“Corruption” was the pillar on which President Maithripala Sirisena’s government was built with the collaboration of UNP.

The keyword on which President Maithripala Sirisena’s government came in to being is “corruption”, therefore  that has to be kept on going for the Government to exist.  There is however no lack of it as the UNP Ministers of SLFP President Maitripala Siriesena’s government  keep on finding new instances of “corruption” on hearsay, without any proof what ever.  

It is like a game where you are asked to relate an  acceptable story about corruption  regarding  any one connected  in someway to the Rajapakse regimes, the one whose story is the most acceptable get the prize.

Strangely now,  the winning side attracts like a magnet hoodlums, nincompoops, thugs, noise makers, also police officers, the state and local media, and  even a former President’s foot worshipping Minister.

However, the word “corruption” is beginning to ware off.  They may soon have to find  some thing else to keep the heat on vilifications and accusations.  The Government has still not got down to work as the principle issue is to take revenge from Rajapakse family-characgter assassination, smearing  him with mud, and obliterating him with black tar.  That is the principle pre-occupation for the moment. 

After all according to Rajitha Senaratne  it had all begun way back in 2012- the process to hang the Rajapakses.  But one does not know who really is the boss of the government of President Maitripala Sirisena.  As far as Ranil Wickramasinghe the Prime Minister is concerned  he cared less the President or even the Parliament  we remember when he signed the CFA with the terrorist leader Prabhakaran behind the back of the President Chandrika Kumaratunga. To his mind,  Ranil Wickramasinghe is  what he could never have been through an election-the President.

President Maitripala Sirisena’s government for all intents and purposes is a UNP Government with the majority of the Ministers  from the UNP. It has all the insignias of the old UNP even the goons or thugs who manifest. They were called during  old days “bath gottayas”.  They manifest and run riot   just for a word from their UNP patrons.   They do not want proof of any thing, the word of the patron is sacrosanct.  Those days it suffice a packet of rice  and a swig of arrack to become a UNP devoted “bath gottaya”

There are no lack of them to-day. Even without the packet of rice and a swig one can still be a “ bath gottaya” .  The BASL just paying lip service to Law and Order behave like the rude common  men with no idea of law and justice, manifesting against  the CJ in front of the Law Courts like the “Bath Gottayas” of the old. Their disrespectful attitude  is a grievous fault  towards  the Chief Justice,  which make them not men of Law, but small morons ignorant of niceties dressed as lawyers in black coats, black trousers, black ties and white shirt.

It was  grossly impolite and showed complete lack of respect to Justice itself for the Attorney General to have d-invited the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka for the Conference of Attorney Generals  held in Colombo on the 19 January,2015, because a set of lunatics of the BASL had forced him to do so.

“…Sri Lanka’s Attorney General barred the countries Chief Justice from attending a regional conference on Monday after allegations he tried to help the former retain power illegally. …..The Sri Lanka’s Bar Association had threatened to boycott the Conference of Attorney Generals , held in Colombo on Monday, if he (Mohan Pieris) attended. “ We have written confirmation from AG(attorney general) that the chief justice (Pieris)was de-invited,” said the head of the bar association Upul Jayasuriya. “ We said we will walk out if  Mohan Pieries is present, and that would have been a big embarrassment”

The big embarrassment would have certainly been there; considering that the Attorney Generals of the region are intelligent men and women who may have been surprised that the so called Bar Association of Sri Lanka consists of lawyers who do not have respect to justice and knows not the axiom that, “  in law, one is innocent unless proved otherwise”

We will not be short of surprises in this score as the President Maitripala Sirisena  has it seems vowed to restore the Impeached CJ Shriyani Bandaranayake to the role.

Is this government of President Maitripala Sirisena taking  Sri Lanka forward or backward ?

This in fact is a replay of the old UNP (in new bottles!)

The coming of UNP into, political power does not auger well, as it had never been so. The President Maitripala Sirisena  is just a nominal figure head,  it is  UNP which has formed a government. Therefore it is UNP  which is in  power. Champika and JVP  may squeak       to be heard but they really do not count in the new Ranil Wickramasinghe and UNP set up.

At the beginning in 1948 despite the treachery against Sir Baron J ayatilleke, D.S.Senayake who was a rough old Sinhala man with a good common sense , he did no have  the vision to make much of the Independent Sri Lanka   he inherited from his Colonial Masters, other than

living like them.

But he  looked  far  into the future having understood  the unreliability of the Tamils.  Therefore he  started Sinhala settlements in the north as buffer villages to safeguard the south.  He built the Yoda wewa  to provide irrigation facilities for the people of those settlements. He was satisfied doing small improvements to Sri Lanka where he did not see immediate economic or social problems.

SWRD Bandaranaike, the Western Educated brilliant speaker in the State Council may have respected the old DS, but he knew that Sri Lanka had to be swerved onto  a new path. He had a vision while his colleagues in the government had none.  Sri Lanka’s forward march for progress and development began with SWRD Bandaranaike.

To deviate a little to come back to UNP a paragraph or two later, the Tamils of Sri Lanka from the beginning were not patriots, in the sense of the patriotism of the Sinhala Buddhists which is in their blood( except some Sinhala Buddhists whose blood may have got mixed with those of the Tamils) . The Tamils  cannot  even be expected to be patriots of Sri Lanka as their beginnings are in the South Indian marauders who came to plunder, steal and ravage Sri Lanka, and some amoung them who settled down to make a living here as honest men. 

