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Don Stanley / May 14, 2015
Good initiative here..
Hope these legal types won’t be wasting time hair splitting over electoral reform.. What needs changing is POLITICAL CULTURE and VOTER EDUCATION in Sri Lanka, rather than increase the number of corrupt clowns in the parliament that has become a luxury hotel for corrupt politicos – in the guise of electoral reform.
This is a red herring!
Lanka currently needs
1. A CODE OF CONDUCT for politicians that is ENFORCEABLE and includes financial disclosure is necessary
2. a SEALING ON ELECTIONS SPENDING.
3. Right to information and
4. PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION must be enabled so that the corrupt governor of the Central bank can be held accountable among other things.
Electoral reform has become a joke and another means to expand corruption by expanding the number of corrupt politicians in parliament!Also, time for President Sirisena to fire the corrupt governor of the CB – Arjuna Mahendran! That bond issue to his son-in-law’s firm must be cancelled!
While Mahinda Rajapassa wants to shut down Financial crimes investigation, Ranil Wickramasinghe has appointed a corrupt clown – Mahendran – as governor of the Central Bank! Sri Lankan Politicians are ALL a corrupt bunch and the parliament is a hotel of Corruption and no amount of electoral reform will change this! And UNP seems to be in hurry for elections while leaving the reform job half done. Ranil is greedy for power and must be stopped until democracy is fully restored
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Yasin / May 15, 2015
Don Stanley,
excellent, I highly value your comment
However your comment is a pinch of salt in the sea of corrupt politicos
supported or made to support by an ocean of people who are in fact people worshippers similar to TN masses who are movie idol worshippers.
There is not much difference of the previous leadership and the current one.
The previous administration was a family affair with criminal elements at the helm, and the current administration is a pickle of sorts with leaders having their own way of doing things or wants to implement certain things that they were unable to do when they were in power in the past. The fitting adage to this dilemma is ” too many cooks spoil the broth (or soup)”
Executive Presidency is powerful tool and has its pros and cons. If this power is in the right hand it can turn a new leaf and prosperity to the nation and in the wrong hand it can bring disaster.
Look in the past and present, we still have the same corrupt politicians who
have jumped the fence to be on this side to save face and hide their own misdeeds when they were on the “other” side.
MR and company are working night and day to grab back the power they lost and
are now relying on auspicious times to make the right move and hold the reigns of power again so that they can wash away all evidence and cases brought against them and they will live happily ever after while the nation will once again bleed to near death.
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Dinuk / May 16, 2015
Yes, good points Don.
It is political culture that needs to change and the CROSS OVER CULTURE of political horse trading MUST END.
If a politician wants to cross over from opposition to govt. he MUS LOSE HIS seat and face and election.
The cross over culture is the root of corruption in the Diyawenna Parliament of corrupt clowns – with politicians being bought by the highest bidder..
Stopping cross overs and reducing the number of Cabinet posts should be top priority when it comes to electoral reform.
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Yasin / May 16, 2015
Don Stanley, Please see a psychiatrist asap. What you are asking is a complete change of our current political culture which is fun and games, murder and mayhem, bribery and corruption,the long arm of the law stays mostly in the pockets fiddling the money earned for themselves. rape and murder is a everyday
suspense. Are you trying take away all this suspense and action which otherwise you will have to see in Bollywood movies.
The masses are being scrwed left, right and center and they are enjoying it.
We had MR, his family and his greasy and grave men earlier and now we have the triple gems (MY3, Ranil and CBK) to entertain us with legal bungling, inquiries
that has no action, investigations under investigation, bribes to the minister
(20m per month to health minister), the diplomatic passport saga and much more.
Don Stanley please don’t be a spoil sport, if you can’t win them join them.
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Kettikaran / May 14, 2015
Widely publicised public discussions of this nature go out to strengthen the democratic culture. As many views from the different
political parties, civil, social and religious organisations should be encouraged in a subject of such import. What we need is not more or less MPs, more or less women MPs but a system of participatory governance where everyone is made to feel part of the whole – above the race and religious factor.
Kettikaran
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Ekendra / May 14, 2015
I hope that there will be a LIVE telecast of these proceedings
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son of a down trodden / May 18, 2015
DR Jayampathy wickramaratne
I like to put this question to you and would like an answer from you as you all are behaving like saints.
I am also a professional like you but a professional engineer and not a lawyer,who worked for govt of sri lanka my entire life till I retired recently.
now my question is we professional have a code of conduct,whereby we all are bound to conduct ourselves in an honourable manner and in an ethical manner.However, is the conduct of his excellency maithreepala sirisena ,is in keeping with the ethical standards.to me his conduct is far from the required ethical standards.
while being the secretary of SLFP ,as he had a personal grouse with mahinda,he betrayed the his party by contesting against the legitimate nominee of SLFP, mahinda Rajapakse by coming out as common (but in effect UNP candidate) and defeated legitimate candidate of his party SLFP.then having defeated mahinda now he has accepted the chairman position of SLFP.is this conduct meet the ethical conduct.
if we had done this kind of thing as a lawyer or an professional engineer we would have violated code of conduct of our profession which would have resulted you and i being expelled from our respective professions,and our licence /registration would have been cancelled.
To me maithrepala’s conduct is extremely unethical,trust you would agree and in case you would disagree can you pl enlighten me I am only an engineer and not a lawyer.
now ,having become the president, he is paying his eternal debt to Ranil for giving the opportunity to become the president (even in his wildest dream he would not have dreamt of becoming the executive president.by keep on destroying the sLFP (he offered “bribes” SLFP parliamentarians ministerial position completely violating ethical conduct.
this kind of things would never have happened in any other country,certainly not in UK,canada or USA.
do you think your former leader NM or that matter,Dudley or DS would have conducted in this manner.
finally do you believe by the so called amendment to constitution would achieve the desired objectives.
to my understanding ,to achieve the desired objectives, first and foremost, the member elected to legislature have to be honourable members.in your assessment ,how many such members are their in the parliament now. or what is the possibility of at least 25% of members of Parliament who will be elected to parliament in Sri lanka in the foreceable future will satisfy the requirements to be called honourable.
to me none of these amendments will achieve desired objectives as in the foreseable future ,i do not see honourable people being elected to parliament as the people whom they represent are unlikely to give opportunity to good people .
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