By Charles.S.Perera

Nearly 7 million people have elected Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the President of Sri Lanka on the 16 November,2019 approving his Presidential election manifesto  Saubhaagye Dakma or the Ten  Principles of Inclusive Governance. According to democracy we claim to practice in Sri Lanka, all the people of Sri Lanka belonging to different political parties whether they voted or not for  Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the President of Sri Lanka have to accept the verdict of the majority of the people, and accept  Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the President of Sri Lanka and his political manifesto as the political  plan of development of Sri Lanka for the next five years. 

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End of last year saw Sajith Premadasa pushing himself  to the maximum, claiming to have in him  dynamic power, and genes of the dead to rule Sri Lanka as its President,  as no President  had ever done  before. 

But with all those unrestrained outbursts he was defeated at the election and got blown off like an empty  balloon. He then disappeared from circulation”, and  the people wondered  what had happened to him.  However, he next showed up as the leader of the opposition in the parliament chasing the media personnel from entering his office. Sajith Premadasa  who says he  is democratric does not seem to have  accepted the President of Sri Lanka elected with an overwhelming majority as his President as well, and showed that he is all out to make governing difficult for the President, by refusing to pass the vote on account presented to the Parliament by the government.  

After dissolution of the Parliament and a general  election was called for the election of the members of the Parliament,  Sajith Premadasa reappeared before the public , as a leader of a Political party  Samagi jana balavegaya, this time asking the people  to elect him to be the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. He has refurbished his old speeches he used last year for his failed presidential election campaign,  and renders them with revived mechanical vigors he claims to have,  swearing once again to the public in his election campaign meetings, that he still has those machine power and genes of the dead to carry him forward and if fortune would smile a little more brighter this time to rule the country”, as the Prime Minister !! 

If what is said about democracy still holds good, one does not get elected as a Prime Minister, but the President of the country appoints a member of the Parliament who in his opinion is most likely to command the confidence of the Parliament, in terms of the Constitution of the country,   Therefore  it is presumptuous  for Sajith Premadasa to go round asking the people to elect him to be the Prime Minister, or as a matter of fact even Ranil Wickramasinghe, or Mahinda Rajapakse to do so.

However, Sajith Premadasa relying on the dynamism of his youth, and the genes of the dead he claims to have in his possession,  recently answered questions at a public show in  his best British Council English accent, where he ignored the President of Sri Lanka as a mere individual in a country where there is a tripartite rule under the Constitution. And explained how  he is going to implement the election manifesto he has just launched.

But tripartite or no, the President of Sri Lanka has been elected by a large majority of the people of the country to carry out his Presidential election manifesto, and the same people at the same time rejected Sajith Premadasa from having anything to do with the Presidency of Sri Lanka. 

In such a situation Sajith Premadasa if elected has only to work with the elected President of the Sri Lanka His Excellency Gotabaya Rajapakse, who has already started the implementation of his Manifesto – The Ten Principles of Inclusive Governance. Sajith Premadasa has no alternative, but to fall in line with the Democratic System and wait to see what  His Excellency the President of Sri lanka Gotabaya Rajapakse will decide after the general election of the Parliament. Will Sajith Premadasa be the Prime Minister ? Que sera sera….

However, Podujana Peramuna  is asking the people to give them a two third majority in the parliament at the elections,  to have an edge over other political parties to expect that its leader may be appointed as the Prime Minister. That is a wiser move, than that of  Sajith Premadasa who blinded by Prime Ministerial ambition seems already to have taken the role of  an executive Prime Minister perhaps dreaming once elected,  to relegate his excellency  the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to a role of a ceremonial President. Ranil Wickramasinha,  not wanting to play a second role to Sajith Premadasa in front of the people, also claims the  position of the Prime Minister in the next Parliament !!! 

It is all a guessing game for Sajith’s supporters and those of Ranil, which election manifesto is Sri Lanka going to implement ?  But they have all forgotten that nearly 7 million people have accepted the Presidential political manifesto of His Excellency the President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa-the  Vision of Prosperity or  the Ten  Principles of Inclusive Governance

Sajith Premadasa seems to be at the peak  of pushing his youth, dynamos, and the genes of the dead he possesses. His aim now is to bait voters- UNP’s old tactic which it used successfully to fool the voters to vote against President Mahinda Rajapakse at the Presidential election in 2015, which was to promise a salary increase of Rs.30000,00 to government servants.  That worked, and Sajith Premadasa seems to hold onto the same old tactic   this time,  promising everyone  an allowance of Rs.20,000,00, and Ranil Wickramasinhe promising Rs.10,000,00.

