{"id":95156,"date":"2019-11-12T18:04:55","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T01:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=95156"},"modified":"2019-11-12T18:04:55","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T01:04:55","slug":"mud-slinging-is-a-sign-of-desperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/11\/12\/mud-slinging-is-a-sign-of-desperation\/","title":{"rendered":"Mud-slinging is a sign of desperation"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Today Sri Lanka is facing, arguably its worst survival crisis since\nindependence, following the two armed JVP insurrections (1971 and 1986-90) and\nthe long drawn out armed LTTE separatism (1976-2009), both terrorist movements.\nA considerable number of good but ill-informed or misinformed young Sri Lankans\nbelieve that the past seven decades of independence have seen nothing but a\nsteady degradation of the country as a nation (in terms of governance, economy,\nand social standards, etc.) due to something intrinsically wrong with the\nestablished (political) system and the alleged depravity of all the politicians\nof the country having been given to corruption and abuse of power without any\nexception. But the truth is that there were and there still are good honest\npoliticians, though they have traditionally been surrounded by a host of very\nbad ones. See how the worst characters who were close to former president\nMahinda Rajapaksa and abused his inborn kindness and rather naive trust in them\nas a cover for their dishonest practices have now decamped to the government\nside, and how some of them are making fake videos to sling mud at him and his\nbrother Gotabhaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A series of mudslinging videos due to be launched in the social\nmedia on the 14th and 15th against Gotabhaya, as some Joint Opposition MPs have\nalready forewarned, is an indication of the utter despair and frustration of\nhis opponent\u2019s camp. Such tactics are bound to earn the disapproval of the\npolitically literate Sri Lankan electorate, and will ultimately turn out to be\ncounterproductive for the perpetrators. Already, a few of the bigwigs of the\ngovernment have been caught red-handed and exposed through the media. Large\nsums money from local or foreign sources (more likely from the latter) are\nsuspected to have been spent on this. One can reasonably wonder what they have\ndone other than Rajapaksa bashing for the past five years. The speakers on\ngovernment campaign platforms sound as if they are the Opposition and try to\nabsolve themselves of all wrongdoing, meanwhile transferring all blame to MR.\nIn other countries, m ud-slinging is usually indulged in by opposition elements\nagainst their opponents in the government, but with the Yahapalanaya it is\ndifferent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The speeches that the UNP presidential candidate makes and the\nobviously impractical election promises he dangles before audiences suggest\nthat he has strategically forgotten that he is a powerful minister of the\ngovernment with the ability to have demonstrated his credibility (if he has any\nand if he wants to) by actually doing something about at least some of the\nproblems that he pledges himself to solving (like looking into what is\nhappening at Muhudu Maha Viharaya and Kuragala, or by doing something\nconstructive about it or by ensuring that the impoverished workers on the\nUpcountry tea estates get the Rs 1000 daily payment they have been demanding\nfor so long ).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Belittling of the country\u2019s past achievements by his secret\npromoters is another mean tactic.&nbsp; Sri Lanka has succeeded in introducing\na number of positive changes through parliamentary democracy under both the\noriginal UNP- and SLFP-led governments, the most conspicuous of these being those\nmade in 1956, 1970, 1978, 1994 and 2009. (The regime change engineered with\nforeign involvement in 2015 that replaced the best performing post-independence\ngovernment Sri Lanka had had until then cannot be included in this list.) The\nnegative assessment that Sri Lanka made no progress because of the depravity of\npoliticians, therefore, is not totally valid, though superficially it may\nappeal to the young sections of the electorate who tend to generalize on the\nbasis of what they have been experiencing in the name of \u2018good governance\u2019\nduring the past four and a half years. That is, this most pessimistic verdict\non post-independence politics up until now is largely a reaction to the\nYahapalanaya, which may be described as an absolute kakistocracy (rule by the\nworst people) unmatched by any government that ruled before. Paradoxically, the\nindiscriminate judgement might make the democratic dislodgement of the most\nundemocratic and corrupt administration ever in post-independence Sri Lanka\nmore difficult than it should be in the prevailing circumstances and it is\nbeing slyly promoted by the Yahapalanaya\u2019s erstwhile supporters who are\nhellbent on preventing the patriotic forces now poised to replace it from doing\nso.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Patriotic forces have a clear vision for the country and a\ndefinite plan of action, especially appealing to the tech-savvy young\ngeneration. Their concern is with the survival of the Sri Lankan state as a\nvibrant single entity. Their opponents are only worried about their own\nsurvival in politics. Now that the voters are wise to their pretensions, their\ndesperation can be easily understood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Today Sri Lanka is facing, arguably its worst survival crisis since independence, following the two armed JVP insurrections (1971 and 1986-90) and the long drawn out armed LTTE separatism (1976-2009), both terrorist movements. A considerable number of good but ill-informed or misinformed young Sri Lankans believe that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95156","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=95156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}