Abandon the Executive Monstrosity: The People Are The Only True Guardians Of Liberty
By Kumar David -January 11, 2015
Prof. Kumar David
You will know the final results when you read these lines. Trends at the time of writing show Mr Sirisena comfortably ahead; this piece assumes it will be sustained. While celebrating the fall of the Rajapaksa monster we should not pull the wool over our eyes and loose sight of the reality that so long as an executive presidential monstrosity remains, the new government is liable to go the way of previous ones and Maithripala decline into a carbon copy of Mahinda.
I will touch on two topics, one practical and the other philosophical today. The practical matter is, what are we going to do now that Mr Sirisena has won the Executive Presidency (EP) for six years? I do not expect him to honour the sacred pledge he made before the nation at Vihara Maha Devi Park to abolish it in wholly; unless of course he is compelled to do so by the people. This is the ‘What Next’ question.
The proposition to which I devote the final paragraphs is that the thesis ‘The people are good, but misled by corrupt and power hungry politicians’, is superficial and false. This is simply not true; there is a symbiosis between masses and leaders, but the truth mostly is the other way round; sham leaders rise to the helm when the mass is corrupt. My assertion skews a two way interaction a little in one direction, but it is important to refute the false thesis at this juncture. The relationship between masses and leaders is not an exclusively Lankan matter, it is ubiquitous across nations and time.Read More
