Our more than bi-millennial history shows that small Sri Lanka is not a country of mean importance even in today’s developed world turning more complex day-by-day. She has produced sons and daughters of much value and great worth who have clarified and simplified international relations justly for the benefit of all mankind. But the character and quality of the policy-making politicians are a great disgrace leaving much to be desired, they have given highly erratic leadership and misled the people, destroyed solidarity, fraternity, unity and peace among them and collectively ruined the country economically by resorting to various methods of disgracefully swindling the people of this land half the population of which has been left poor.
Today the sovereign people of Sri Lanka is being governed by self-absorbed egoistic politicians with the aid of a Constitution drafted, approved and amended nineteen times according to the particular needs of self-seeking men and women in the political field. The provisions of basic law the people are supposed to have given themselves have been designed by crafty, utterly selfish politicians of yesterday and today mainly for their private profit and to gratify themselves. Though Sri Lanka is called a Republic, socialist and democratic, they are meaningless words camouflaging the disgusting dictatorial inclinations of political party leaders who have lacked a genuinely democratic and social vision and are incompetent to govern.
AGAINST THE GRAIN OF SELF-RESPECTING CITIZENS
The present Constitution opens itself to confusing interpretations. Very knowledgeable persons, lawyers and legislators and those at the summit of political power are at a loss as to the clear meaning, direction and spirit of the Constitution. It looks as if it had no democratic and people’s sovereignty animating it at all. That is the great enigmatic conundrum that the politicians have devised with which to govern the people who have been practically dispossessed of their human dignity and deprived of their rights. 
The people are reduced to mere nobodies. They need the support of a politician in power to get anything done: to admit a child to a school, to get a legitimate transfer, to get a due promotion, to get paid for work done for the ministries and institutions of government, to go for employment abroad, to get positions of government’s foreign service among many other things. If you are getting paid by any government agency, you will have to oil the palm of the politicians with sizable bribes.
We come to know the people from whom illegal payments and bribes have been demanded.
A Sri Lankan who wishes to stand on his own feet and hold his head high, needs to be far from these charlatan politicians who have crept to power. When the politicians in power and their henchmen who also exercise power in their name are uneducated, stupid and corrupt scoundrels of low character, it goes against the grain for self-respecting citizens to yield to them on any matter. To be saved from its decline and fall Sri Lanka must reform root and branch and turn out to be an exemplary country. Nothing short of that will do.
HUMAN AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE
Though the world we are living in is far from perfect. Organised governance is everywhere afflicted by deep human flaws and corruption. Yet honest and dedicated men and women have much improved, enriched and qualitatively enhanced life on earth in so many areas and aspects of life. They are arising even today. But the selfish political leaders are a tremendous hindrance to the progress of nations and of mankind.
A few decades ago, the world was divided into capitalist and socialist governments with another group of various hybrid types of governments that tried to be a third force calling themselves non-aligned even though the alignments of the leaders of these countries varied from time to time. Yet neither in capitalist, socialist or non-aligned countries do we find widespread respect for truth, human dignity, human rights, equality, freedom, justice and peace prevailing at an acceptable level. Those in power enjoy these and grant them to their chosen partisans and henchmen as favoured concessions for which they should surrender their very soul if they are to live in some sort of peace.
In all these systems that have been devised for governance, men with pronounced selfish tendencies, those wielding authority, especially political and administrative authority and power, enjoy privileges in a disproportionate manner.
These privileged, though endowed with an intelligence insufficiently cultivated and developed and therefore incapable of meeting the challenges of seeing to the human needs and well-being of all the people, exercise power over the people under their jurisdiction. Their incapacity is evidently shown in the significant masses of the powerless, the voiceless, and helpless marginalized who are neglected making them feel alienated and lost. They are left in the fringes of society to conserve the comfort of the privileged. They are sometimes literally thrown overboard that the eyes of the privileged may not see the sight of humanity made ugly by their fellowmen! The millions of human beings are made victims of wars.
Wars are initiated by those impatient potentates unwilling to resolve problems by frank and sincere negotiations. They want to impose their partisan views on others and conserve their comfort zones. The internally displaced, the discriminated ethnic groups, the ‘stateless’, the immigrants, the famished, the lonely, aged and the homeless, the unemployed that become the dross and the rubbish of society result from war.
