Is There Anyone Listening Out There?
Let us start the 2007 with a new resolution

By Sinhalaya

It was very interesting to read a plea by Mr. Anandasangaree asking the President not to allow the de-merger of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is not to be governed according to the whims of Rajiv Ghandhi, his mother, J.R, Premadasa, Ranil, CBJ, her mother, Anura or even Mahinda Rajapaksa - adding LTTE's name to this list is an insult.

The highest court in the land has judged that it was unlawful to merge East & North in the first place. JR should have asked the law makers in Sri Lanka to decide before deciding on his own. Sri Lanka is not his grandfather's property to unilaterally decide to merge to please his buddies.

With all due respect, Mr. Anadasangaree too should hold his piece. He may write thousands of letters and appeals but sentiments aside, both north and east must be populated with all ethnic groups, Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers and may be a few thousand foreigners from the West - who do less talking but more working, as was seen in a UK documentary on December 26th in UK, where Annika Rice in 5 days with a group of Brits accomplished two very important projects in Paiyagala to commemorate the second year anniversary of Tsunami.

The government of the land should first with the help of every civilized, decent, law abiding citizen wipe out the curse of terrorism. Hunt, capture and wipe out Prabhakaran and his goons first and Kick the Norweigians out next. We need NGO's but make sure they are transparent.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is on the right track and seems to be doing just that. The day Mr. Anandsangaree can walk anywhere in Sri Lanka, including the north and/or the east without any bodyguards and/or without getting hunted by murderers like the LTTE or any other splinter groups is the day Mr. Anadasangaree should be writing letters and should be talking about public opinion and mergers and/or demergers.

Put behind bars all the ministers, deputy ministers and junior ministers, heads of departments, and the privileged minority power holders involved in corruption and bribe taking. Reduce the number of ministers in the federal government to 12.

Make Trincomalee a free port and a commercial hub.

Develop North, East, South, West, Central, as well as all areas of Sri Lanka equally so that any Sri Lankan would without hesitation love to live and work in any part of the island. Sri Lanka is such a small country but the problems are complex because the men who governed them have made it so. 90 percent of our so called leaders learned about politics after coming to power.

Look at Sirimavo. She was just a housewife who spent countless years learning to govern hiding behind Felix and TB. Who is turn absolutely had no experience. It was blind leading the blind. What a mess she created. She literally starved Sri Lankans - very much similar what some African leaders did during the past 30 years. We did that before Africans did.

Talking about Srimavo, it was pathetic having a cripple in a wheel chair for a prime minister in the not so distant past. Why the heck couldn't we have a qualified mature healthy individual be appointed as the prime minister for that sad period of our history? Are we so foolish to have old woman in a wheel chair as our prime minister. I believe for sentimental reasons and because we the foolish Sri Lankans had our own Royal Family in Sri Lanka, whose god given right it was to govern us even if they were living vegetables.

Anura should be deported to a country where there is no food. He is a liability to poor Sri Lanka. We cannot afford his meals or his frequent official air trips. Obviously with his girth he cannot fly economy class. May be his sister should look after him - after all he kept on boasting about the absolute powers CBK wielded during the last six years. Lastly look at CBK. Other than a foolish claim to an imaginary throne in Sri Lanka what experience or professionalism did she bring to the table? She made us a joke in the world of politics. She could not even understand why some idiot a long time ago invented the clock.

Then you have the JVPers, the Samasaji's and the Communists. They do not know when to give up. Socialism has failed the world over. These fools are still hiding behind red flags and red shirts. Somawansa should go back to exile in UK. Sri Lanka needs working men, not supervisors and saboteurs.

We should take countries (let it be China, India, USA, Britain, Cuba, Singapore or where ever) as examples, where people roll up their sleeves and do an honest days work to make a living to build a better Sri Lanka. In other words there are more chiefs than Indians in Sri Lanka. Train hands-on workers and increase what we pay to hands-on workers and to hands-on supervisors.

Start with University graduates. Give them hands on training. The country needs smart and skilled electricians, plumbers, carpenters, masons, welders, mechanics, millwrights, pipe fitters, heavy duty drivers, equipment operators, road workers, cabinet makers, book keepers, dental technicians, nurses, and many other types of skilled workers. Why can't we retrain university graduates in these fields?

The salaries for skilled workers have to be the same as for so called graduate engineers after proper training. Europe and US do and they do not seem to be doing that bad. Abolish the titles of General Manager, Directors who are nothing but paper carrying clerks, especially in government and state departments. Reduce the heavily loaded useless management structure in government and state department institutions. Over the past sixty years it has proved that this breeds bribery and corruption.

Get some job training to them and put them to do hands on work. We will have less people dying from high cholesterol, high blood pressure and from diabetes. Not a whole bunch of easy riders. Statistics in Sri Lanka show that the people in State sector and in management positions suffer from the health hazards than those out in the field.

We do not need to send Sri Lankans to be trained in US, Canada, Australia or to Europe. They do not come back after the training. Send them to India instead. India is a super power, an industrial, commercial and a business giant not far away from Sri Lanka. Today Europeans, Canadians and Americans are flocking to India to learn from the Indians.

Finally people in Sri Lanka die early (68 for men and 70 for women) compared to those in rest of asia and in Europe. Let there be no presidents and prime ministers older than 65 years of age. We do not need demented leaders to add to our chaos. I believe that's what J.R. and Premadasa did.