By Charles. S.Perera

It is not to insult the President Maithripala Sirisena that we pose the question, whether  the President  of Sri Lanka is a fool ? It had been apparently so from the day he left SLFP some where in November, 2014, to become the common Presidential candidate  of the opposition led by the UNP.

Since then he had been acting as a fool taking second place to Ranil Wickramasinghe the leader of the UNP whom he  appointed unconstitutionally  as the Prime Minister, to show his gratitude for his having picked him up to put him on the Presidential Chair.

He is a fool to have left  the SLFP and President Mahinda Rajapakse even if he were to say that Mahinda Rajapakse  was a difficult man to work with. Because if MahindaR was as difficult as that, it was because had reason to be so. Firstly he was new as the President and secondly  he had so many unsolved, problems of his predecessors and terrorism to deal with before any thing else. He had to trust every one around him and those in his cabinet. In doing so he may have allowed abuses by his Ministers and others , as in the face of terrorism he had to keep together even a disorderly groups  sitting around him.

Fortunately,  he had a brother who he could trust to the hilt, to be put in charge of solving  the problem with the terrorists. He may have also trusted his Cabinet of Ministers and more so his Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena, who was also the Secretary of the SLFP of which Mahinda R was the President. But Sirisena proved himself to be a dishonest fool.ealth who was also the Secretary of the SLFP the reins of which he had taken over

Therefore, isn’t there a  question for us to pose whether  Maithripala Sirisena the President we have is a fool,  when we saw him leaving the most successful President Sri Lanka ever had, who eliminated  terrorism and develop the country to be a modern sovereign State, and if he had been still in power he would have made Sri Lanka not second to most of the  developed countries of the world

And for what did this foolish man Maithriplala Sirisena allowed himself to be lured by a angry hateful foolish woman, and Ranil Wickramasinghe who had lost nearly 30 elections , and  was sitting aside   fearing to contest a Parliamentary election lest he would fail again.

Maithripala Sirisena when he was still with Mahinda R would have known that RanilW will not make a trustworthy Prime Minister, having seen how he turned his back to both the President Chandrika K ,and the Parliament to betray the country by signing  a CFA with the terrorist Prabhakaran when he was the Prime Minister of  President Chandrika K’s government ?

How strange that this man Maithreepala Sirisena trusted the UNP leader, who was not unknown to him for what he had been accused of in the Batalanda Commission Report, and subsequent raid of the Army Safe House in Aturugiriya millennium City ?

Maithreepala Sirisena deceived the SLFP and its President, and also the SLFP voters who elected him to the Parliament.

All that for what ?

Was it to become a name plate President, with his Prime Minister deciding on every thing affecting the country, such as taking over the Ministry  in Charge of Banks from the Finance Minister, appointing a citizen of Singapore  Arjun Mahendran as the Governor of the Central Bank and helping him steal the bank through issue of Bonds , negotiating  an ECTA with India, and  seeing the growing opposition of the people against it changing the  tactics by   turning his back to the Parliament as he did with the CFA, to sign a Trade Agreement with Singapore ?

What does the President know about the Trade Agreement of 1500pages issued  only in English signed by his Prime Minister with Singapore, which even the Prime Minister himself had not  the time to read when he signed it ?

This Trade Agreement with Singapore is  for all purposes the same as the proposed  ECTA with India.  If there is a difference it is only in the transport of material and services and personnel from India to Singapore and then from Singapore to Sri Lanka using the Agreement Singapore has with India and now with Sri Lanka.

Maithripala Sirisena having come to the opposition and being elected as the President,  should have had the guts to tell his Prime Minister  RanilW to do nothing without telling him, and to stop the Prime Minister taking decisions on his own, which have now  resulted in a fast track to bankruptcy.

These acts of the Prime Minister  since  Maithripala Sirisena  was  elected President of Sri Lanka on the 8^th January,2015, were each a slap on the face of the President . The only possibility left with the  President MaithripalaS is to appoint a Commission  when the news papers report them, and the opposition begins to clamour.

If Maithripala Sirisena as the President had  atleast a peanut size brain he should have told Ranil W when he was appointing him as his Prime Minister  to continue Mahinda Chintanaya until they are able to start there own plans for the future development of the country.  Of course when he left SLFP he may not have expected the Presidency of the Party  to have been thrust upon him. Mahinda R, had to do it as by then the ambitious senior SLFPs Sarath Amunugama, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Rajitha Senaratne etc. were already creeping to stand by the newly elected President.

But those SLFP seniors were unable to give the new President  the strength to stand on his own and say no” loud and clear to RanilW’s  fanatism to erode the Sovereignty of Sri Lanka. A wise President would not have allowed the Prime Minister to propose the leader of the TNA as the leader of the opposition. He should not have allowed  the Prime Minister to  propose Karu Jayasuriya to be the speaker, Mangala Samaraweera to  the Foreign Ministry and Ravi Karunanayake to the Minister of Finance.  Maithripala Sirisena when he was with Mahinda Rajapakse knew all about these miscreants.

The UNP is continuing its disastrous trajectory for the destruction of Sri Lanka of which Maithripala Sirisena became the Ptesident on the 8^th January,2015.But this foolish President still holding onto the now dilapidated Yahapalanaya, continues to allow his Prime Minister to do what he wants , while he is satisfied  making speeches and calling for hangmen to hang the drug dealers.

The latest is that the Yahapalanaya is planning to give thousands of hectares of land from Badulla,Monaragala and Ambara to a US Based multinational company to cultivate sugarcane (CeylonToday of 17/08/2018)

This is the worst that this Yahapalanaya Government would be doing to Sri Lanka by giving  land to grow sugar cane to a US Base multinational, as it is well known with various types of US multinationals Companies the US had turned  developing countries into miserable Bananna States depending on the whims and fancies of these companies.  Further  sugar plantations are a crop destructive to the soil and it should be stopped at any cost as it is  not suitable  to an agrarian society like ours.

The foolish President will only wake up when things have gone too far and the only alternative he would have then would be to appoint a Commission  and forget about it there after. How many Commissions has this President appointed and has he taken action on the Commission reports ?

While  the President Sirisena makes speeches and travel abroad, his Prime Minister is doing lot of damage to Sinhala Buddhists. He goes round saying that there is no people called Sinhala as they are a mixture including seafaring sailors, and the sea merchants. He also said at a ceremony at Church of Madhu that Sri Lanka should be a multi-religious country as that is the means to reconcile with the Tamils. Of course the President may not have still read about it in the papers , or may have thought a comment unnecessary.

The President has placed great trust in his NGO  supporters and readily  accepts their advice. An observant President would have taken into account hat his Yahapalanaya government has done nothing substantial  during the last three year period, of which it can be proud. They have only pushed the country into a deeper debt trap  than that they had when they took over the government on the 8^th January,2015.

If the President Sirisena can depend on whatever  wisdom he still has, he may at least now think seriously of forgetting his false pride to  come to an arrangement with  President Mahinda Rajapakse to govern the country together.