The privileged become obtuse to this phenomenon. Their inattention, forgetfulness, disregard and their wastage of resources, time and energy on far less important matters leave everyone less than human. They (politicians, economists, financiers, university dons, generals, all who exercise leadership over peoples) do not seem to pay attention to all the people of the world inclusive of these helpless, voiceless people. The millions of these people, among whom are the wounded and the sick, the unfed, undernourished children, women and men need shelter, food, medical remedies, medical attention and care. Many do not think globally while they have always to act locally.
Our political leaders of the present and immediate past have imitated the misleading potentates of other countries, burdened the people with insurmountable debts and swindled them and tied them in economic straitjackets.
CALL TO FRATERNAL SOLIDARITY
Pope Francis seems to be the constant lone voice calling the attention of the powerful to the discriminated ethnic minorities, those discriminated and persecuted due to their religious belief, those driven from their homes, dispossessed of their properties and are internally displaced, left unemployed as immigrants and the homeless poor.
The millions of helpless people need the attention of those countries that have the resources to alleviate the needless sufferings of the masses of people who need to be fraternized and invested with their human dignity and made worthy of all sustainable means to support themselves. The world as a whole has the capacity to support all of mankind today.
The initiatives, intellectual, inventive and creative skills of many are channelled to waste limited natural resources on projects that threaten humanity with mass destruction and calamity in the name of defence. That should be diverted towards the restoration of humanity to millions of helpless, voiceless, powerless people. The priority needs of peoples neglected over decades of years should be attended to. A few countries together spend and waste trillions of dollars every year due to their seeking a spurious prestige.
There are mistrust and great suspicion and envy among powerful nations. Their assumptions show themselves incapable of frank and human communication with each other to bring about understanding, friendship and trust. They wish to thrive below a level of humanness and fraternal solidarity. They have so far been unable and incapable of adopting policies of mutual cooperation. They build up instead vacuous policies of hollow rivalry, arms races leading towards meaningless and foolish mutual destruction. Each of them continues as an embodiment of total evil on a global scale.
NEW CONSTITUTION
In this contemporary context, Sri Lanka has a pack of politicians dominated by the intellectually, morally, spiritually and culturally defunct. On matters of ethnicity, religious affiliation, social cohesion and human enhancement, they have no understanding and viable views on the improvement of the human condition of neither all people nor any that would enrich society.
They do not know how to mobilize all the people and lead them towards goals of values. Political parties and leaders should see that persons insufficiently educated, corrupt and totally unfit are not nominated as candidates for elections. There should be no political deception and trickery. Many politicians from the majority tend to be Sinhala supremacist of one shade or another. It is not because they are Sinhala or Buddhist. It is because they are afflicted with the mystery of iniquity that makes them self-absorbent and corrupt like Satan and his satanic clan.
The people cannot be forgetful of this political phenomenon as we are going to have Presidential and parliamentary elections.
We need to have genuine political reformers who will request the people and mobilize their contribution for a New Constitution that will give hope and satisfy the just aspirations of all the people of Sri Lanka without any discrimination.
The people are tired of decaying selfish leaders attempting to come to power mainly to secure their own future setting aside the tragic future the people will face when these disgraceful leaders have gone the way of all flesh. Entrusting a country to them is like the people throwing THE PEARL before a herd of swine.
A civilized future based on the Rule of Law has to be initiated in an orderly manner according to law. No one could by-pass or break the law arbitrarily and introduce a New Constitution. It has to be a venture of all the people. The socially conscious leaders of all ethnic, religious and genuinely patriotic political groups should transcend personal attachments and feelings and come together to save the country at this crucial moment when it is threatened by forebodings of great tragedy. Once again an opportunity dawns after the relief we experienced and the hope we entertained after the last presidential election vanished before our eyes due to the two leaders prioritizing their personal political agendas. There is much to be saved. If not much will be lost.
Will Sri Lanka reform and be exemplary to others too or make a tragic choice of irreparable disaster? I t is the responsibility of a mature democratic people who should be conscious of their sovereignty as one people and bequeath a forward-looking country of realistic confidence to the next generation.
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