{"id":118332,"date":"2021-09-19T16:23:36","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T23:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=118332"},"modified":"2021-09-19T16:26:23","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T23:26:23","slug":"an-open-letter-to-president-gothabhaya-rajapaksa-on-the-proposed-new-constitution-part-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/09\/19\/an-open-letter-to-president-gothabhaya-rajapaksa-on-the-proposed-new-constitution-part-11\/","title":{"rendered":"An open letter to President Gothabhaya Rajapaksa on the proposed new Constitution. -Part 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Sudath Gunasekara Retired Secretary to PM Sirimavo Banmdaranayaka Ex-President SLAS (1991-94) and President Mahanuwara Sinhala Baudha Jestha Purawesiyange Sanvidhanaya<\/em> <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

\u00a0I apologize to my readers for deviating from the above Headline in this article as I wish to discuss few important issues where President Mahinda Rajapaksa erred between 2010 and 2015 as they have a direct bearing on the post-2015 political ramifications in this country including those faced by the Present President which will be discussed in the essays that will follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0In the wake of the 2009 war victory, people expected President MR to take some historic decisions like, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The abolition of the curse that is the 13th<\/sup> \u00a0\u00a0Amendment and Provincial Councils imposed under the provisions of the JR\/Rajiv Accord of 29th July 1987 at gunpoint by India and passed by Parliament illegitimately under coercion and using MPP as hostages to destroy the territorial integrity and political stability of this Island nation and make it a part of the Indian subcontinent as they have been dreaming from the days of Rama, with the final objective of erasing the Sinhala Buddhist civilization from the face of this planet\u00a0 Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) Abolition of\nthe Rajiv\/JR Accord of July 29th<\/sup> 1987, so that the following\ntreacherous, illegal and undemocratic decisions taken under the Accord will\nautomatically be null and void<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a) Declaration\nof the Northern and Eastern Provinces as the Traditional Tamil Homeland (never\nexisted in the history of this Island Nation)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

b) Accepting of Tamil as an Official Language in the whole country (again illegal, undemocratic, and treacherous as Tamil had never been the official language of this country\u2019s 2500 history or even in India where 70 million Tamils live)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0c) All Citizenship is given over an affidavit to all Indians living in Sri Lanka on the appointed date including illicit immigrants (kallathonese) violating all accepted legal procedures followed by any country in granting citizenship to foreigners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

d)The power to\nmerge two or more Provinces, the Kavutillyan intrigue imposed by India to merge\nthe NP first EP and CP, Sab and Uva later as the next step of taking over Sri\nLanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

e) Above all the\n13th Amendment proposed by it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) The Abolition\nof the National list that has killed the spirit of representative democracy in\nthis country that opened a back door for Party leaders to bring their henchmen numbering\nanother 29 persons as MP to Parliament, by a Constitutional Amendment bypassing\nthe legal process of electing MPP and thereby also increasing the 196 to 225,\nadding a further burden to the national coffer just to add more privileges to\n{Party leaders to consolidate their power in Parliament)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Consolidation\nof the war victory on the ground like what <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dutugemunu and\nVijayaba 1st did after the wars against the Chola invaders <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 Abolition of\nPolitical Parties based on Ethnicity, Religion and region agitating separation\nleading the way to disintegration of the Island <\/p>\n\n\n\n

6 Restore the name of the country \u2018Sinhale\u201d as it was the name of the country that was ceded to the British Empire in 1815 (as it had been there from the inception of the history of this country)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7 Abolishing the District MP system by reintroducing the former Electorate-based MP system and also the proportional representation and the preferential voting system to make elections more democratic and simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8 Abolition of Multi-Member Electorate system as that tends to polarize minority communities<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9 Increase 5 %\nto12 % for a Political Party introduce by President Premadasa which again  discriminates against the majority  and hinders social integration and\nreconciliation He could have done all these things without any problem as he\nhad a 2\/3 majority in the house and the Executive Power as the President Above\nall he had the support of the majority in the country<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Big Tragedy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is a big tragedy none of these great expectations of the Sinhala Buddhists were fulfilled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, he held the Northern Provincial Council election and paved the way for extremist communalists like Vignesvaran to start a vigorous pro-devolution, anti-Sinhala, anti- Buddhist, anti-government and pro-separation agenda. He also spent over 75 % of the national budget on infrastructure development in the North and the East expecting to win over the Tamil votes like the proverbial fox that followed a goat expecting its dangling testicles to drop to satisfy its hunger and finally got killed with a kick from the goat. In the same way, you know what happened to MR in 2015.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had he listened to wiser advice and taken the correct decisions as given above at the correct time he would have been the leader of this country for life. The people would have made him even their King giving new life to our 2500-year-old tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I made an analysis of this national tragedy in\nmy article \u2018Where Mahinda Rajapaksa went wrong\u201d published in Lankaweb 24.2.\n2016. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0MR\u2019s problem was, first, I opine he overestimated his war victory and mixed up his development priorities. Also either he had no wise advisors or he desists from such advice, for reasons known only to him. Neither he nor his so-called advisors had any acumen or the vision of statecraft of that level. He also paid less priority to the aspirations of the Sinhala Buddhists and paid more attention to Tamil and Muslim people. One such classic example was making Rauf Hakeem the Minister of Justice and everybody knows the damages he did to the entire judicial system by meddling with it to promote his community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0These were the reasons why a historic war victory of a nation ended up as a tragic abortion due to the follies of a leader where both the mother and the child got finally succumbed to death. Most leaders run blind when they get power. I do not know whether that was his problem as well.\u00a0 He had the 2\/3 in Parliament and the whole nation (except the extremist Tamils and Muslims) acclaimed him almost as a king.\u00a0 But, sadly he did not know that the priorities he has selected and the advisors hanging around him have made him a King wearing new clothes. Unfortunately, there was not even a tiny tot by the wayside to shout Mum look the King is going naked\u2019 I feel very sorry for his predicament as well as that befell my motherland in 2015. In spite of all this personally, I still like him as a populist leader. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn\u2019t it the\nsame story repeating now with President Gotabhaya as well? If Gotabhaya, on\nwhom 6.9 m people had so much hope is also going to be inflicted with the same\nmalady, finding a remedy to rescue this nation will be another Covid 19\noperation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The next\narticle of this series will appear soon in this column as part 111)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Sudath Gunasekara Retired Secretary to PM Sirimavo Banmdaranayaka Ex-President SLAS (1991-94) and President Mahanuwara Sinhala Baudha Jestha Purawesiyange Sanvidhanaya \u00a0I apologize to my readers for deviating from the above Headline in this article as I wish to discuss few important issues where President Mahinda Rajapaksa erred between 2010 and 2015 as they have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-sudath-gunasekara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118332","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=118332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}