{"id":74768,"date":"2018-02-14T02:40:44","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T09:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=74768"},"modified":"2018-02-14T02:40:44","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T09:40:44","slug":"ranil-and-his-royal-gang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/02\/14\/ranil-and-his-royal-gang\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranil and his Royal Gang \u00a0\u2026!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Punsara Amarasinghe PhD Candidate in International Law Higher School of Economics Moscow<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

For a good or bad Royal College in Colombo had held the helm in the country\u2019s history since its inception. When \u00a0Robert Wilmort Horton took his paternal interest in Royal College or Colombo Academy \u00a0in 1836 one year after the establishment of the school by Rev. Marsh, Horton\u2019s interest was to keep it as a British factory in Ceylon to produce a local clerical service for the service of the British Raj. However the development of the school provided the best influence to nourish a breed of elite Ceylonese to play better cards with British in the national movement.\u00a0 For the past 183 years history of Royal has produced personalities in every walk of life and they are still vividly remembered by the school they studied as distinguished products. The uniqueness of the school has not been confined to a certain class as Royal has produced political leaders and ideologists from Marxism to Liberalism and Tamil nationalism to the Sinhalese nationalism. Nevertheless today School\u2019s hall of fame and its glamour stand at bay with the outrageous acts culminated by premier Ranil and his notorious Royalists friends in the inner circle. I can recall in 2007 when Ranil stepped into Mustangs tent in Royal Thomian big match some of his loyal supports from Royal welcomed him as the future president of Sri Lanka though it has not become a reality thus far and it would not be as long as Sun rises from the East!<\/p>\n

In the backdrop of trembling and hauling defeat to UNP and entire Yahapanlaya fraternity in local election, Ranil should understand how wretchedly he failed the aspirations of diehard UNP voters who were eagerly waiting to uphold a strong green blood rule and above all the bitter looming truth before him is how his so called Blue and Gold\u201d Royal friends played a foul game for past three years. In toppling Mahinda Rajapakshe\u2019s \u00a0rule which stood for the nation\u2019s interest against all odds, UNP and all the anti-nationalists forces manipulated the public opinion by creating a term named Sahodara Samagama\u201d.\u00a0 Three years after the defeat of Mahinda in 2015 still Sahodara Samagama has left a practical legacy than what Ranil and his Royal frtatntiy have been doing since the day they took the power. Moreover popular myth on Ranil\u2019s honesty and his cleanness in politics was shattered by bringing his Royalists friends into the circle of power. In examining the path how he began to bring Royalists into power the appointment of Arjun Mahendran as the Central Bank governor was the first detrimental blow on theYahapalanaya. After having criticized the Sri Lankan tax system and state owned enterprises this notorious Royalist was expected to perform a sudden wonder in the economy. Instead of galvanizing the economy he was busy with selling the government bonds to his Son in law which did to cost a 1.6 Billion loss to the country. Even after the revealing the despicable nature of Mahendran\u2019s act, premier was not keen to stand for the truth. Instead of that he opted for the path of protecting his fellow Royalist. The statement given by Ranil Wickramaisnghe before Bond Commission may be the most obtuse statement made by any prime minister in Sri Lankan history.\u00a0 In testifying before the commission Ranil stated that he had relied on the assurance of Governor Arjun Mahendran regarding the divestment of Arjun Aloysius\u2019 ownership in Perpetual Treasuries and had insisted on the divestment prior to Mahendran taking as Governor. \u00a0Despite Arjun Mahendran has breached the trust and fooled Ranil, he \u00a0continued to keep Mahendran as a loyal supporter \u00a0and placed him as the head of his five year development plan. It seems to indicate that Ranil has lost his political instinct (If he had any!) in trusting his closest Royal College gang, because even after the bond scandal he shamelessly defended Ravi Karunayake albeit \u00a0all the evidence had set up against him. In the commission Ranil stated that his assumption on Ravi Karunanayake was clearly genuine as a senior Cabinet Minister and senior UNPer that he was telling the truth about the Penthouse allegation . In his testimony premier went on to say I asked him ( Karunnayake) about it and he said no. There was no reason to go further\u201d.\u00a0 This remark simply illustrates how seriously Ranil kept his trust upon his Royal College Gang even those people\u2019s actions had ruined the interests of the state. It becomes evident with this imbecilic decisions made by premier that he has almost forgotten the most important line from his school song learn of books and learn of men and learn to play the game\u201d! In fact the deeper meaning of those line learn to play the game refers to how one should be staunch in dealing with the life\u2019s decisions, but Ranil\u2019s own arrogance of power has led him to believe his Royal Gang to the last ditch.<\/p>\n

After the Bond scandal the humbug of Ranil\u2019s Royal gang was exposed to the whole country. Especially\u00a0\u00a0 when a Sri Lankan military officer tried to defend the pride of the country in London against a rally led by LTTE supporters, his action was critiqued by Mangala Samarweera as a threat to national harmony and this Royalist Foreign Minister has been irrational to ignore \u00a0how can national harmony be affected when a military officer acts accordingly to face a terrorist organization.<\/p>\n

In truth Ranil and his Royal College fraternity did not understand the pulsation of the people and when people demanded more practical benefits Ranil was willing to give them WiFi! The recent overwhelming victory has clearly set the nails to the yahapalana\u201d coffin and it is not an exaggeration to state that Ranil is spending the autumn of his political career, perhaps he can regarded as the weakest statesman came from the hallowed portals of Royal. The motto of Royal College Disce aut Discade or Learn or Depart is a quite popular one these days \u00a0as a result of another political joke, nevertheless the alternative motto proposed by Sir Henry Burton British Chief Justice in Ceylon in 1915 at Royal College prize giving Disce Aut Discede Manet Sors Tertia Caedia ( Learn or Depart or be Caned ) should be a worthy one to mention here. \u00a0After going through a constant serious of failures in his political career Ranil has learned nothing and did not depart either. However the massive victory of Pohotuwa\u201d and rise of nationalist force has finally canned Ranil and his Blue and Gold\u201d fraternity to hide their faces..!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Punsara Amarasinghe PhD Candidate in International Law Higher School of Economics Moscow For a good or bad Royal College in Colombo had held the helm in the country\u2019s history since its inception. When \u00a0Robert Wilmort Horton took his paternal interest in Royal College or Colombo Academy \u00a0in 1836 one year after the establishment of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74768","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=74768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}