{"id":69054,"date":"2017-08-18T17:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-19T00:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=69054"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:11:02","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T00:11:02","slug":"69054","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/08\/18\/69054\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranil’s request"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

16 August 2017<\/p>\n

Hon. Ranil Wickremesinghe
\nPrime Minister of Sri Lanka
\nNo. 58 Sir Ernest De Silva Mawatha
\nColombo 7<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Dear Prime Minister:<\/p>\n

Today, I read in Home News<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0 that while speaking at a ceremony held at BMICH, Colombo the \u00a0PM says people\u2019s support is essential for good governance\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What!\u00a0 A\u00a0 strange request , I thought.\u00a0 I suppose your memory is short Mr. Prime Minister.\u00a0 You did ask for the people’s support in late 2014\/early 2015 to help you to change the corrupt, thuggish, nepotistic, personal\u00a0 wallet stuffing culture of the previous government, and people rallied around you and your governing Combo partner, President Maithripala Sirisena, and installed you two for the good Governance\u201d \u201d job you had promised them.\u00a0\u00a0 Remember?<\/p>\n

The problem with you two is that you challenge the intelligence of the ordinary people, especially the gamme minnissu <\/em><\/strong>all the time, thinking they are\u00a0 a bunch of idiots.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>So thousands of them exercised their franchise\u00a0 and democratically placed a cross against the names of the candidates they thought would help you two bring about \u2018good Governance\u2019 and rejected those whom they thought were no good suspect corrupt politicians who would only be interested to poke their hands into the Public’s Treasury Jar.\u00a0 These voters were no fools.\u00a0 They were smart and intelligent.<\/p>\n

So what did the smart leadership Combo do! You brought back the rejected candidates by the masses, one literally showed the middle finger at the voters who voted you in,\u00a0 and the other placed the thumb of his right palm on his nose and wiggled the other four fingers saying, Na…nana… na…na; Na…nana…na…na,\u00a0 we fooled you didn\u2019t we.\u00a0 This is how we bring about \u2018good Governance\u2019 and appointed some of the democratically rejected candidates back to the government and appointed some to your Cabinet, too\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 It was arrogance on your part.\u00a0 It was a crass act of political power.\u00a0 It is that simple and sick.\u00a0\u00a0 After a 40 year political career, it is time you learn to respect public opinion and stop treating the\u00a0 rural masses as a bunch of illiterate idiots as they are not and they sure do recognize a fraudulent mathithuma<\/em><\/strong> who walks into their village promising them heaven and earth if they vote for him again.<\/p>\n

Mr Prime Minister, these are the village-folk who recognize that their kid is hungry<\/p>\n

when his or her stomach sings and scratch their heads wondering what is there in the kitchen to feed the child to fill the hunger.\u00a0 These are the village-folk who are also smart to recognize the decadence of their government when they see a Minister chauffeur driven in a many hundreds of thousands of rupees car, when they cannot afford to pay a tuk-tuk driver a fee to race their seriously ill child with a high fever to the nearest hospital.\u00a0 That is a reality check for you, Mr. Yahapalanaya Prime Minister.\u00a0 I deliberately used the word \u2018decadence\u2019.<\/p>\n

That calculated move of bringing back the rejected candidates boomeranged against your Yahapalanaya Government.\u00a0 The majority\u00a0 of Sri Lankans wouldn\u2019t trust you lot anymore and I will bet my last dollar that they will not vote for you again either, nor touch you lot with a barge pole.\u00a0 You cooked your own goose, and isn\u2019t this why you and your Combo leader keep postponing the Provincial elections.\u00a0 You two are scared off your wits, aren’t you?\u00a0 Own up, Mr. Prime Minister.\u00a0 The democratic franchise is not for you to manipulate that takes away the rights of the people.\u00a0 Just be politically judicious with what ever you do for the want to hang in there.<\/p>\n

…boomeranged against your Government\u201d, I said.\u00a0 Here is the litmus test and a reality check for you.\u00a0 In February 2016, almost 13 months\u00a0 afterk Your Leadership Combo and Company were installed hoping for a change of the corrupt, thuggish, nepotistic, personal wallet stuffing culture of the previous government, I was travelling along the the west coast to the south, then up to the hill country, and up again to the north-west\u2019s Sri Lanka\u2019s\u00a0 ancient cities region before heading back to Colombo.\u00a0 It was a 11 day trip of 20 of the Swansea University (Wales) Class 67, with their spouses in a 49th year Reunion.\u00a0 The majority of us met for the first time after graduating in 1967.<\/p>\n

