lankan political opinion, then the proposition that the executive presidency should be abolished should, notionally, garner a very comfortable majority in the next presidential election. There is of course many a slip twixt cup and lip, but perhaps this is the first glimmer of hope in sometime that the Mongol hordes of the Rajapaksa regime that are laying waste to our democratic inheritance might finally be stopped.
A Triumph of Hope Over Experience a Preliminary Comment on the Nmsj’s Road Map by Maria Anderson