BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Political and economic issues are common facets in any country in the modern world.  It is apparent that people in any democratic country use to cry for quick solutions to political, economic, social and cultural predicaments, but they also know that it is highly unlikely finding active solutions for problems as quick as possible. People of Sri Lanka should face the problems and need gradually find the way to get out of problems using intuitive techniques rather than relegating to an insecure risky situation.  Early 1980s, Sri Lanka faced to the most vicious problem of terrorism and different governments attempted to find a solution to the problem listening to international advocates and the elected Rajapaksa regime in 2005 found a long-lasting solution. When the same regime was attempting to identify right solutions for economic and social problems the yahapalana government elected unexpectedly in 2015 and beguiled people about unknown heaven and now information in Sri Lanka bring round that known devil was better for solving political and economic issues than the unknown angels of the yahapalana regime.

The campaign for political changes of Yahapalana regime aimed at a vital issue to constitute a good governance system in the country that could eliminate corruptions with a view to creating a procedural superiority in relation to public management arena. It has been critical issue in country for more five decades, which needed agreement from all political parties by all party conference despite a hidden conspiracy against China.  In fact, the aim of changes had a good element that people of the country has been expecting since independence in 1948, but it was not creating colonial retapes against the development needs and taking revenges from only the Rajapaksa regime.  However, the expected changes did not convince to people at least two three years before the presidential election in 2015 to attract the wider support of the community and critically evaluate the background of the jockeys of the yahapalana movement. The practical results showed that the policies of Yahapalanaya were contradictory to the good governance concept of the United Nations and the motivation of changes secretly focused to a regime change specially to take revenge from Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa for unknown reasons.  In fact, common people of the country did not expect hidden motives and strategies when changing the regime in 2015.  The leadership of the regime changing movement was secretly motivated by offering bribery style of incentives by certain countries, which were directly against the United Nations Policies. The transparency of the regime changing movement was a necessary precondition for the understanding of common people.

After the beginning of changes with the presidential election in 2015, manipulators of the good governance have found faults with the leader of the yahapalana president as he openly violated democratic traditions and rules of good governance, which were fundamentally accepted principles of Western democratic society.  This violation incurred before electing the yahapalana regime in 2015 and people in all over the world disappointed with actions of the Yahapalana leader. People were also disappointed with the use of power by the president of Sri Lanka as his rulings were directly against democratic rules and now Western democratic advocates can’t use Sri Lanka as an antecedent example for the establishment of good governance and for the future plans for regime changes in the world.

The concept of regime change had been used by Soviet Regime in many Asian, African and Latin American countries using different techniques, and American and Europe camp used by democratic way using elections or justifying military dictatorships.  It is assumable that China and India too have used this method when there will be ruling regimes in neighbouring countries against their economic and social plans.  That is why many people suspect about the regime of Imran Khan.

Although it is quite difficult to successfully implement good governance, there are many positive features and is an excellent concept for administration in any country especially for Asian, African, Latin American countries, which are obviously involved in corrupt practices.  At the beginning, advocates of good governance in Sri Lanka did not know about the leader they selected and the leader did not know about personnel, who were surrounding him. The leader was purely motivated by the reason that he was not given the prime minister post in the Rajapaksa regime.   The nomination paper of Mr Sirisena for the presidential election was signed by an unknown person and later he was arrested for an offence of cheating a Taiwan bank. The Central Bank Bond scam happened soon after the election of Mr Sirisena as executive President. The Prime Minister and the members of the cabinet were changed overnight without an election using the presidential power, which was the most rated concept of yahapalana advocates. That is how the yahapalanaya began and the method of beginning good governances clearly showed that it has broken the principles of good governance.