Every time the Tourist van stopped , I ventured out to meet the local people. And when I asked 23 of them – kohomadha may aluth arnduwa.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d\u00a0 Pat came the response. And what was strange about the responses were that\u00a0 as if they had all voice trained at the same Choral Society off the same manuscript, and this is the holy truth..\u00a0 The prelude to the response was a sarcastic snicker and then everyone of them sang the words,\u00a0 Oya okkoma Hora Yakku, Mahaththaya\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>Go, figure that one out Mr. Prime Minister.\u00a0 One person elaborated.\u00a0 He said in Sinhala, We thought we got rid of one bunch of rogues, but have put in place a worse bunch of rogues.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

I returned to Canada at the end of February and wrote to President Maithripala Sirisena my observations and encounters as I thought he should know the pulse of the gamme minnissu. <\/em><\/strong>\u00a0The letter was dated 26 February 2016, requesting him to send one of his Yahapalanites to speak at random to\u00a0 folk-people at Kosgoda, Galle, Nuwara Eliya, Rattota, Gatambe, Ibbagamuwa, Gallewalla, Melsiripura, near Seetha Amman Temple in Haggala, Dambulla, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and grave diggers at Colombo\u2019s Kanatta to feel the pulse of these people about his good Governance\u201d.\u00a0 You too ought to fan out one of your Yahapalanites to find out the pulse of the gamme minnissu<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 The response will be priceless and an eye opener for you, Mr. Prime Minister. Do it<\/p>\n

Mr. Prime Minister, you gloated when former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Lotteries, Ravi Karunanayake resigned saying that a new culture has dawned in Sri Lankan politics. Phew!…that was a biggy.<\/p>\n

I am not sure whether it was a new culture that had uprooted a I don\u2019t know\u201d <\/em><\/strong>dementia culture of fraudulent Ministers.\u00a0 Did you mean that with one Minister\u2019s resignation you now have 43 Ministers in Cabinet with Brasso polished golden haloes over their heads, and\u00a0 that they will not have to take a number to stand in line to hand over their resignations!\u00a0 Whoopee…do, Mr. Prime Minister.\u00a0 I am impressed!<\/p>\n

It is nice to live in a dreamland.\u00a0 I hope none of your other Cabinet Ministers will let you down as well as the country down.,\u00a0 That is a Himalayan recognition about the \u2018dawn of a new culture\u2019 and I am not sure whether that resignation was a honourably volunteered Class Act, especially when Ravi K had been pushed against the wall by the civil society and the media.\u00a0 What choice did he have?\u00a0 Stop gloating over it as he was a Cabinet Minister prone to be an I don\u2019t know\u2019<\/em><\/strong> forgetful Minister who shouldn’t have been holding an important Ministerial position anyway, especially when he had to deal with numbers…big numbers, when he was prone to to be forgetful.<\/p>\n

Mr. Prime Minister, I am stymied with your request asking the people their support for \u2018good Governance\u2019 when you all buried 29 people alive at Meethotamulla not being serious enough to remove the garbage dump which had been growing in height and diameter for everyone to see for donkey\u2019s years.\u00a0 That was bad and sad on every account.<\/p>\n

What was that we read in the media that there were 60 tender submissions to remove the dump and no one or a company was given the contract to do the job.\u00a0\u00a0 If this is true, did you find out whether that unacceptable delay was due to someone waiting drooling sitting on his or her behind for the best kappan <\/em><\/strong>to be shoved into his or her pocket to hand that contract?\u00a0 I am curious and my anger is visceral over this unacceptable tragic event of burying people alive due to callousness of the former and the present governments. Both governments stand guilty of this tragedy in my eyes.<\/p>\n

Mr. Prime Minister, with such a dark and questionable backgrounder when people say Oya okkoma Hora Yakku, Mahaththaya\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 I hope you will be a bit more circumspect when you go to the gamme minnissu<\/em><\/strong> asking for their support to provide them with \u2018good Governance<\/strong>\u2019.\u00a0 The question that they will throw back at you will be What good Governance, Prime Minister.\u00a0 You know absolutely nothing about \u2018good Governance\u2019, Sir?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sincerely<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe
\nOttawa, Canada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada 16 August 2017 Hon. Ranil Wickremesinghe Prime Minister of Sri Lanka No. 58 Sir Ernest De Silva Mawatha Colombo 7 Sri Lanka. Dear Prime Minister: Today, I read in Home News,\u00a0 that while speaking at a ceremony held at BMICH, Colombo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asoka-weerasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69054","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=69054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}