{"id":49813,"date":"2015-11-27T22:10:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T04:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=49813"},"modified":"2015-11-27T15:04:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T22:04:59","slug":"when-ranil-was-minister-of-education-a-personal-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/11\/27\/when-ranil-was-minister-of-education-a-personal-story\/","title":{"rendered":"WHEN RANIL WAS MINISTER OF EDUCATION…a personal story."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sri Lanka Well Wisher.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

It was just that to get anything done at the Ministry of Education you had to go through Mr Sunil aka ‘Gonawala Suni’l. Let me briefly explain my experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the 80’s my sister and BIL lived in Kandegoda, Ambalangoda, with my mother.\u00a0 My BIL worked in Colombo and travelled daily to Colombo on the Samudra Devi. They had two son’s one at Trinity and the younger fellow at Dharmasoka. As my sister was at home she used to teach English to the village kids absolutely free. Naturally the number of kids grew.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the Vice Principal of the village school Kandegoda Maha Vidyalaya wanted my sister to come and Teach English for the school ids. (By the way the Vice Principal happened to be my Grandfathers drivers daughter – a graduate Teacher.). Again my sister taught gratis on a volunteer basis. Later they wanted her to join the staff, which she did as by then she was involved with various other activities of the school.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother made the mistake of telling my sister that if she was going to be teaching she might as well do it properly and become a Trained Teacher. With much inconvenience she attended the Teacher Training School at\u00a0Bolawalana\u00a0close to\u00a0Negombo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now after she graduated she got a posting in the Hambantota District. So now, they had a situation of living in\u00a0Ambalangoda, Husband working in Colombo, wife at somewhere in Hambantota, one son in Kandy and the other in Ambalangoda. No amount of appeals from my Sister, the village school and the Principal was even considered. When all avenues failed my BIL spoke with Gamini Dissanayake who was a good friend of both my brother and BIL as they were school mates at Trinity.\u00a0 GD arranged for my BIL to meet Ranil who at that time was the Minister for Education. Ranil told my BIL to go and meet coordinating officer Mr Sunil at the Ministry. He did not know who this Mr Sunil was. Anyway he went to the Ministry and waited outside Mr Sunil’s office for hours. Then he saw a person dressed in white go into the office. He didn’t like the of him and asked the peon or the catcher fellow outside who that person was. He had said ”\u00a0e sir apey Suni sir ne. Mr Sunil Gonawala”. It then only clicked who this Mr Sunil was. My BIL had thought to himself if this is the kind of thug I have to go and speak with might as well bugger the job, he collected his papers went home, arranged to pay the Bond and asked my sister to stay at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not an isolated case. Nothing in that Ministry got done without the say so of Gonawela Sunil.\u00a0 Every thing apparently was done at a price. So that is the way Mr Clean Ranil Wickramasinghe operated.<\/span><\/p>\n

As far as I am aware Ranil is a conceited dreamer who trusts no one other than his cronies, and most definitely not the electorate and lives in a world of his own. He may think he is doing the best but sadly I don’t think so.<\/span><\/p>\n

the “West” has NEVER gone out of it’s way to help Sri Lanka in a meaningful way. They have the greater\u00a0portion\u00a0of the Trade as it benefits them. The Old Fox JR with all his so called US ties and having an absolute pro Western stance was left to his own devices when the sh1t hit the fan. China on the other hand has been Sri Lanka’s friend irrespective of which Party was in Power. So was Pakistan and Russia. The Western countries where there is a sizeable Tamil Diaspora voter base blindly pander to their tune.<\/span><\/p>\n

Appeasement will never bring reconciliation.\u00a0 When DB W<\/span>\u200bi\u200b<\/span>jethunga said that the minorities are like the vines entwined on a tree, he did not mean to disparage the Minorities. I believe what he meant was for the vines also\u00a0 to survive the tree itself must be strong and survive. The minorities especially the Tamils should realize that. Yes\u00a0 obviously there are areas where improvement is necessary. But it must be a two way thing. Whatever is done is not enough for the Tamil Politicians.\u00a0Saumya Murti\u00a0Thondaman did and got more for his people by working with JR. The Sinhalese as a community have been bending over backwards to make positive gesturers to the Tamil community since 1983 or even before. but this has NOT been re<\/span><\/p>\n

The way Ranil, Sira and Mangala are heading is to undermine the Sinhala community.\u00a0 With a nation at peace – thanks to MR – we can prosper economically, if the morale of the majority is high. If the self esteem and the morale of the Sinhalese are shattered we will not achieve broad based economic advancement. With Ranil it\u00a0has not happened, it is not happening nor will it happen in the future.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sri Lanka Well Wisher. It was just that to get anything done at the Ministry of Education you had to go through Mr Sunil aka ‘Gonawala Suni’l. Let me briefly explain my experience. During the 80’s my sister and BIL lived in Kandegoda, Ambalangoda, with my mother.\u00a0 My BIL worked in Colombo and travelled daily […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49813","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=49813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}