By Dr.C.G.Ilangakoon Courtesy Ceylon Today

What the general public expects from governance is peace and prosperity as the minimum. A period, more than seven decades have lapsed and what the majority of the rulers have failed to give to the motherland is much more than that what they could give. The people are fed up of this ceaseless political deception. ‘Enough’ is the word which reverberates the totality of everyone’s soul. 

The Initial understanding for the voter must be:

(1)The mental state and emotions of humans must be seeded in the energy of oneness.  

(2)Dream and learn to perform only for the final result. 

(3)Admire and grant priority and preference to the tested and trusted politicians only – eg: The Rajapaksa regime, as politically promised, who crushed the LTTE, who caused ruthless bloodshed and brought peace to the Motherland. 

(4)Drop all politicians and their parties who deceived the voters, did not fulfil the pledges and destroyed the Motherland in various ways. eg: The UNP Good Governance regime who gave us the Central Bank Scam, Inaction against Zahran’s ‘Islam extremist terrorists’ and their brutal bomb blasts.

(5)Discard politicians and parties who and which sold the public wealth to private international or indigenous trade giants. eg: The UNP regime as in the Hambantota Harbour. 

(6)To vote, not for the party membership, party colour or its symbol, but, for the party-agenda, with a powerful determination to profit people. 

(7)To consider the casting of the vote as a business. The aim should be profit, profit and once again profit.

(8)To maintain the thought in its integrity that the Motherland must have one law, applicable to all.

(9)The governing leaders must be strong. eg: In the final days of the war against the LTTE terrorists, the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner visited Sri Lanka and demanded to handover Prabhakaran to them. President Mahinda Rajapaksa categorically refused

(10)To comprehend that a Fighting President and a Parliament is a terrible loss for the country- eg: President Maithripala Sirisena and PM Ranil Wickremesinghe ‘National Government’ 

(11) To discard politicians, who fail to capture power via the wished will of the voters and who abuse the law to grab and stay in power.

We were given many chances but our rulers didn’t make use of them, not rightly nor intelligently. The Motherland was in dire need of a powerful political leadership team, who were the masters of their words. And they got them. That was during the last Presidential Elections, the former Defence Secretary, under whose military leadership the bloodshed of LTTE terrorism was crushed, the SLPP candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was elected as the Executive President of Sri Lanka. Yet, the matters do not end at that. Why? The administration of the island comprises three constitutionalised pillars: (1) President (2) Legislature (3) Judiciary.

The judiciary is an independent constitutionalised organ for the administration of justice. It is not an elected institution by the people via votes. Hence, it’s nexus with the other two pillars of governance is not absolute, but, relative and specific. Nevertheless, the mutual relationship and the inter-supplementation of the Executive President and the Legislature is a very serious affair and in the absence of the management cordiality, right understanding, operational integrity, recognition of targets to be attained and the objectives to maintain the unity of the Motherland, both establishments are set in the potentiality of a deadlock. 

The two-thirds majority

The worst instance of this scenario was experienced during the time of the so-called ‘good governance’ in the tug-of-war of between the SLFP President and the UNP Prime Minister. The negative impact of this was so disastrous that it ruined the peace, the Rajapaksa regime installed and brought back to Sri Lanka, the ‘Iraq and Syria Islam State’ terrorism, bomb explosions, blood, pain, destruction and death.

Therefore, what the voters must logically realise is the President should have a cooperation-enriched and collaboration-conducive legislature to rightly execute the law, being enacted in the Parliament. 

This state of affairs requires the following major factors in force: 

(1) Oneness of the political party of the President, Prime Minister and the Parliament 

(2) One Election Manifesto as the Constitution of the economy and administration 

(3) An intelligent opposition capable of performing objectively in the best interest of the public 

(4) Two-thirds Parliament majority of the governing party, particularly, in this election.

The burning need of the two-thirds majority in the governing party, which the President is belonging to, is reflected very much specifically, by reason of the necessity of the amendment of the Constitution of Sri Lanka, by virtue of the de-constitutionalisation of the powers of the President by the erstwhile UNP ‘good-governance’ Government.

A futile effort to remove Gotabaya and Namal 

What the voters of Sri Lanka should intelligently understand is that the 19th constitutional amendment, besides the amputation of Presidential powers, had, as its orientation, a clandestine conspiracy to remove the powerful and popular Rajapaksa members from the domain of politics.

The foreign citizenry and the age limit components were enshrined with schemes on Gotabaya and Namal Rajapaksa. Hence, this Constitution cannot profit the country and its people. It follows that its immediate amendment and redesign, to fit the needs of the hour and the Motherland represents an inevitable imperative. 

This is possible only with the two- thirds majority of the Parliament. Now, it is the crucial duty of the voters to explore this constitutional crisis and exploit the God-gifted chance of election, to set aside the glasses of differing hues and use the votes to structure a two-thirds Parliament majority, in order to originate a cordial operational space for the present President, to execute his tasks in the best interest of the country.

The Essence

The voters must epitomise the above-elaborated as follows: 

(1) ‘Enough’ is the word, being reverberated in the souls of the frustrated populace. 

(2) The voters must elect ‘Masters of their own words’ as Members of Parliament. 

(3)  The Rajapaksa regime had ended the LTTE bloodshed. 

(4) The UNP ‘good-governance dependence on minority votes was exploited to import ISIS Zaharanic ‘Islam’ Extremist terrorism of ‘religious racists’.

(5) The Motherland needs a cooperation-enriched and collaboration-conducive         legislature. 

(6) Profit making, patriotic governance needs two-thirds majority. 

