{"id":88922,"date":"2019-05-16T16:40:29","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T23:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=88922"},"modified":"2019-05-16T16:40:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T23:40:29","slug":"his-excellency-the-globetrotter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/05\/16\/his-excellency-the-globetrotter\/","title":{"rendered":"His Excellency the globetrotter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

When the disaster\nstruck on that fateful Easter Sunday, he was away. When the sporadic incidents\nof communal unrest broke out on the 13th<\/sup>, he was already away or on\nhis way to China. The exact details are irrelevant though. The crux of the\nmatter however is that the skipper by accident or by design doesn\u2019t more often\nthan not happen to be where he should be, which is at the helm to steer his\nship towards safety, when it gets into really rough seas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I, for one, am\namazed at his ability in finding out excuses and\/or plucking out an array of\nexamples from or drawing parallels with the past to justify his absence or\ninaction. Whether those excuses are taken seriously by the public is another\nmatter, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I am sure that\nthose foreign invitees wouldn\u2019t be highly offended if he tells them about his\ninability to attend whatever it is since he has more important and urgent\nmatters to deal with, at home. For all I know, most of those invitations are\noften sent based on diplomatic protocol and courtesy and one Mr Sirisena\u2019s\nabsence is not going to matter to them much, if not at all. Even though every\ntime he and\/or some of his troops accept those invitations with gleeful smiles\nno doubt, our near empty coffers get another direct hit too. By the way, this\napplies to our equally enthusiastic prime minister as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then it looks\nlike the elections looming on the horizon are on the minds belonging to all\nparties and even the present crisis is seemingly considered by many of them as\nsomething that can be best used to further their political ambitions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The present\ngovernment\u2019s inexplicable inertia and lethargy to act promptly and launch\noperations to nip all those poisonous weeds of extremism in the bud (even\nthough by now they all are quite possibly past that budding stage, thanks to\nboth former and present governments that were busy looking the other way, as\nthey were growing up, whilst being nurtured and watered by politicians\nbelonging to both) is inconceivable, but not incomprehensible if one were to go\nby their track records replete with deceit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nSo we have a president, who seems to be incapable of handling complex political\nissues of national importance and instead is quite happy and willing to be away\nfrom action and go on his globetrotting, whenever there is an opportunity. And\nthe country in turn has already paid too high a price for his adventures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula When the disaster struck on that fateful Easter Sunday, he was away. When the sporadic incidents of communal unrest broke out on the 13th, he was already away or on his way to China. The exact details are irrelevant though. The crux of the matter however is that the skipper by accident or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption-and-bribery","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88922","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=88922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}