{"id":83885,"date":"2018-12-03T13:08:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T20:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=83885"},"modified":"2018-12-03T13:08:10","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T20:08:10","slug":"he-mahinda-rajapaksa-an-opinion-of-a-non-sri-lankan-citizen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/12\/03\/he-mahinda-rajapaksa-an-opinion-of-a-non-sri-lankan-citizen\/","title":{"rendered":"HE Mahinda Rajapaksa &#8211; An Opinion of a Non-Sri Lankan Citizen"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Prof. Hudson McLean<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Governor Generals, Presidents and Prime Ministers in Ceylon \/ Sri Lanka have come &amp; gone.<\/p>\n<p>I was a youth, an under-age driver, at the Orient Club, Colombo 7, the morning when General Sir John Kotalawala lost the election to SWRD. Furious Sir John simply called Ananda Tissa-de Alwis and gave a thundering kick to his back-side.\u00a0 No one was shocked. That was Sir John, the aristocratic arrogant British trained military officer.<\/p>\n<p>When Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, the Governor General of Ceylon appointed W.\u00a0Dahanayake\u00a0as\u00a0Prime Minister when SWRD was assassinated, he suggested that the Beira Lake might have Gondolas, if Ceylon imported a pair for breeding.<\/p>\n<p>When I met Esmond Wickramasinghe, Legal Eagle, the Press Baron, King-maker, (father of Ranil) in his dimly-lit library in Colombo, he was in doubt if his son Ranil would ever lead Sri Lanka or Ceylon. The old man knew that Ranil had his limits.<\/p>\n<p>Of all the Presidents &amp; Prime Ministers of Sri Lanka I met, in my time of life, I would not hasten to nominate, in my humble opinion, the best out of the lot, Numero Uno &#8211; HE Mahinda Rajapaksa, followed by late HE Ranasinghe Premadasa.<\/p>\n<p>I hope the citizens of Sri Lanka hedge their bets on HE Mahinda Rajapaksa, and get the political campaign to get the greedy politicos to put the country FIRST before their luxuries of life, in their list of priorities.<\/p>\n<p>I also wish that the Sri Lankans put past the old Colonial Terminology of &#8220;Kalu Sudda&#8221;, Race, Colour, Religion, Tamil &amp; Marakkala, and just treat each and every son of Sri Lanka with the same measure of rice.<\/p>\n<p>May Blessings of Your Chosen God Shower Upon You!<\/p>\n<p><strong><em><u>Express Your Opinion &#8211; Read What Others Say!<br \/>\nThe Independent Interactive Voice of Sri Lanka on the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>Please visit -: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/\">http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/<\/a><\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prof. Hudson McLean Governor Generals, Presidents and Prime Ministers in Ceylon \/ Sri Lanka have come &amp; gone. I was a youth, an under-age driver, at the Orient Club, Colombo 7, the morning when General Sir John Kotalawala lost the election to SWRD. Furious Sir John simply called Ananda Tissa-de Alwis and gave a thundering [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hudson-mclean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83885","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=83885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}