{"id":92142,"date":"2019-08-11T23:56:03","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T05:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92142"},"modified":"2019-08-11T16:36:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T23:36:17","slug":"separating-politics-from-economic-development-and-security-of-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/08\/11\/separating-politics-from-economic-development-and-security-of-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"SEPARATING POLITICS FROM ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY OF SRI LANKA"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

It has been reported in news media in Sri Lanka that Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa stated if he becomes the president of Sri Lanka from the next election, he will give all politics and political-related activities in the country to Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa and fully concentrate on the economic development, elevating the economy and national security of the country.\u00a0 No presidential candidate in the past made such a strong statement or promised to separate politics from national activities and even practically activated to work the same way after the election to the presidential position. In 2015, Mr. Maithripala Sirisena showed to work the same way as a candidate of Yahapalanaya, however, after few weeks acquiring the presidentship, he also acquired the leadership of his opponent’s political party (SLFP) and stuck in a political mud puddle.\u00a0 The statement of Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a highly appreciated and respected statement compared to other presidential candidates. When compared to so-called presidential hopeful or self-proposed presidential candidates, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa demonstrated his suitability to be the president and his maturity and understanding of the major issues of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UNP and its associated parties show internal conflicts to select the candidate for the presidential election and Mr. Sajith Premadasa and Mr. Karu Jayasuriya make conflicting statements to the community, most probably they are intending to covering up the real behavior of them during past five years. There is no argument that they behaved like henchmen of Western forces despite the will of people of Sri Lanka.\u00a0 It is quite clear that Mr. Sajith Premadasa has no idea about Sri Lanka’s economy, elevating the economic status and national security. Can UNP candidate separate politics from economic development and the national security if he\/she becomes the president of the country? It seems that the associated parties with UNP aim at playing politics as they played after 2015 and the people of Sri Lanka don\u2019t want such games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experience since 2015 has been shown that UNP or it supported a candidate for the presidentship could not separate the politics from the economic activities and national security. The upliftment of the economy has been a pipe dream of supporters and people voted for them in 2015 realized with a short period that they did a mistake voting to so-called Yahapalanaya. \u00a0\u00a0The current behavior of much-publicized UNP choice reflects that Mr. Sajith Premadasa is in a mud puddle without understanding or practical experience in the economy and national security and foreign affairs. There is no doubt that acting like Mr. R. Premadasa means taking arms against poor youth who struggle for a life with basic needs. \u00a0\u00a0Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe learned many strategic options for administration under Mr. JR Jayewardene and Mr. ACS Hameed but Mr. Sajith Premadasa did nothing and people will twice consider whether voting for Mr. Sajith Premadasa could be justified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare many negative points against Premadasa\u2019s politics in Sri Lanka since the\nera of the last stage of Mr. Dudley Senanayake. What happened to Puravasi\nPeramuna established by the leadership of Mr. Premadasa and Mr. Gamini Fonseka\nis known to nobody.  Mr. Mahinda\nRajapaksa after the defeat in 2015 publicly stated that a mistake he has done\nduring his administration was helping Mr. Sajith Premadasa\u2019s sister, Mrs.\nDulanjali Jayakody to get away from the case of printing fake money or\nattempting to deposit fake money to her account.  These are moral issues against the honesty of\nMr. Premadasa\u2019s family.  If these issues\nemerge, Mr. Sajith Premadasa cannot answer to them but Mr. Sajith Premadasa\nattempts to show he is a superior person by words of mouth and pointing figure\nto a housing scheme, which is clear to people but there is more spending for\npublicity than the value of houses.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People of Sri Lanka want a concrete person with excellent ideas and practical experience for development activities and national security.\u00a0 Sri Lanka doesn’t want a presidential candidate, who purely attracted popularity because of playing Cricket or acting in movies or spending money for attracting popularity. If Sri Lanka wants a Cricketer, Mr. Arjuna Ranatunga was the best person who brought the Cricket world cup defeating Australia, but he might not be the choice of UNP. Sri Lankans are highly concerned with culture and religion.\u00a0 Culture means rules, regulations, laws, and procedures, etc. Any presidential candidate disrespects culture and religion he or she is not the choice of Sri Lankans and candidates from any political party must be a respected person for human values and understand the expectations of people without racial differences.\u00a0 The economy is the giant challenge of Sri Lanka which has been complicated by the changes during the past five years and the economy should be able to fulfill the expectations of the young generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent\nspeeches of Mr. Sajith Premadasa reflected that although he studied in the\nLondon School of Economics, that he does not know about Schumpeter’s idea about\ninvestments, profit, and entrepreneurship. If so, how can he bring investment\nto the country? Can he develop an environment in Sri Lanka to attract\ninvestments as Schumpeter explained and why didn\u2019t he work during the past five\nyears to attract investment without money laundering in Sri Lanka?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka is a small country, which is subject to global hegemony and has no power to react or respond to global hegemony.\u00a0 Mr. J.R. Jayewardene said without surrendering to India he works to live under the shadow of India.\u00a0 Now Sri Lanka needs to live under the shadow of India, China, and America to attract investments without constraints. The future presidents of Sri Lanka must be able to live the shadow of these powers and the next presidential candidate needs to show the skills for it.\u00a0 Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa has shown his capability and people of Sri Lanka have a clear understanding of his capabilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\ndo these, politics need to be separated from economic development, elevating\nthe economy, national security, and foreign affairs.  Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa already stated that he\nwill do it and he will be the best choice to Sri Lanka. Politics means\ndifferences and when a person elected as the president, he or she must be a\nnational leader working for the country without any differences.  Mr. Sirisena elected in 2015, but he could\nnot work as a national leader and he had to work for people who supported him\nto be the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The statement of Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa confirmed that he will be a national leader, who is desperately required by the people of the country. People of the country never expect a henchman in the way that Mr. Karu Jayasuriya acted in October 2018.\u00a0 Therefore, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa can understand what is needed for the people of the country. \u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS It has been reported in news media in Sri Lanka that Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa stated if he becomes the president of Sri Lanka from the next election, he will give all politics and political-related activities in the country to Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa and fully concentrate on the economic development, elevating the economy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92142","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=92142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}