(7) The UNP designed a clandestine conspiracy to remove powerful and popular   Rajapaksa members. Now, what is the eighth threatening constituent?

The racist minority politicians and the tail wagging dog

The Sinhala Buddhist, Hindu Tamil, Christian, Muslim and other communities lived in this country in absolute friendship, mutual understanding and peace. They enjoyed no dirty conspiracy of destroying the historical and ancestral identity of the original community of Sri Lanka – the Sinhala Buddhists. During that peaceful time of absolute beauty, no racist rite and ritual was imported from abroad, to segregate people, by way of abusing the innocently existed and mutually acceptable historical dress codes and eating patterns of friendly communities. During the time of elections, any voter could cast his/her vote to anybody, independent of any communal, religious and cast discrimination. 

However, gradually with the lapse of time and with the increase of the number of heads of certain communities, things not only changed, but also criminalised into hating others racially and religion-wise. Strange eating habits and the Motherland identity destroying dress-codes, which never existed before, for the centuries of living together, began to mushroom in the name of certain Gods. On the top of that an inception was set, for racialisation and religionisation of politics, forming political parties and naming them after the race and the religion. The two ‘isations’ led to identification, the identification to differentiation, the differentiation to segregation, the segregation into division, the division into contradiction and the contradiction in to the conspiracy of the destruction of other communities, based on religion and ethnicity. The communal oneness was crushed, the competition was set in, the hating racial race began and the purity of politics was contaminated.

Now, the minority community does not vote for the policy manifesto of the Party, but for the individual form of their own community, religion and race. The Tamils would vote only for Tamil Parties. The vote of the Muslim is cast only for parties, carrying the words of precise ethnic identification: ‘Muslim and Islam’.  What matters is not the country, but the race and the religion. The unfortunate situation is the original community, which is the majority, is divided in conformity with the party, its colour and the symbol. The minorities are united. The majority is divided. Then, along with the proportional representation system, except for exclusive occasions, no one party can obtain the majority in the Parliament and structure an independent government. The major party is compelled to resort to the help of the party of a minor ethnic community. Right here begins the bargain and metaphorically speaking, the tail wagging the dog.

This is one centrally threatening aspect, the voters must seriously think of. The threatening state of the tail wagging the dog, is well capable of: 

(1) Bending the minds and dominating the souls of power greedy majority community politicians. 

(2) Using and abusing the power-greedy, character-weak, spineless politicians to bend the knees of the majority community and kneel them down before the minority community. 

(3) Allowing more than one law to be operative in the Motherland. 

(4) Closing the eyes of the Goddess of the administration of justice before heinous crimes, perpetrated by racists. 

(5) Promoting irrationally ethnicised and stupidly politicised grants to minority communities. 

(6) Being conducive to the execution of schemes for the bifurcation of the Motherland.

(7)  Super-imposing endeavours to introduce civilisationally condemned, religiously unacceptable and historically ethical disgusting doctrines like secularism. 

(8) Enjoying silence by power-greedy politicians, until the ancestral archaeological and religious remains are destroyed by race and religion based racists – eg: The Great Sea Temple 

9) The list is endless and the allocated newspaper space is limited.

What to do?

The most important: all Sinhala, Tamil, Burgher, Muslim and other communities should, not only understand, but also, seriously realise that not independence, not even dependence, but inter-dependence is the determining factor, the sine qua non, everyone must abide by. 

Hence, the racist doctrine of separatism, which champions communal segregation, should be perceived to be political and religious rubbish which leads this land solely to destruction. What must be discerned by all is, if with a war with minority Tamils, comprising only 12 per cent of the population, could cause so much damage, then, should there be a war of the Muslim minority with the Sinhala-Buddhist absolute majority, the community percentage of which is more than 75 per cent of Sri Lanka, what a colossal damage would be caused is an exploding truth, left for the intelligence of everyone. 

It is high time for minority politicians to discard the stupid question, one friend of mine, a staunch supporter of LTTE, living a luxury life in USA posed to me, in a midnight WhatsApp dialogue: “Can you live in Sri Lanka with Tamils, waging a way against you? “My immediate response was:” Of course No”. Then, I asked him: “Can you live in Sri Lanka with Sinhala Buddhists waging a war against Tamils? He became speechless and precisely, this is inter-dependence.

The voters of Sri Lanka need a political doctrine and a governance, which unite all communities under one roof, indeed, in the total absence of the trespass of original and majority community rights, in name of the protection of minority community rights. The voters must see that the UNP and the ‘Yahapalanaya’ successfully failed in this tremendous task. And then, the only option left for the voters is, the political and the economic Constitution, the SLPP Manifesto, furnished by the Podu Jana Peramuna, the leaders of which are not only tested, but also tasted and trusted by the absolute majority. It is only based on that test, taste and trust, the former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who nourished the military leadership of the war against LTTE fascism, became the President of our Motherland.

Strong Parliament for President GR

UNP Yahapalana and the SLFP Maithripala Sirisena team craftily slackened the constitutionalised Presidential competence. Unfortunately, some other parties, which should not have supported it, made a thundering blunder by voting for the 19th constitutional amendment for deconstitutionalising Presidential powers. 

Hence, the voters must feel the burning need to amend and rescript the Constitution, to fit the patriotic and prosperity needs of the island. Therefore, they must be politically and vision-innovative to structure a Parliament with a supportive two-thirds majority, in order to manufacture a space, for President Rajapaksa to galvanise the people profiting SLPP agenda- “Vistas of Prosperity and Splendor”.

About the writer: Dr.Gamini Ilangakoon is a Lawyer, specializing in International Treaty Laws.