It is all over bar the shouting! – 2015 Presidential Elections – Let it be a history lesson for the illiterate

There is a great Sinhala expression that says “sobadharmayath thekka sellam baha” which in essence says, that you cannot mess with the natural order of things, and if you do, you will pay dearly for your arrogance.

The incumbent President, who hoped to be known as the President for Life, will have to commit suicide, in the next 7 days, in order to keep that title for posterity!

The game is over but for the counting on Election Day. The President has received the results of the postal votes, and even the great Army to whom much of the budget has been allocated has failed him, voting in a majority against him. It is just the other Govt. servants in their uneducated state, who have been drunk with their motorbikes and the time wasting 600,000 jobs they received in the past 10 years who have still stood by him as far as the postal count is concerned. He fell on his own petard, at a moment he seemed invincible as shown in my previous blog entry.

Nobody wants to back a loser, and all those who switched to the Govt. Side for money will not be sleeping at night, as the list of how much each has received from the people’s money has already been handed and upon the announcement of the results, they will ALL be asked to return their ill-gotten gains, on the presumption that they have received stolen money. So the likes of Tissa Attanayake will have to even hand over the clothes he has on, if he is to avoid being locked up!

The Fat Lady has sung, and bringing Salman Khan over was the final act of a Marie Antoinette administration, that spiced the news lately with him saying that MR was a great man, and in the same breadth, Namal saying that he had NOT been paid a red cent to come! Get a life, know when it is best to stop making a fool of yourself.

My blog has over the years attempted to show the reader, the ridiculous direction that the administration has been taking. So I do not want to repeat what was said, except to say that it is only now most of what I have been saying for years, has been said in the press by those who have abandoned ship, and those who have NOW got the courage to speak up, and call a spade a spade! Not a club!

It is now up to the incoming administration to deliver on the promises. That is the hardest part. We have been fooled and lied to for so long, and the leaders have believed their own lies all this time, that they can continue to lie with a straight face.

Many of those who have come have not changed their colors, just their sides, and are singing a different tune, explaining somewhat dishonestly, why they hung on for so long before turning themselves in! It is best they fully explain their complicity in crime, and seek atonement before being fully rehabilitated into the fold of the new administration. That is because a bunch of opportunist rogues have also turned in.

The only people who deserve a mention, are the long suffering UNP rank and file carder who stood by their leader, through thick and thin, and under very trying and life threatening circumstances, been reduced to penury, for their belief in principles, who are the heroes here. Right now they are not getting as much of the credit, as the enablers are. It is time the people are made fully aware of the real reason, and the inner strength of a mass of forgotten humanity, who have been the foundation of this revolution, and I hope the new leadership will give them the credit they deserve for this quiet but firm revolution, to regain Sri Lanka from Dictatorship, back to Democracy, within an unthinkably short transition period, since the Election itself was announced.

The least the incumbent should do to keep his dignity is bow out gracefully and wish the new administration, as it is done, NOT with malice, but with the intention of returning the basic, and lost checks and balances, that prevent a few individuals from destroying a whole country.

100 Day plan as set out in the policy document by the Sirisena camp is all well and good, however the immediate task is how to reduce the staggering debt, that last administration has burdened the Country with.

There is NO option but to look at each loan in its commonsense reality. These are mainly project finance loans from China’s Ex Im Bank. Therefore they WILL NOT affect Sri Lanka’s sovereign debt rating. Simply tell the lenders, you have lent on a project that should have cost for example US$200M and not US$500M and so we will ONLY repay US$200M and you can collect the balance if you wish from the people who you dealt with who have obviously walked out with the loot.

In this way, we will repay on the value of the contracts, NOT the total loans. I suspect we can save US$5Billion within 30 days of coming to power, and the Chinese can go after the Rajapaksa’s to get their balance, as they are the ones who wired the money to offshore accounts, and know where they sent it to also!

In this way the Rs100B cost of the promises made by the new administration for the first 6 months of their rule can be met without a further burden on the treasury.

That said, let us hope there is no infighting for positions of power, and the new PM is allowed sufficient leeway in determining his cabinet, so that at least in the interim, until the General Elections are held in May 2015, we can have a corruption free administration, that is putting waste and excess spending under control, and investigate those who have dipped their hands in public coffers and ask them to return their ill-gotten gains, to avoid prosecution, and allow immunity to those who surrender a certain proportion of their loot.

If there is transparency in this activity, the people will have confidence in the administration’s undertaking to clean up as soon as possible, while taking the time necessary to set up the necessary mechanisms, to ensure that good governance and law and order are established with transparency as promised.

THE COUNTRY MUST SEE A CHANGE almost immediately from the previous state of things. Arrogance must be the first to see the back of, as that is the root of dictatorial behavior. There should be NO revenge on those who messed things up, just a polite request to return the loot!!! So it is wrong to put someone like the General in charge of Defense! As an example of what NOT TO DO.

Things look rosy for Sri Lanka in 2015, if we have a commonsense Administration, who don’t attempt to make the same mistakes of the previous one. If we need a change, it MUST be for the better. Despite all the false promises, the current administration was UNABLE to change their stripes. The new one has a better chance, if there is firm leadership by EXAMPLE, that we will NOT tolerate abuse of power, and corruption. Many of the new line of Cabinet Ministers, let us hope it would no more than 25, and to accommodate some Jonny come latelies, we may tolerate 30 till the elections are held and revert to 25 thereafter.

The incredibly wasteful Presidential allocation can be cut immediately from Rs12B a year to say Rs6B in 2015, as there are many salaries to pay, and upkeep that needs to be cut down within a short period, so that in 2016 it can drop to Rs2B.

I am merely mentioning this as examples for public consumption, if the new administration is to be taken seriously and people’s cynicism of the Govt. changed.

I have just touched the surface in what needs to be done, let us wish the Country a happy and prosperous 2015, with hope for all who live in this wonderful and soon to be vibrant democracy, where dissent is tolerated, and entrepreneurship and a level playing field encouraged. We can then regain our status as one of the foremost countries in this family of Nations on Earth.