By Charles S.Perera

The young Minister of  President Francois Holland Emmanuel Macron at 39 contested the 2017 French Presidential election on his own without the backing of the recognised Socialist or Republican parties  to win  the Presidential election with the resounding majority of 62 percent. He has influenced at least two not so young persons without a political background to announce that they would be  candidates for the Sri Lanka Presidential election of 2020.

But President Emmanuel Macron who swam into French Presidency in the  flood waters of hope  and enthusiasm of the French population , has become today the  most unpopular President,  and  the same people who with overwhelming enthusiasm hailed him  as the  President of France in 2017 have risen up today from all classes and professions, from all over France wearing yellow jackets calling him for goodness sake to resign.

It was a short lived marriage between a non-political inexperienced politician as a President  and the people who had lot of hope for a new comfortable experience of  life under a new President with new ideas,  which seem to be ending as suddenly as it rose.

What lesson does  this give to Sri Lanka. The people cannot place hope on political leaders , without political experience, nor with those who talk a lot looking for benefit of power for themselves, and others without lack of love and sincere patriotism to shamelessly rob the country to  build their own lives and those of their kith and kin.

The UNP and its partners may have political experience but we saw in the past three years where their political experience has led the country.  JVP make lot of noise and make lot of promises, can people hope they will do what they promise or despite their ideas once they come to power will the people of Sri Lanka face the same deception of the French people who voted  for untried promises which fell like logs into a flowing river.

Sri Lanka is not a virgin damsel, but an experienced mature old woman  who had gone through 2600 years or  more of a life through a glorious a past, followed by dependence and misery.  Sri Lanka today is capable of taking her destiny into her own hand , if it is entrusted to a capable experienced and already tried political leaders, without depending  on the rich and powerful, but with wisdom and serenity to accept what is good,  rejecting  what is bad to find the middle path of development into which we were introduced  first by the wisdom of a wise woman Sirimavo Bandaranayake who took the path of non-alignment.

Sri Lanka though became independent of colonialism seventy years ago, it began  tasting real independence with SWRD Bandaranaike in 1956, and after that we groped between hope and deception until we found in 2005 a real patriot with experience, determination and patriotism  who first saved us from  certain division and destruction by the  evil force of terrorism which lasted for thirty years with considerable loss of life, psychological loss of a will to exist, made to live stressfully under fear of a lurking death.

Developing countries as opposed to the countries of the West, are hampered in their development  by the constant interference by the West and making their own plans  of development for our countries. If we step out of their planned development processes  the price we may have to pay is immeasurable. This process is to a great extent supported  by our own politicians as we saw in the past three years, and to get out  of the clutches of  the West is not an easy task.

Many developing countries, like Iran, Guatamala, Chile, Congo, Iraq, Libya are a few victims of the Western trap.  Therefore , we have to be careful selecting the correct politicians who are capable to take the risk to swim amoung  whales to take the country to the correct destination.

It is there that political experience, determination and devoted patriotism count. For seventy years since independence we could not find  a correct political leadership, and through out a period of ruthless terrorism our political leaders did not have the vision,  courage and determination to end  the canker  of terrorism, until in 2005 the people elected Mahinda Rajapakse as the President of Sri Lanka.

Of course, those self interested politicians greedy to hold on to power, and those who yearn for English educated West imitators  as politicians  oppose Mahinda Rajapakse and his way of governance to give the West  the necessary power to use Sri Lanka to suit their political strategies.

Sri Lanka has  a strange Judiciary, with a questionable independence. The Judges are after all men. And to what extent can one expect them to have the ability to think  independently not like an ordinary  man,  but as  a Judge ? 

We have an example of a retired Supreme Court Judge Wigneswaran the Chief Minister of the NPC whose attitude as man out of his judicial training is utterly questionable. We cannot even believes such a man as Wigneswaran had been a Judge of the Sri Lanka Sureeme Court. He is a racist and concocts falsehood to separate communities.

Judging judges taking Wigneswaran as  an example make us fear who we really have as Judges. A retired judge who become an ordinary man should have, justice , fairness and  mental collectedness built in him to take correct independent decisions.

Recent Judgements coming one after another , make one really begin to wonder what is in the minds of the Sri Lanka Judges . Is it justice  and rendering  fair and independent judgement in their mind or  an effort to please those who are powerful and accrue to them selves applause for judgements considered independent by them,  even though their seem to have no logic in their judgements.

The first judgment withheld a gazette notification dissolving the parliament to hold elections without considering the consequences the judgement would lead to,  if the Parliament is allowed to sit two weeks during the interim judgment until a judgment is given.

The second is no better than the first, because it  withholds the work that had been under taken by a Prime Minister and his Cabinet duly appointed by the President to redress the people who had been suffering under decisions taken by a West Oriented Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe  and a visionless cabinet of Ministers, proved to have mismanaged the finances of the Country, for nine whole days making Sri Lanka function without a Government. All that smells litro gaz.