So were the Muslims who came as traders and later sought protection from a Sinhala king who settled them in the East.  Therefore it is natural the Tamils and Muslims do not vote at elections for the love of this country, but for the best they can get out of it and live separately from the Sinhala Buddhists.

This period  under SWRD Bandaranaike  was a period of great  development making Sri Lanka truly independent taking her out of  the colonial influence.  He was even able to bring in the “leftist parties” into his fold  and begin a march towards progress adopting principles of  socialism.

The UNP government that came into power thereafter was that of JR Jayawardhane.  He did not want a rival political leader awaiting for a chance to recapture  power.  Therefore he took away the civic rights of her rival Mrs.Bandaranaike. 

He mismanaged the riots of 1983 resulting in  Indian Intervention. He signed the notorious Lanka India  Pact where India forced his hand to include the 13^th Amendment  written by Indians in India into the Constitution of Sri Lanka.  He allowed an Indian Peace Keeping Force into the country  and  merged the North and East to facilitate their surveillance by the IPKF. There was not much of a development  other than catastrophes which marked that period of UNP rule.

The second UNP Government to Succeed was that of Ranasinghe Premadasa.  Premadas’s period is  known for torture camps, where many Sinhala youth were assassinated .  It was also a period where the terrorists instead of being fought against were presented  with arms and ammunitions, and  the assassination of an Army General.  Finally Premadasa himself was assassinated by the terrorists. He started the garment factories, and  built villages under gam udawa. But yet the UNP under his rule as well did not contribute greatly for the development of Sri Lanka.

Then came another UNP Government led by  Ranil Wickramasinghe in 2000. It was a period of appeasement of the terrorists. The then  executive President Chandrika Kumaratunga was pushed behind stage.  Ranil Wickramasinghe the Prime Minister  acting as it pleased him. He signed  a CFA (prepared by Solheim and Praphakaran) ,  with Prabhakaran the terrorist leader. 

Ranil Wickramasinghe  started negations with the terrorists and kept the Sri Lanka Armed Forces confined to the Barracks.   That was   a dark period of the parliamentary history of  Sri Lanka.  Finally the President Chandrika Kumaratunga  took courage to stop him by taking over his Ministry. If he would not have been stopped then, he would have surely consented to declare that North is a Tamil Eelam State for Prabhakaran.

Rauf Hakeem- the President  Chandrika   without a majority to function, thus forcing her to dissolve the Parliament. After Chandrika’s not too glorious rein Sri Lanka was fortunate to have a change in President Mahinda Rajapakse, who had to start afresh the unclean “stables” left behind by Chandrika and the Presidents before her.

Some of  the elite,  the educated , some of those who wants to brush with the rich and well to do  moving with the remnants of the pseudo capitalist, and lawyers, readily accept  false allegations against the Rajapakse family despite the fact that they are only hearsay allegations without truth or substance. It is the nouvelle vogue to be with the yahapalanaya, and condemn corruption and  call  for the return of stolen money. 

Rajiva Wijesinghe the Minister of Higher Education has said, in his fluent English of which he is pretentious and down grades those who are not as fluent,  “…that government will introduce laws and create. norms that will strengthen the hand of public officials to act independently. "I am personally against witch hunts. While we must take stern action against the corrupt and try to get back the plundered money we should not be vindictive against the weak-minded, We will be spiteful against weak-minded persons."

Under yahapalanaya,  the mostly suspected for corruption and theft is the former President Mahinda Rajapakse,  thanks to whom they are secure  having no fear of prowling terrorists, to even check at leisure  the containers consisting  his personal belongings….“However the police had today obtained a court order to further inspect the items and to see if anything belongs to Temple Trees and not the former President.  Accordingly the court had issued the order and the Presidential Secretariat is to inspect the items in the container tomorrow.”

How very efficient ?

In the meantime  the President Maitripala Sirisena  remains content  in the warmth of his victory , without seeing, without hearing and without speaking, while there is restlessness and dissatisfaction begining to be heard. 

“JVP splinter Frontline Socialist Party has called upon the people to demand from the new government to deliver on the promises it made to the people before the presidential election………Addressing a press conference at the Centre for Society and Religion in Maradana on Saturday, FLSP Politburo member and presidential candidate Duminda Nagamuwa said that if people failed to exert social pressure to get the incumbent government to deliver on its election promises, the voters would soon realize that they had only been able to change the face of Mahinda Rajapaksa with that of Maithripala Sirisena, but there would be no actual change.”

Now beyond corruption they even accuse the Rajapakse family members  for keeping death squads.   They are not bothered with evidence any one can speak out against the Rajapakse family and there will be those goons,  and bath gottas of all sorts –the  legal and the illegal  to take the news to the streets.

And so survives new UNP Government under Maitri Palanaya.

Ranil Wickrmasinghe speaks of  giving autonomy to the Tamil speaking areas.  Is he planning something dangerous to put Sri Lanka once again in danger like the CFA he signed with Prabhakaran?

The Government of Sri Lanka today is like a ship without a Captain.  JVP is extremely active and they are now seen every where.  Wijitha Herath is raking up the mud in search of proof to nail those being accused by goons and “bath gottas” 

There is nothing to worry we are today  under a UNP Government. Any thing could be expected whether it is in the interest of the country  or not.  If it is a replay of the Old UNP  one shudders to think  of what JR did to keep away his rival Mrs. Sirimawo Bandaranaike  by denying her civic rights.

But this time if that happens the prize the UNP may have to pay for it may well be different.