{"id":116713,"date":"2021-08-02T17:08:49","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T00:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116713"},"modified":"2021-08-02T17:08:49","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T00:08:49","slug":"for-them-joy-rides-and-us-taken-for-rides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/08\/02\/for-them-joy-rides-and-us-taken-for-rides\/","title":{"rendered":"For them, joy rides, and us, taken for rides"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Laksiri Warnakula<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The Island editorial of 29-07-21 with the title \u2018It\u2019s MPs\u2019 Code of Conduct, stupid!\u2019 prompted me to write this short letter on the matter discussed in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For starters, let me pose the same question that the editor and\nquite a few others too, including the Chief Opposition Whip have asked: What\nwere (perhaps some of them are still there) they doing in Tokyo? Well, simple\nanswer; Olympics. And one, obviously belonging to their clan might even try to\ndefend them. Why can\u2019t they? They need a rest too, having put in an \u2018Olympian\neffort\u2019 to do well for the country. &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And where did the money come from, for the vacation, I, for one\nwonder, whether they are all-expense- paid trips, courtesy of some saying thank\nyou for the favours granted or do the monies come from their own pockets,\nknowing very well how baggy and bottomless those pockets can be and how they\nget filled and replenished, the wearers never becoming \u2018empty pockets\u2019!&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our political enterprise for many decades now has been more of\ndeals and less of deeds. I do not want to dig even to the recent past or not to\nthe present, either. People and media have spoken loudly and written volumes on\nour political campaigns followed by respective governments. It\u2019s a bitter tale\nand the governments that subsequently took over, followed almost the same\ntradition, of partaking in the self-serving banquet, which will no doubt\ncontinue into the future and how far, can anybody predict except those\nastrologers, perhaps? And while at it, they forget all their difference,\ncolours and symbols alike and throw them out of the window (by the way,\nspeaking of windows, don\u2019t they have many, I mean, of opportunity?). &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All in all, it\u2019s two rides that are poles apart; theirs and ours.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I am sure that many of our citizenry will agree with\n\u2018Sophocles\u2019 (below) and live accordingly, but those, who sit at the top?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018Rather fail with honour than succeed with fraud\u2019 &#8211; Sophocles&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Laksiri Warnakula&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laksiri Warnakula The Island editorial of 29-07-21 with the title \u2018It\u2019s MPs\u2019 Code of Conduct, stupid!\u2019 prompted me to write this short letter on the matter discussed in it. For starters, let me pose the same question that the editor and quite a few others too, including the Chief Opposition Whip have asked: What were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laksiri-warnakula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116713","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=116713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}