{"id":92813,"date":"2019-09-02T15:44:33","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T22:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92813"},"modified":"2019-09-02T15:44:33","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T22:44:33","slug":"a-short-tale-of-long-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/09\/02\/a-short-tale-of-long-deals\/","title":{"rendered":"A short tale of long deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I make it a point to read the \u2018The Island\u2019 (on-line edition) every day. The times I get to do that depends on my daily work-schedule that involves shift work too. But suffice it to say that I never miss the ritual, which it has been for so many years now. I start with the \u2018Editorial\u2019 and then work my way through the \u2018Features and Opinion\u2019 columns and then to politics etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now there is one topic that is often discussed and written about by the Editor himself and other concerned citizens, which pains me so much so that there was many an occasion, when I had to stop somewhere in the middle of my reading and then pause and ponder on, with a lump in my throat; the amount of scams (not forgetting the \u2018Bond\u2019 scams), crafty deals, small deals, big deals (not forgetting the \u2018Mig\u2019 deals), double deals, cheating and robbing the nation of what it had many years before and what little it has come to have now after all this abhorrent, abominable, incessant, unimaginable pillage of her resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heartless robbers in the guise of administrators, managers, and politicians have been busy to such an extent that one of the ministers was heard saying recently that \u2018Sri Lanka will go bankrupt if the Government fails to pay international debt repayments due in September\u2019. I wonder why it took him so long to say that, though!<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nLeaving the bigger \u2018billion-rupee\u2019 deals aside since we know more or less about\nthem, there have been lesser \u2018million-rupee\u2019 deals that could still amount to\nbillions, if added together. And by the looks of it, there are still hundreds\nif not thousands belonging to that despicable creed \u2018the bad and the ugly\u2019, who\nare still busy doing their dirty work of stealing, in many a diverse\nform,  somewhere, and not some times, but all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The printers have been apparently busy cooking and eating but not printing, with their canteen staff being paid more than a staggering 100 million as overtime. A band of adventurous provincial councilors accompanied by their secretaries goes on foreign trips just before the expiration of the tenure of their council, costing the nation some forty-odd millions. And a controversial transaction of more than one billion rupees involving an advance payment to purchase milch cows from Australia has been questioned by the Central Bank. Then the investigations by the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprise) on questionable power deals that have cost colossal amounts to the nation\u2019s coffers, are underway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above are only a small number of\nexamples, which is just the tip of the iceberg, I am sure, of diverse nature\nthat speaks of the level and the magnitude of misappropriation\/stealing of\nnation\u2019s resources. It is downright thievery that has been rampant in the\ncountry for many years now. And no government has been able to kill the\nepidemic, effectively. And then come to think of it, \u2018will a doctor or can a doctor\ntreat and cure a disease, when he himself is the cause of it\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The saddest part of this dirty\nspectacle is that there are also people involved, who are seemingly highly\neducated too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am now and so are many no doubt, left with feelings of despair and longing, a yearning for the return of the honest and the righteous Sri Lanka, which it was once.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n


If this curse can be wiped out somehow, once and for all, starting with the public sector and the governance, the rest will fall into place soon and the much-talked-about prosperity won’t be a dream anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Laksiri Warnakula I make it a point to read the \u2018The Island\u2019 (on-line edition) every day. The times I get to do that depends on my daily work-schedule that involves shift work too. But suffice it to say that I never miss the ritual, which it has been for so many years now. I start […]<\/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-92813","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\/92813","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=92813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}