Some Questions For The President & The Prime Minister
Emil van der Poorten
As one who has been admonished for my criticisms of the regime that has followed the Reprehensible Rajapaksas, I would like to revert to some of what has been published under my name and expand on it even if such criticism of the Sirisena/Wickremesinghe government is considered an attack on Sri Lanka’s last hope as far as a return to democracy and governance of a democratically-acceptable quality is concerned.
At the outset let me state, very categorically, my conviction that anything short of a government committed to human rights, the rule of law and all the other benchmarks of democracy is absolutely and completelyunacceptable. This is not a matter of degree. It is simply a question of absolutes in the matter of the essential principles associated with democracy and democratic government. (And I hope that I don’t have a suggestion from Ranil Wickremesinghe that I should read some tome on the “art of the possible in governance” or some such claptrap.)
I have previously drawn attention to the absolute unacceptability of several appointments to Cabinet and quasi-Cabinet positions. Let me reiterate what I said then and add a few more specifics to those criticisms in passing.
That John Amaratunga and Rajiva Wijesinha had no business in anything claiming to be a change from a time of corruption and sycophancy has been proved – ‘in spades” as that old expression has it – by recent events. That Rishard Bathiudeen, whose conduct as a sterling member of the Rajapaksa cabal with absolutely no respect for the law, should never have been even a token representative of the Muslim community goes without saying. That his fellow token Muslim, Rauff Hakeem, belongs in the same category hardly bears repetition.