By Charles S.Perera

There may not be election meetings. There may not be house to house campaign by Candidates.  But there may the possibility of voting for your preferred candidate from the political party you support. Therefore there are things that you have to think before you cast your vote. 

We had been a country that was in the process of being divided and communally separated by a ruthless group of terrorists supported by the so-called Western Democracies. Yes, Western Democracies.  We were saved from that eventuality thanks to the people who elected  Mahinda Rajapaksa as the President of Sri Lanka in 2005, amidst powerful forces against him within and without the country. President Mahinda Rajapakse faced that terrorist situation with Gotabhaya Rajapakse as his Defence Secretary.

Though many now try to take the credit for that great victory against terrorism, it was definitely the determination and the unwavering confidence  Gotabaya Rajapaksa had of the Armed Forces that they can successfully fight that war” against terrorism.

Our Armed Forces were willing to take all risks, knowing that they were in the command of the reliable political leadership of  President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse, who himself had previously been in the war against terrorism. Therefore the Armed Forces stood firmly determined to defeat terrorism for good.

Despite that courageous decision taken and fulfilled, the people were ungrateful to Mahinda Rajapaksa who gave back to them the right to exist as a free people in a  peaceful environment, yet defeated him at the Presidential election in January 2015, to what they hoped was for a change for a better life, and we now know what cost that change of heart to bring to power the worlds worst government led by  Maithreepala Sirisena and Ranil Wickramasinghe with the support of JVP which they called Yahapalanaya –good governance. What a deception it was need not be reiterated. And the voting  Gotabaya Rajapakse as the President in  November 2019 with a 19 lack majority was a vindication of that deception.

The people were wise to have elected Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as the President of Sri Lanka in November 2019. Sajith Premadasa did his best to balloon himself as the appropriate  Candidate with working dynamos, fully charged batteries and above all with the genes of  Ranasinghe Premadasa to lead Sri Lanka as its President.

But the people knew better, that neither Ranasinghe Premadasa, nor Ranil Wickramasinghe with whom Sajith associated was commendable men, and the son with such genes could not be any better than the father.

It was an error that the armed forces that wiped out the terrorists were considered to have violated human rights by the worlds most stupid Institution the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva when actual violators of human rights were Ranasinghe Premadasa and Ranil Wickramasinghe with a history of burning rebellious youth on pyres of rubber wheels and torturing others in Batalanda torture camp.

If the people were not wise enough not to have been swayed by Sajith Premadasa’s exaggerated trumpet blowing, we would have had the most disastrous President of all times in Sri Lanka. We are fortunate that our people were not fooled by this big” talk of loud-mouthed Sajith Premadasa.

Fortunately for Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa a far more intelligent and visionary leader who could bring back Sri Lanka from the sad state it has been relegated to by the Yahapalanaya was elected as the President. But he has inherited an empty treasury and is compelled to govern under utterly modest financial conditions as a  minority government in the Parliament. 

The opposition led by the failed leader Sajith Premadasa who was finally elected in the Parliament as the leader of the opposition boasts that the opposition would vote with both hands” if the government were to present any bills in parliament.  But that was a hoax to mislead the government.  Their intention was to allow the government to present a   Bill in Parliament and then vote against it,  thus putting the government into greater difficulty by having to dissolve the government and reappoint a new government.  

That became evident when the government presented a Vote on Account to parliament to pay the debts, incurred by the Yahapalanaya which remain unpaid, thus blocking the government from buying essentials such as manure for farmers and medicine for hospitals, etc.

This move of the leader of the Opposition was a ploy to embarrass the government and antagonize the people against the government.  But  Sajith did not see that it was the country and the people who suffered as a result. This the people should take into account when they go to polls to cast their votes,  and vote against the candidates put forward by the Samagi Peramuna of Sajith Premadasa, the UNP lead by Ranil Wickramasinghe, and Anura Dissanayake led JVP.

JVP leaders are clever to present to the people that both Samagi Peramuna of Sajith Peramuna and Podujana Peramuna will not be able to give the people the desired changes as it is they of the JVP, who has the key to provide the people with what they desire.

But these are mere words. Their true colours would be seen only if they ever come to power. They stand for a  new Sri Lanka without its Buddhist cultural background, a country where there is no communal difference. But JVP would still work with the UNP because they are politically sheltered by the UNP.

JVP cannot understand the heartbeat of the people. Sri Lanka is unique because of its Buddhist Cultural background. The Sinhala people have no other country to claim to be theirs. Therefore Sri Lanka has to preserve its Buddhist Sinhala identity which JVP opposes on the ground of equality for all.

