{"id":92106,"date":"2019-08-10T17:00:30","date_gmt":"2019-08-11T00:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92106"},"modified":"2019-08-10T17:00:30","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T00:00:30","slug":"will-it-be-never","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/08\/10\/will-it-be-never\/","title":{"rendered":"Will it be never?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

He was clad in the national dress, an immaculate white that\ncontrasted well with somewhat dark and enclosed surroundings. He was stocky,\nyet lean enough. He was not tall, yet not short either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was standing on the podium addressing a distinguished gathering\nof foreign and local dignitaries. With confidence and composure, he was\nspeaking to his audience through an interpreter in his mother tongue. Little\nthose listeners knew that if he chose to, he could with equal eloquence have\ngiven the speech in English too. Yet he was proud of his heritage, language,\nhis country. He was not a man, who had given himself and sheepishly surrendered\nto an inferiority complex of any kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stood erect, shook hands with that firm grip, which conveyed to\nthe other that he was sincere yet firm in conviction of what he believed was\nfair and right. He without words could convey to all around him, that behind\nthose smiling, charming eyes and frequent nodding lay a mind belonging to an\niron man, a no-nonsense man, a man of action, yet someone, who always opted for\nfair play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He never travelled in half-a-mile long motorcades with armed\nescorts dressed in camouflaged fatigues on vehicles with lights flashing and\nhorns blaring.  Neither did he allow his ministers to do that. They, only\na two dozen with impeccable credentials, whose thinking often resonated in\nperfect harmony with that of their leader, didn\u2019t want it anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He never treated his land of birth as his own. He wouldn\u2019t sell it\nto the aliens in bits and pieces and wouldn\u2019t lease parts and patches of that\npristine soil to them in the name of \u2018development\u2019, which he always maintained\nas nothing but grand theft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His kith and kin hardly got any mention anywhere, let alone in our\nmore-than-curious media. They were just ordinary citizens not above or below\nthe average, minding their own business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He knew his limitations. He sought advice, when he felt the need\nfrom his team of honest, capable men and women of knowledge and moral standing.\nAnd he never felt small about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His aversion to self-aggrandizement was more than obvious. He\nnever sought cheap popularity. He didn\u2019t want to see pictures of him and his\nministers displayed in government offices. He was a man, who could instantly\nrecognise slavish obedience, servility and undue veneration, the signature\nqualities of greedy, incapable, incompetent, spineless yes-men\/women, whom he\ndespised intensely. He respected the opinions of the others, listened to them\ncarefully before arriving at a solution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he didn\u2019t fear the strikes and the unions. He always resorted\nto solution through discussion and negotiation. Yet when their actions and\ndemands became unreasonable and unacceptable and were going to affect the\ngreater good of the nation, he acted firmly, swiftly with corrective action\nwithout an iota of fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He faced his opposition with courage, emboldened by conviction and\nfact. And he was not afraid of criticism and was unshakable in what he believed\nwas right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Above all he was not a fake. He was an honest man, who was not\npower-hungry and he did not seek power for powers\u2019 sake. He loved his country.\nAnd then he was still much more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I woke up. The other day I started to read a book after my\nlunch. It was about an extraordinary man. Then came the snooze. And almost a\nsimilar figure to the man in the book took the centre stage of my mind while, I\nwas basking in the comfort of my little siesta. Probably because of the story\nabout the man that I was reading in the book was playing at the back of my\nmind.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kept thinking, now both my mind and eyes wide awake. When are we\ngoing to see a man\/woman at the helm of our motherland, who could be like the\none that I saw in my snooze or someone, who could at least come close, to that\nfigure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will it be never?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laksiri Warnakula<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula He was clad in the national dress, an immaculate white that contrasted well with somewhat dark and enclosed surroundings. He was stocky, yet lean enough. He was not tall, yet not short either. He was standing on the podium addressing a distinguished gathering of foreign and local dignitaries. With confidence and composure, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laksiri-warnakula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92106","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=92106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}