CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

DO LANKANS DESERVE BETTER ?

ASOKA S.

Sri Lankans enjoy a literacy rate of over 90%. They have had universal suffrage since late 1920 and in fact was by then way ahead of India and many other Asian countries to that matter. They also are a very enterprising and smart people who usually do very well once migrated to developed countries. Sri Lanka is also full of technocrats including doctors, engineers, architects, IT personnel, electricians and so on.

But Sri Lanka continues to be in the poor man's club in the eyes of the world and indeed we are. Countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand who too were in similar or worse economic standing at the time we got independence have overtaken us by leaps and bounds. So what is it that hinder our progress?

One is likely to offer the LTTE menace as one good reason. But even before the LTTE menace we were in the poor man's club. This is worthy of some evaluation for the sake of at least the next generation of Lankans who might enjoy a better standard of life.

In my judgment the main factor that contributed to our continued poverty is the incompetence of the entire Lankan leadership from top to bottom; top more than the bottom. Great Leaders create great countries. To name a few Margaret Thatcher of Britain, DR Mahathir of Malaysia, Lee Quan Yoo of Singapore, Franklin Roosevelt of USA. These leaders moved their countries by leaps and bounds and their citizens reaped the benefits.

One can walk into almost any government institution and instantly notice lack of leadership, resulting from poor planning and organization. The days of a letter of acknowledgment for a citizens letter to a government office is unheard of. One can hardly find a town free of trash and garbage on streets. I remember once a local leader of Aluthgama area stated that why there are thousands of empty Thabili shells are strewn on the Aluthgama town is that there was no place to dump the trash. What an excuse? Aluthgama incidentally is a key tourist hub that generates millions of dollars and the sanitary state of the town is a national disgrace.

One can retort to say well we are a poor country and don't have the money to do all this. I would ask how come so many thousands of expensive SUV's are driven by politicians and their henchmen. How come we have 107 ministers and their entourage? How come all the million dollar expense of these not so useful people are paid daily. How come we have thousands of local level politicians to manage a country of 25000 square miles. Isn't this a joke?

Thugs like Mervin Silva go around beating people up, talk raw filth in public and parliament. When Mervin Silva used raw filth in Lankan Parliament not so long ago the Speaker Lokubandara was seen to be laughing with the rest of the parlimentarians..How come he was not desciplined, not by the speaker, not by his party and not by anybody who rules our country? Parliamentarians have even resorted to raw physical assault to each other and no disciplinary action was taken by the speaker. What kind of country this generation of leaders will pass over to the next?

It sometimes occur to me like we need to send every Lankan Leader to a Training Class before trying to rule the people so that they can learn the fundamentals of political leadership including common decency and common sense. I do not profess to know leadership but I do have common sense to detect poor leadership.

Unfortunately Lankan constitution does not have a screening process to our ministers and senior government officials and a part of the problem may very well lay right their. Virtually anybody who the leadership picks can end up a cabinet minister or a government boss immaterial of his background or criminal history. This is real bad public policy.

Whichever the way we look at it, one thing is certain. There needs to be an overhaul of our political establishment and public policy. So it looks like President Rajapaksha's first priority is to annihilate the evil LTTE and the second is make some brave and bold decisions to the deteriorating political establishment of the country. He seems a capable man and let us hope he will have the political will to do so.

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