After a year of the beginning of yapalana changes, it seemed that the participated political parties and the members of the civil society organizations perceived many faults with the leaders of previous Rajapaksa regime without convincing evidence, based on gossips and people disappointed with the answers of the government for various corruptions that believed to be committed by the members and the administrators of the previous regime. Many cases were recently analysed by C.A Chnadraprema showed that Yahapalana regime attempted to mislead people using the administrative discretion as criminal cases, despite the administrative legal precedent as Lord Green MR explained in a judgement of British Supreme Court.  A significant principle of Criminal law, Mens Rea is not provable in many cases but they treated as criminal cases. The establishment special high courts against democratic traditions and appointment of selected judges and transferring cases to the courts established for special purposes with recommendations of cabinet members of yahapalana regime contrary to the accepted judicial procedures in the country since colonial era halcyon that yahapalana regime sticked to a dictatorship than good governance principles.

General public in Sri Lanka feels that yahapalana politicians have misunderstood reforms expected by voters or they have willingly concealed reform agenda for bluffing Western countries.  Some academics believe that certain powerful politicians of yahapalana regime have misconceived the expected changes interpreting the mandate received in 2015, was to take revenge from Rajayapaksa family.  The rallying voters in meetings participated by Mr Rajapaksa in local government election in 2018 also gave a clear message that voters in 2015 elections did not expect to take revenge from Mr Rajapaksa or disable his ability or prospect of future leadership and his services to the country by giving severe punishments to him.  The looking for dead rats in public offices through appointed presidential commissions, would not find concrete evidence for litigating the past regime for punishments as the director general of Bribery and Corruption Commission recently stated that commission finding may not be concrete evidence that warrant to litigation of public servants and punish them and the commission inquiry might be show off to public that the government is acting for yahapalana promises. Certain members of parliament who spoke in political platform of yahapalana in 2015 have disappointed and although they were in political platforms and became members of the United National Party, the party leadership and the big hands of the government don’t listen to them and they have become a rubber stamp of UNP.

As soon as the yahapalana office assumed duties they have done serious mistakes which were badly affected the economy especially for uncontrollable inflation, depreciating Sri Lanka’s currency unit, economic growth, unemployment and many areas.  At that time the leaders of good governance did not expect immediate consequences believing that economic conditions of the country would be changed, but after three and a half years in the power, many advocates of good governance have realized what went wrong and many attempts to get away from the concept of yahapalana.

After one year of the appointment of yahapalana government, a news briefing of educated Buddhist clergies in Colombo highlighted several vital issues, which were believed to be currently dominating in the country.  They could be succinctly indicated that (a) the plan to abolish the unitary status of the country through the proposed constitutional reforms, which suggest to convert Sri Lanka to a secular state abolishing the prominence status to Buddhism (b) the undermining of the national security of the country giving for an international pressure of India and Western block, (c) Securing conventional agriculture and plantation industry based economic sector. (d) reduction of lawful right of trade unions and (e) conspiracy against the national unity of the country.  Any analyst with a broader knowledge and background of Sri Lanka could look at these issues from different point of views and the current developments in the country display that people have no trust on the regime change and people want to re-elect the Rajapaksa regime. After three and half years of administration, no issue has been resolved by the yahapalana regime.

These issues are inherent problems of the country since the era of colonial administration and the issues originated as a repercussion of the actions of colonial rulers without listening to majority Sinhala aspiration. Everybody must honestly admit the highlighted above issues by educated Buddhist clergies were far-reaching and the yahapalana government should have understood that they need sustainable solutions within a democratic framework, consistent with the expectation of Sinhala majority, which represents 76% of current population of the country. The real situation in Sri Lanka is that if Sinhala people are united they can establish a regime without any support from the minority, which represents only 24% of votes in the country.  However, the hidden objective of the yahapalana regime was to divide Sinhala majority and tract 50% of minority votes and establish a shaky regime, which cannot find sustainable solution to the underpinning political, economic and social problems of the country.

When it looks on these issues except the trade union related issue, it is quite significance to read the forward of JR Jayewardene of Sri Lanka, a political biography written by KM de Siva and Howard Wriggins.  From these two authors, who wrote the forward to the book was unknown, but assumes that Prof KM de Silva might have written it, as he was a great scholar in relation to historical issues of Sri Lanka.  The forward of the book must be read by all politicians and administrators.