The President is for once is on the losing side – the daily dose of disasters

I don’t know if his luck and good fortune has finally run out, but Mahinda Rajapakse seems to be on a losing streak with one disaster after another and with all of them he appears to be implicated. Worse still he is completely ignoring the growing pressure which has now been exerted on his Ministers, but he believes by ignoring them that the mud will not stick to him, nor the fingers will point at him for all the failings.

The bottom line is that the A level results were issued prematurely due to his intervention and demand. This has caused untold hardship and heartache to about a Million people of this country who are directly affected, either as students who sat their A levels or their parents, and care givers.

As if that was not enough a Presidential pal has dealt a body blow to the tourist industry by killing a foreign tourist, something unheard of in Sri Lanka all during the course of the conflict. As if that was not enough, the dead man’s companion was raped and injured after the killing, adding more insults to our tourism hub.

As if that was not enough the National Freedom Front and the Jathika Hela Urumaya parties in his grand coalition are now uttering words that are very scathing about some of the President’s policies and are trying to toe an independent line as far as resolving the ethnic conflict is concerned. So any hope of an early resolution to the problems is premature and looks like it will persist.

Then there is the general displeasure with the LLRC report with allegations it has not done enough work in addressing the grievances and point to culprits and holding people accountable for some heinous crimes. The international pressure for the President to act on their recommendations is also a major embarrassment and he follows this by not saying anything about it.

As if that was not enough, there are direct accusations from his party about other MPs also in his party, where one has been accused of taking huge bribes for facilitating the licenses for new gas stations from the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation.

All this soon after the ill timed Appropriation of properties bill, which consigned Sri Lanka into a ‘what might have been state’. The passing of the buck most stop and some let up in the stream of damning news attached to the President is required.