{"id":47085,"date":"2015-08-16T15:46:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T22:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=47085"},"modified":"2015-08-16T15:46:56","modified_gmt":"2015-08-16T22:46:56","slug":"august-17-will-decide-sri-lankas-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/08\/16\/august-17-will-decide-sri-lankas-fate\/","title":{"rendered":"August 17 will decide Sri Lanka\u2019s fate"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Janaka Perera<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Without question the August 17 Parliamentary Election is going to be a most crucial one for Sri Lanka. The decision the majority of the voters take on Monday is bound to have the strongest impact on the Sinhalas, more than any other community.\u00a0 Never before in recent years have they been so polarized.\u00a0 Apparently it has turned almost into a \u2018life-and-death\u2019 battle between Mahinda lovers and Mahinda haters (rather than Ranil lovers).<\/p>\n

This polarization, needless to say, is the outcome of external and internal forces inimical to Sri Lanka\u2019s national interests exploiting to the maximum the blunders the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime made, especially after crushing the LTTE militarily in 2009.<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether the Mahinda haters are going to be victorious or not the country\u2019s tragedy is that in their obsession with what they call \u2018good governance\u2019 they have turned a virtual blind eye not only to the so-called Sinhalas among their camp who see no national importance in the Tigers\u2019 defeat and the need to prevent their comeback by all means but also to the dubious deals struck with groups and individuals (some contesting on the UNP ticket in the North) who openly promote the cause of Tamil separatism and see Prabhakaran as a hero and liberator.<\/p>\n

Was the appeal not to give nominations to corrupt individuals to ensure good governance anything new? People raised this issue a number of times during past elections.\u00a0 And are the slogans politicians have raised today unusual?\u00a0 They are virtually the same ones raised before.<\/p>\n

Who are the lily white politicians among us today?\u00a0 If at all they may be a handful no matter which party they belong to.\u00a0 The difference between the politicians of one party and those of another in this matter is only in degree. It all depends how long they have been in power and the temptations.\u00a0 Although a few political leaders themselves may not be corrupt they have given their supporters the freedom to do so in order to remain in power.<\/p>\n

A new generation of voters has emerged during the past decade.\u00a0 But the million rupee question is how many of them are aware of the country\u2019s political history, at least since 1977.\u00a0 Undoubtedly some parties would wish to keep them in ignorance since it serves the groups\u2019 dubious objectives.<\/p>\n

Says Senior Attorney Kalyananda Thiranagama, Executive Director of \u2018Lawyers for Human Rights Development\u2019: Many politicians who talk about misdeeds of past regimes of which they were opponents, are themselves criminals.\u00a0 They always talk about others\u2019 misdeeds not in order to prevent such wrongdoings but to seize power and create an opportunity for themselves to do the same.\u00a0 This is my experience of having worked against the corrupt and fraudulent activities of politicians for a long period.\u201d<\/p>\n

He regrets that one of the big mistakes the Rajapaksa Government made was its failure to investigate and punish the individuals and parties which attempted to obstruct at every turn the anti-LTTE military operations.\u00a0 He recalled the unsuccessful move to defeat the Budget and topple the government at the height of the war.<\/p>\n

According to Attorney Thiranagama, every government in Sri Lanka has robbed public funds.\u00a0\u00a0 He concluded that the real threat facing Sri Lanka is not corruption, bribery, frauds and other misdeeds but the very existence of Sri Lanka as a unitary state, its territorial integrity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Janaka Perera Without question the August 17 Parliamentary Election is going to be a most crucial one for Sri Lanka. The decision the majority of the voters take on Monday is bound to have the strongest impact on the Sinhalas, more than any other community.\u00a0 Never before in recent years have they been so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-janaka-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47085","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=47085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}