A cabinet of 108 Ministers…so What ?
(Mahinda Rajapakse has brought back to the Nation the pride it had lost)

By Charles Perera

I think it is human nature not to appreciate a person or thing for long. If a person comes forward and proposes a number of things to do which would be useful to the community or the country, we may not agree with the sum total of his proposals, but we should at least have the honesty to accept that some of the proposals are acceptable.

No doubt if we have a person who by the role he had played in the past comes back more or less with the same proposals we can reject them from the outset, because he had proved himself wrong once or many times before, and there is no reason to believe he has any new workable proposals to put forward.

But if the person is new and the proposals are sound and comes from a sincere desire to serve the community or the country, then we should give him a chance. The giving him a chance is to rally round him, until he puts in to effect his workable proposals, and they yield expected results.

Applying this, perhaps simple principle to the case of Mr.Mahinda Rajapakse, we have to see his proposals in the light of the most important problem that faces Sri Lanka which has to be attended first. In doing so we should lay aside our own personal prejudices. We have in Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse a political leader for the first time after SWRD Bandaranaike who courageously accepted to do his best to steer the country away from the perils of an adventure started by a group of terrorist strengthened and encouraged by foreign agents, and give a new meaning to unity and prosperity by bringing together all patriotic people of the country without their ethnic, religious or political differences.

Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse is new to being a President, and knew not what lies ahead of him. He started off believing that he will have the JVP along side to face the problems together with him. But the JVP dropped him when Mahinda least expected it. Yet he trusted in them, and he kept on inviting them to join rank. Bu the JVP traitors as they were let him down, but Mahinda never let them down. He leaves the door still open for them. If the JVP becomes wiser they will not hesitate to join him unconditionally even late as now.

Evaluating Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse from what he had been doing so far , we find that he has shown more than good results. He has cleared the East of the terrorist. He was able to build a very strong army of valiant soldiers ready to sacrifice their lives to the cause of the freedom from terrorism.
The ordinary people of the country, who are not led by political allegiances, are satisfied, and proud of belonging to this nation. A nation whose government has been able to fight back not only the terrorists, but all the nauseating foreigners who are always critical of us, patting on our
back and sympathising for our poverty and backwardness !

The President if he were to carry on the proposals put forward by him he had to rid himself of political opposition to his projects. The main opposition being the UNP he had to wisely manoeuvre the situation to win over the major opposition or eliminate their opposition. He was able to do the impossible by offering the 18 dissenting members of the UNP, Ministerial posts and with one stroke mastered the situation, and was able to net in the SLMM,the CWC and the JHU. The critics jumped into make a big issue of the unprecedented cabinet of 108 Ministers.

What is wrong in having a cabinet of 108 Ministers ? Where is it laid down how many Ministries a Cabinet should have ? There is nothing wrong in that and making it a world record is nothing to be ashamed of . The purpose justified the act of creating an excessive number of Ministeries. The fact is the President Mahinda Rajapakse is growing up. He is learning to govern and keeps his place of leadership. He has already proved himself wise and courageous.

The persons who have still not learnt their political lessons are the JVP, and Ranil Wickramasinghe faction of the UNP. Somawansa Amarasinghe rants like a mad man trying to give lessons to the President. But what wisdom or political experience has Somawansa Amarasinghe ? He is sitting in a cloud of his own political theory, which serves nothing.

If Somawansa Amarasinghe does not learn his politics from the President Mahinda Rajapakse he will only lead his coteries and the JVP- which had lot of possibilities to be useful to the President Mahinda Rajapakse, to political wilderness. As it is it appears their blind hatred will lead them to join hands with Sri Lanka’s well known political looser the also ran Ranil Wickramasinghe

Chandrika Kumaratung, sadly missed her chance in opposing Mr. Rajapakse, to maintain a political influence among the people of Sri Lanka. The President Rajapakse showed his human quality in having offered the Ministry of Tourism to Anura Bandaranaike in his first Cabinet, despite Anura Bandaranaike’s open campaign against him during the Presidential elections.

The President Mahinda Rajapakse again showed his political maturity in sacking the three Ministers Anura Bandaranaike, Managala Samaraweera and Sripathy Sooriyaaratchi. It was the only thing open for him to do, in the presence of three Ministers being critical of him behind his back.

At least two of the crossover Ministers Messrs Keheliya Rambukwella and Bogollgama have proved that the President was not wrong in his chise.