This is contrary to what the people desire and therefore the people should not vote for them as it would be a wasted vote.

Today the Government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is facing great difficulty in the administration of the country due to the financial mismanagement of Yahapalanaya. Perhaps the sudden fall of the price of fuel could be utilized by the government holding back the immediate benefits going to the people and use the fall off to bring substantial changes delayed due to the present financial difficulties, enhanced by the Coronavirus and the government’s great effort to save the country from making it goes to a pandemic level, and until a new Budget is passed in the Parliament after the elections in April.2020.

The Opposition led by Sajith Premadasa and the JVP are trying to stop this possibility to allow the government to give the people the desired financial relief and find a way out of the present financial difficulties by insisting at their political platforms that the  Government should give the people the benefit from the falling down of the fuel prices. 

The Opposition Leader and the JVP are not clamoring for these demands for any love they have for the people and the country but merely to put the people against the government ad stop it from getting a two-third majority.

The financial crisis that the Government is facing is not it’s making but that of the Yahapalanaya Government which had failed to pay the bills for construction work, pay for the purchase of manure during their period of government and pay the unpaid bills for the purchase of medicine.

The financial difficulties the government is facing is a national issue where a reasonable, concerned Opposition should cooperate with the government by voting in the parliament for the Vote on Account if they are really interested in the welfare of the people.  But Sajith Premadasa is a political leader without political maturity, working for his own personal aggrandizement. Therefore the well being of the country and its people are far from his thoughts.

Sajith Premadasa is campaigning with the intention of becoming the Prime Minister.  But as the Minister of Housing in Yahapalanaya Government he was a failure. Furthermore, he had not even participated in any important debates in parliament, and above all, he does not show the qualities of a Prime Minister. That may be the reason why apparently Ranil Wickramasinghe seems to want his defeat. Ranil Wickramasinghe is also refusing to give him the leadership of the UNP.

These are the matters the people should think of and take into consideration at the polls and vote to give Mahinda Rajapaksa led Podujana Peramuna a resounding victory. That would be a vote to bring Sri Lanka to what it had been before the 8th January 2015 and for its development into a modern Sovereign National State with different communities living in harmony as Sri Lankans.

There is a belief among the English Speaking Colombians that a tyranee” of the absolute majority should be avoided. That comes from the believers in an exaggerated democracy identified as British.

The democracy we have seen from our own experience and that of many other countries is being dictated to us by the so-called developed democracies insisting that the developing countries should adhere to a strict democratic norm as defined by them. But this norm is apparently different from their democracy.

These pontificators contrary to their strictures have adopted democracy to fit into their own purposes. We see the functionality of the UNHRC in Geneva to have got into a habit of looking at democracy differently according to the countries they deal with.

But developing countries should not adopt the western interpretation of democracy as such a system will not allow the developing countries to rise above their developing” status. In 2015 Mahinda Rajapaksa lost at the Presidential election because his opponents carried a campaign against him that the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was for him to continue to be a life-long President.  

Which was wrong as President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s  Government after successfully eliminating terrorism and after a planned economic development program successfully brought  The Sri Lankan economy to robust annual growth at 6.4 percent over the course of 2010 to 2015. Sri Lanka is now focusing on long-term strategic and structural development challenges as it strives to transition to an upper-middle-income country.” Sri Lanka increased from below 15% of GDP in the mid-1970 to about 25% of GDP in 2010/ This is a remarkable trend.” (World Bank).

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s intention was to keep the pace of development by continuing to lead a government for a further period of five years to strive to transition to an upper-middle-income country, which he would have been able to accomplish  if he was elected President at the 2015 Presidential election.

That was what Sri Lanka missed in January 2015,  and the result is that the Yahaplanaya reversed the development process to an economic growth below that of Afghanistan.

Today we have President Gotabaya Rajapakse who with keen intelligence and determination will follow the steps of his elder brother now his Prime Minister to bring Sri Lanka pack to the correct path for its development and bring back the pace of development set by President Mahinda Rajapakse to take  Sri Lanka to the next level of an upper-middle-income country and more.

To accomplish that for the people of Sri Lanka he needs a two-thirds majority so that he will not have to depend on any other political party, or allow other political parties to become a deterrent to reach reach the target he has set. 

Therefore the people of this country should not hesitate to give their fullest support to President Gotabaya Rajapakse by giving a landslide  victory to the candidates put forward by Podujana Peramuna and its allied Parties led by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse.