{"id":116027,"date":"2021-07-12T15:54:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T22:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116027"},"modified":"2021-07-12T15:54:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T22:54:52","slug":"kotelawala-defence-university-bill-must-be-passed-the-nation-needs-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/07\/12\/kotelawala-defence-university-bill-must-be-passed-the-nation-needs-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Kotelawala Defence University Bill Must Be Passed. The Nation Needs It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

There are usual protests and\ndisruption by the disruptive cabal against the progressive Kotelawala Defence\nUniversity (KDU) Bill. These are the elements that always disrupt Sri Lanka\u2019s\nprogress and hinder equal rights to citizens. They rely on twisted logic that\nfree education\u201d equals only government provided education and no other\neducation\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Free education was never meant to\nmonopolize education. Instead, it was introduced to compete with paid education\nand allow those who could not afford paid education, a pathway to education. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imposing\nfree education or no education\u201d<\/strong> is inhuman, violates fundamental\nrights, driven by jealousy and regressive. Anyone should be able to gain\neducation by paying for it. The state must look beyond the dysfunctional free\nuniversity system (ranked very poor in the world due to the quality of\ngraduates they produce today) to create a mechanism to produce worthy\nprofessionals who support the nation. With very limited resources in\ncomparison, KDU has rendered a yeoman service to the nation in the fields of\ndefence, medicine, engineering, construction, etc. It makes perfect sense to\ninvest in the KDU and provide all that is needed for its progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the age-old question\nof private medical colleges. Sri Lanka is the only country in the world (with\nuniversities) that does not have private medical colleges. Petty jealousy and\nmafia business of a section of the society denies the right to education of\nothers. National policy must not pander into jealousy of a rotten section of\nthe society! Surely Sri Lanka can do better than this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funniest part is the absence of\nany serious fundamental rights case at the Supreme Court against the KDU Bill.\nIf it is so bad, it must be in violation of at least one law of the country!\nThe truth is it is as harmless as the free education bill almost a century ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The participation of certain Tamil\nelements brings a racist tint to the protest as well. Racism is not a valid\nconcern in any decent court of law. There is no militarization of education.\nMilitary personnel are also entitled to education. Only tribal racists deny\nthat right who must not be entertained in a civilised society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The so called educationalists and\nteachers are setting a very bad an uneducated example to others by disregarding\npandemic laws and codes of behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Gotabaya\u2019s government must\npush on with the KDU Bill. All right thinking and progressive people must\nsupport it. The island nation needs far many professionals and many more\ntertiary education centres than it has. This is a progressive move that failed\nsince the 1980s as past leader were hung up on short term politics. President\nGotabaya must push on and get the Bill passed. Future generations of Sri\nLankans will thank, if not venerate him for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara There are usual protests and disruption by the disruptive cabal against the progressive Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) Bill. These are the elements that always disrupt Sri Lanka\u2019s progress and hinder equal rights to citizens. They rely on twisted logic that free education\u201d equals only government provided education and no other education\u201d. Free education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}