Nepotism & The Political Brats
By Granville Perera –November 18, 2015
When Mervyn Silva, the political outcast from Kelaniya is fading away another Mervyn is in the making in the Gampaha district. He is none other than Chathura Senaratne, son of Rajitha Senaratne, the current Minister of Health and one of President Maithripala Sirisena’s closest confidantes. Chathura is becoming a law onto himself and his mouth is as bad as that of the dentist with the bad mouth. His actions are second only to the now discarded Mervyn Silva.
In our miracle of Asia, politicians or their siblings and children continue to become street fighters and thugs causing huge damage to democratic polity. President Sirisena’s siblings too are no exception. A peasant murdered one of Sirisena’s brothers for sleeping with his wife, and another it is claimed has become a law unto himself in Nuwara Eliya, filling up the racecourse with debris from his luxury real estate construction project. Another sibling, the head of Telecom too has been exposed in social and alternate media. Wonder what the other eight are up to?
We had a Chief Minister from Gampaha who demanded a bribe of 50 million, and the one from whom the bribe was demanded has been told in no uncertain terms, (with the choicest words from the Sinhala vocabulary) as to what would happen to him if the full amount in bribes were not paid. This telephone conversation was recorded and made available to the relevant authorities, and sweet nothing has happened under Yahapalanaya, even after complaints were made to the highest echelons of government. We had also Yahapalanaya stalwart Arjuna Ranatunga appointing his sibling as the Chairman of the Sri Lanka ports authority. Arjuna Ranatunga was one of the most vocal against the Rajapaksa nepotism on election platforms in the run up to the January 2015 elections..