Rightly speaking,  the Commissioner of Elections should prohibit candidates making  election promises of  financial aid or grants if elected. It is as good as giving  bags of cements, or roof sheets. If the Election Commission stopped giving appointments to employ unemployed  graduates as he said it is  against the Election Law, so should be promises of  financial aid  or allowances  if elected. 

The people should look at these parliamentary candidates like Sajith Premadasa, or Ranil Wickramasinghe as potential trouble makers in a future parliament where the President has presented a workable election manifesto to modernise Sri Lanka bringing it out of the mess into which several of the former governments which had acted for their own  or for the benefit of their clan members  rather than to help the country and its people as a whole. After 72 years,  it is time Sri Lanka  agrees for a common plan  of development without different political parties proposing their own, each wanting to take credit for the final outcome.

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna has formed an alliance and also present their own political manifesto  asking people to give them a chance to carry out their proposals. That means JVP and its alliance of political partners are asking the people to allow them to try  out their plan to make Sri Lanka  their guinea-pig” to see whether their proposed method would help in the development of the country. Is it that the people want ? Allow political parties to carry out experiments  with the country and its people to see whether their methods will work better  than those previous methods that had been tried and mostly failed ?

Is not that what Sri Lanka had been doing since  independence ?  Sajith Premadasa as much as Ranil Wickramasinha have not tried out any plans before and got results to show the people that they have the best method to develop the country.  The result of these political experimenting left us with a thirty year of separatist terrorism,  and today with a  country in a financial cricis with an economic groth less than that of Afghanistan the result of a four years of Yahapalanaya  in the midst ofa pandemic. 

Until 2005 no one came forward with any suggestion to end the terrorism and put Sri Lanka onto a path of development. Now Sajith Premadasa, having failed to have been elected the President wants to be the Prime Minister,  to carry out the same programme of development he proposed when he campaigned as the Presidential Candidate.   Sajith Premadasa as the Presidential candidate had to wait a long time to put forward his election manifesto which came much later than that of his  rival candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa,  and  Sajith Premadasa’s political manifesto some found  repeating in different terms  certain parts of  his rival Candidate Gotabhaya Rajpaksa’s manifesto.  Sajith Premadasa has no political vision and therefore  cannot produce any valid workable development plan.

His Excellency the President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was  and is a practical man.  He had gone through life the hard way as a battle hardened soldier knocking on the doors of death most of the time. And he proved after he was entrusted with the Defense Ministry as its Secretary that he can work with different people with different experience and get them all together to successfully end the terrorist war that lasted for thirty long years without any one even making a positive suggestion to end it.

Sarath Fonseka was in the helm of the Armed Forces in 2004 and was on the verge of retirement  when Gotabaya Rajapaksa was called to be the Secretary of Defence. It was Gotabaya Rajapakse who got Sarath Fonseka back to the army and made him  the Commander of it. But  Sarath Fonseka lacks the gratitude to accept it. But Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a silent man who does not want to take credit for what he does. To him it does not matter whether one appreciates him or not, but  he wants a job of work well done, generous  to give credit for it.

Another criticism leveled against the Government  by the Sajith Premadasa, and also coming from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna  is against promoting Sinhala Buddhism which for them  is racism. It is a wrong understanding of historical reality.  

Being Sinhala Buddhist is not being against Tamils , Muslims or any one else, it signifies a cultural trait of the people and an inane generosity  which makes Sinhala Buddhists a friendly people who are ready to accept into their  fold those who demand acceptance. 

It was that Sinhala Buddhist trait which saw even during the terrorist war” Sri Lanka Armed Forces sending lorry loads of food items to the people in war zones, the army saving thousands of people in distress kept as human shields by the terrorists, and the Sinhala Buddhists in the South sending to those people in refugee camps in the North packets of rice, clothes and dry rations almost on a regular basis. 

Lastly,  Sajith Premadasa complains that the government is only promoting a family,  Rajapaksa family.  This may sound so, and it  is an easy target of attack . But if one looks at that family objectively without any bias, one may realise that  it is not so. In a way Sri Lanka is fortunate in having had that Rajapakse family. It seems that Rajapakse  family has a natural ability  to attract people,  make that family  a refuge of safety, a family that has the  ability to foresee and deliver what makes others happy, giving them an assurance of peace.

What other family in Sri Lanka could make that claim ?