{"id":47199,"date":"2015-08-21T22:18:44","date_gmt":"2015-08-22T04:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=47199"},"modified":"2015-08-21T04:24:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T11:24:06","slug":"political-victimisation-of-rajapaksa-family-sets-a-vicious-precedence-for-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/08\/21\/political-victimisation-of-rajapaksa-family-sets-a-vicious-precedence-for-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Victimisation of Rajapaksa Family Sets a Vicious Precedence for Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em> Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019m appalled by hateful comments made by a prominent local NGO activists to foreign newspapers justifying political victimisation of Rajapaksa family members. He has justified using coercion and prosecution to force Mahinda into retirement. He also proposes prosecution of his brothers, wife and children to force him to retire from politics or shut him up. This sets a very bad precedence for future governments to follow. No party stays in power forever. At most, it will be a decade and the ruling party will change. Then it will be the new ruling party to take revenge from the UNP. This is the trend he is proposing and be may unfortunate enough to live to regret it.<\/p>\n<p>Every Lankan has the right to engage in politics within the law. The parliament has many MPs with alleged unlawful acts. If action is to be taken, every MP should be included. Selective justice is no justice. If the current regime indulges in selective justice, the next regime will be happy to follow.<\/p>\n<p>For the nation to function as a viable democracy, a strong opposition is needed. Head hunting the Opposition using violence, coercion and prosecution turns the nation into a dictatorship. Once the trend is set it is difficult, almost impossible, to reverse. The long and hard road of slow consensus and tiring compromise efforts must be taken instead. That is how lasting changes can be made. No one has to assume supremacy of their policies that justify contravening the democratic process. Others\u2019 view is equally important and must be given a hearing and an opportunity to be heard. 5.8 million Lankans stand by Mahinda and that is a large number to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>May this be served as a warning to all those who wish to use violence, coercion or prosecution against UPFA MPs to either buy their support or force them to shut up that their actions will boomerang on them in the near future. Many will justify it then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dilrook Kannangara I\u2019m appalled by hateful comments made by a prominent local NGO activists to foreign newspapers justifying political victimisation of Rajapaksa family members. He has justified using coercion and prosecution to force Mahinda into retirement. He also proposes prosecution of his brothers, wife and children to force him to retire from politics or shut [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47199","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\/47199","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=47199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}