BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Since the administration of King Vijaya, the application of values did not work in society because the behaviour of King Vijaya showed that he had no values and was not concerned about practising values in society. King Vijaya was a lawbreaker and was deported from his country as he was behaving harmful way to peace-loving people and leaders of the ARAGALAYA were ideal models of Vijaya who destroyed peace-loving inhabitants who were called the HELA community.  

Religions attempted to educate religions-related values that aimed to get respect from the laity. The authoritative administration in the past and the democratic administration used in modern society in Sri Lanka could not see the application of values. It is not an accustomed term in Sri Lanka. The political administration, as well as the general society, is responsible for maintaining democratic values. The public disregarded values and many analysts expressed that the government is accountable for strategies to suppress democratic rights, but people are too accountable individually in terms of the legal structure to protect values. The best example was the ARAGALAYA this year which looked like a self-centred attempt and hidden terrorist strategy rather than encompassing the responsibility of all in society. 

The prime aim of the president, Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe is to unite the people of the country as they are divided by many political parties, religious groups and others. When critically analysing the attempt of Wickremasinghe it seems people neither know the policies of political parties nor religions and roles they play. People have valid or baseless reasons to get away from government policies and many like to look for stupid reasons aligning with self-centred attitudes. It seems that the difficult task for the president would be changing self-centred attitudes and it could be done by educating people but not any other strategy. Educating values in schools would be the concrete way to change attitudes. Since the era of the Portuguese, education has been directed to certain groups and poor and rural people were neglected by the education policy framework.

I watched an interview with Mr Nandana Lokuwithana by a journalist and Mr Lokuwithana showed how he respected values and opposite views; it was a good show for educating policymakers on how they should apply values in the education system as well as in government service. Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe needs to consider incorporating value education with studies in various subjects and leaders of Aragalaya might go against this strategy in education. This is a selected strategy for the moment in education and many actions that should be taken by the president.         

As I observed the initial task that is difficult to implement with the agreement of all political parties is uniting people for the country and many political parties based on religions and ethnic groups should be banned by the government and grouping people based on religion or ethnic groups or any other need to ban for the benefit of the country. If anyone investigates the origin of political parties it would show that the objective of political parties had been violated since the beginning because the authority allowed to establish parties with erroneous objectives.  This type of policy action might be observed by a few people in the country and the government was silent. Kings and Queens in history successfully used an authoritative strategy to control the disunity and the current president should educate international leaders about this administrative predicament to control the society.

Many international leaders have understood the situation in the Indian Subcontinent and dictatorships in Pakistan and other countries were tolerated, if the president, Ranil Wickremasinghe attempts to unite people it might fail and the authoritative administration should use it if fails to be successful.    

Sri Lanka has populated by many people who cannot disclose how they gain ownership of assets; this is the root course of the beginning of ARAGALAYA and a quickly investigating of how gained the ownership of assets would be the way of satisfying people. If there was malpractice in acquiring assets all assets should be given to the government and be used to initiate economic projects that would be helpful to lower-income earners and the unemployed. This will be the best way to settle ARAGALAYA. For example, Rohitha Rajapaksa stated a hotel was owned by him who never engaged in a job and how did he get funds to build a large hotel is a significant issue and there may be many cases like this.  The government should audit and investigate such cases and be made justice to people.

Auditing assets of all people would be a challenging task as well as a process of policy implementation to bring justice to all and it is the best way to unite people for the country. When observing the asset structure, it is difficult to imagine how did people quickly get rich. I suspect that direct or indirect illegal drug business had been the major way of acquiring assets and political corruption such as making commissions from the project implementation has been the way of acquiring assets since the independence. The Search for a solution to the current economic backwardness while uniting people for the country.

Nevertheless, no political party including Marxist parties might agree with this solution as they also contributed to the problems of the country and Marxist parties don’t like to accept the blame and want to push part of the blame to other political parties.  In this background, president Ranil Wickremasinghe has a giant task. He must not listen to bull-shiting political parties and dishonest politicians in whichever political party.