{"id":87951,"date":"2019-04-30T00:48:53","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T06:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=87951"},"modified":"2019-04-29T17:47:46","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T00:47:46","slug":"sirisena-must-resign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/30\/sirisena-must-resign\/","title":{"rendered":"SIRISENA MUST RESIGN!"},"content":{"rendered":"

DHARSHAN WEERASEKERA<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

President Maithripala Sirisena must resign\nimmediately and make way for new Presidential elections.  It is the decent thing to do, and more\nimportantly is in the interests of the country. \nSri Lankans must have a chance to choose a leader capable of conducting\na vigorous and sustained campaign against Islamist terrorism, the new existential\nthreat that the country is facing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sirisena was brought to power by a coalition\nof forces led by the U.S. to facilitate bringing fundamental Constitutional as\nwell as economic changes to this country,  changes that would make the country more or\nless a permanent vassal of the U.S. and thereby prevent China from gaining a\nfoothold here.  Under the Sirisena-Ranil\nregime that lasted from 8th<\/sup> January 2015 to 26th<\/sup> October\n2018 many of those changes were made or were about to be made.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Sirisena\u2019s immense credit, he did not\nsell-out the country completely.  Had he\nnot sacked Rani Wickremasinghe as PM on 26th<\/sup> October 2018 and\nsubsequently ended the \u2018National Government\u2019 we might well be living under the\n\u2018Urumiththa Nadu\u2019 Constitution by now, a fate no less awful than living under an\nIslamic \u2018caliphate.\u2019 However, Sirisena is not the man to lead a campaign against\nthe Islamist terrorists.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is evident from the way he has\nconducted himself in the very first week after the bombings.  To the best of my knowledge, he was taken\nthree steps: first, appoint a Commission of Inquiry which is to report within\ntwo weeks on the reasons behind the bombings and any shortcomings in the\nGovernment\u2019s response, second, call an All-Party-Conference and third, promise that\nhe will solve the problem, \u2018as soon as possible.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those measures will probably help Sirisena\nbuy time and save his neck as usual, but they do not in any way help answer the\nfundamental questions as to how Islamist terrorists appear to have sunk deep\nroots in this country, including set up extensive networks of suicide bombers,\nsafe houses, bomb factories, etc. and most importantly what the Government\u2019s\nvision, plan or policy is on how to combat this.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To digress a moment and turn to the LTTE,\nthe previous terrorism that Sri Lanka successfully stamped out, to the best of\nmy understanding we won the war only when we: \na) mobilized the full resources of the State for the war, in effect\nmaking it a national priority, b) stopped relying on foreign advisors and\nadvice and instead devised our own strategies and tactics (certainly when we\nneeded specialized equipment or training we turned to the foreigners\u2014Pakistanis\nfor Multi-Barrel Rocket launchers, the Chinese for tanks and assault rifles,\nthe Americans and the Indians for intel on the LTTE\u2019s \u2018floating armories\u2019 etc.\nbut the strategy, tactics as well as personnel were our own\u2014and c) put together\na good team of commanders who could take the fight to the enemy.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lankans cannot afford to make the same\nmistakes that prolonged the fight against the LTTE for nearly thirty years.  Not only do we need a leader who can\nmilitarily crush the Islamist terrorists as swiftly as possible, but just as\nimportant and perhaps more so, find a long-term solution to ensure that the\npeople of this country have a semblance of a common cultural and national\nidentity rather than be a collection of separate communities thrown\ntogether.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undoubtedly, to accomplish the above one\nwould have to among other things make profound changes in the economic system,\nthe educational system and the foreign policy of the country.  The educational system in particular would have\nto be thoroughly re-examined.  For\ninstance, how is it that Sri Lanka\ncan have universal free education according to national standards and\ncurriculums but there appear to be groups of persons within this country who\nlook and act as if they were born and bred in the tribal lands of Afghanistan or Pakistan?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the next President of Sri Lanka,\nwhoever he or she turns out to be, must have the vision, skill and tact to\nhandle these issues.  He or she must also\nhave a fresh and undisputed mandate from the people.  Sirisena has none of these things.  However, he still has about 6 months left in\nhis term, and six months can be crucial to how the campaign against the\nIslamists shapes up.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six months is sufficient for the enemy to\nre-group, and also for, a) various countries to further entrench themselves in\nSri Lanka under the pretext of helping fight terrorism, b) the enemy to try and\nassassinate our best leaders and potential leaders and thereby deprive us of\ntheir service, and c) the enemy to launch more attacks that ultimately trigger\nanti-Muslim riots.  In such a situation\nthe problem will become quite intractable because the terrorists will start\ngetting more and more recruits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I admire Sirisena for what he did on 26th<\/sup>\nOctober 2018.  He has an unparalleled\ncapacity among Sri Lankan politicians to take bold<\/em> decisions\u2014except,\nthose decisions have so far been to save his own neck!  Now, he has to make a decision on behalf of\nthe country and the people he claims to love. \nHe must go, in order that the rest of us might live.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DHARSHAN WEERASEKERA President Maithripala Sirisena must resign immediately and make way for new Presidential elections.  It is the decent thing to do, and more importantly is in the interests of the country.  Sri Lankans must have a chance to choose a leader capable of conducting a vigorous and sustained campaign against Islamist terrorism, the new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dharshan-weerasekera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87951","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=87951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}