My Plea To Your Excellency President Gotabaya Rajapaksa

What Sri Lanka needs now is a capital and investment flow from regional and international companies for both Small- and large-scale companies.

 

by Sri Lankan Patriotic-2019-11-30

 

I’m writing this with the hope and expectation that your excellency would turn this Island as one of Asia’s vibrant economies. 6.9m Sri Lankans voted for your excellency with a great expectation that you would become Lee Kuan Yew of Sri Lanka. 6.9m Sri Lankans have placed their faith and confidence on you to turn this Island into another Singapore in Asia with rapid development, prosperity and rule of law. 6.9m Sri Lankans strongly believe that Sri Lanka urgently needs an iron man to take this country out of corruption, fraud, mismanagement and political chaos. Now, you are blessed with mandate of more than 6.9m Sri Lankans to demonstrate your leadership skills, patriotism, and integrity. Now is the right time to act and deliver. People put their trust and hope on you to make a difference in politics. Now, the ball is in your corner. You could make this country either one more Singapore or turn it a failed state. It is entirely up to you and your teams who guide and advise you to make a difference in politics. It is entirely up you to introduce a new political culture in Sri Lanka. Otherwise, the same 6.9m Sri Lankans will send you home in five years’ time.

 

 

I’m very much impressed with your development projects: I understand that there are some strong teams behind you to develop this nation. There are some highly qualified academics, professionals and experts behind you to advise you what to do and what steps to take to develop this nation in education, agriculture, business, heath, environment protection, defence, and community harmony. After listening to some programme in ITN (Doramadalawa), I’m so impressed that you have a good program to develop this nation. I’m very much fascinated to see you a man of action rather than a man of political rhetoric. That is exactly what we need in Sri Lanka right now. We need an upgrading in many public departments. I will share my thought in some areas that we need improvement and updating. I hope that your teams of experts and advisors read this article and take some actions in these areas. I’m writing this with a good intention to see some dramatic changes in Sri Lanka in coming years.

 

Within one week, you have taken some positive steps to make a difference in Sri Lanka. You have cut the numbers of your personal security guards and you have removed your photos in public offices. You have Taken some austerity measures. You have taken some steps to clean up our cities. You have limited your cabinet into 15 members. You have limited official trips of your MPs abroad. In fact, you have taken a positive signal to cement inter-community relationship between all Sri Lankan communities. You have taken some good steps to create a Sri Lankan national identity among all communities without any racial discrimination. So far, we have seen some positive things from your good leadership. We hope that you create a political legacy in Sri Lanka with support of all communities. We hope you do not give a space for crook and corrupt politicians once again in this country. We hope that Journalists who report on fraud and corruption will not disappear from Sri Lanka soon. We hope and pray that white van culture will not come back to Sri Lanka at all. We hope that rule of law will prevail in Sri Lanka. We hope people will have freedom to express their views without any fear.

 

You have appointed your elder Brother as your PM. By doing so, You have created a history in Sri Lankan politics. I do not have any qualm about it. I do not mind it, if it is for the greater interest of this nation. I hope and pray both of you do not misuse this vested power. I hope that your elder brother does not repeat his old mistakes once again. I hope you have a hold on your MPs. I hope that you give nominations for next general election only for some qualified people among our communities. A team of highly educated and honest MPs could make a difference in Sri Lankan politics. We should select and elect some highly qualified people into Sri Lankan parliament. That will make your projects and your task easy.

 

If new government fails on its promise to deliver, the 6.9m people will turn their back on this government to send it home. In politics anything could happen in a couple of days/months or years. So, you must take this leadership challenge with the utmost commitment and dedication. Winning the hearts and minds of public in politics is not an easy task and yet, you have done that now, but keeping this public goodwill would be a daunting task unless you take some firm measures to introduce a new political culture and discipline.

 

Make sure that you make a distinction between your family and professional life. Keep all family connection out of your politics and out of public duties. Last time, your brother did not make that distinction in fact, he gave jobs to all his relatives, friends and cohort. They all damage his good name in politics. It took sometimes to regain his popularity. Some of corrupt cohort put the country into a near bankruptcy: Do not repeat the same mistake if you want to survive your political career. People have hope and confidence on you now but do not shatter that hope. I understand that have created different teams to develop this nation. I’m fortunate enough to listen to some of talks given by you and your teams. All are ambitious projects and programs. To do all these development programs we need some honest and dedicated politicians. As a Sri Lankan who love my mother land, I share my thought with your development program.

 

Education:

 

We are living in an age of knowledge-based economy. If your excellency want to see rapid development and program in Sri Lanka, we must make some radical changes in our education. Our school and university education systems have got an outdated teaching and learning system. Teaching and learning pedagogies are outdated. Radical changes are needed in our education both in school and university education. I hope that your excellency will take some drastic action to update our education. Sorry to say our teaching recruitment system is outdated too. Not all graduates could teach. Teaching is an art itself. We do not recruit teachers through a vigorous teaching training program.

 

In western countries graduates must have credits in Language and Mathematics to become teachers in any subject. They train graduates with some teacher training programs such as PGCE. I think Sri Lanka badly needs some teacher training programs to train our graduates. No point in giving teaching jobs for graduates without any training. Today, teaching is a demanding profession. Without training, how could we expect to give teaching jobs for graduates. Teachers produce our next generations. Teachers are resource persons who train our children/next generations. If teachers do not know what to teach and how to teach? They will spoil next generations of Sri Lanka. Teachers are resource persons who guide and who direct next generations of our community and yet, we do not recruit trained teachers. This is, indeed, greatly detrimental to our education.

 

So, I hope new president takes some measures to improve quality of our teaching in schools and universities. Our university education badly needs some radical changes. Each one of us know our university education standard is not to any international level like that of Singapore, Japan, South Korea and any western countries. why is this? Some academics in our universities are not qualified to teach. Sorry to say this but this is a bitter truth. Look how our university lecturers are being recruited. It is same as how we recruit teachers to our schools. Some university lecturers do not have skills and talent to teach at university. I do not blame them, but I blame our system of higher education. In western countries, university students have right to complain against any university lecturer who teaches poorly. In fact, western universities have got a monitoring system to monitor the quality of teaching in universities.

 

Students are given a questionnaire in each term to report about the quality of teaching. Some academics are sacked and fired for poor quality of teaching. University academics get a good salary now in Sri Lanka and yet, university administration does not how make them work for university and for the country. So sorry, some academics come to work one or two days per week and do not put their time and energy to prepare lectures.

 

I hope, your excellency take some measures to make a difference in university education. Otherwise, your dream to make this country as one of Asia’s developed counties will not be feasible. Education, Education and education was the slogan of British PM Tony Blair to win his election campaign in 1995. I hope your time in USA might have given you some practical experience to know about western education system. I think that Sri Lanka must have some government schemes or collaborative teacher training scheme with some western universities to train our graduates in some western countries. We need this to learn modern teaching pedagogies and methods. Countries such as Malaysia and Singapore send their teachers to get teacher training in western countries. We should send some of our graduate for PGCE courses in western countries if we really want to develop our education.

 

Economy:

What Sri Lanka needs now is a capital and investment flow from regional and international companies for both Small- and large-scale companies. What Sri Lanka badly needs now is a job creation in Sri Lanka. Due to 30 year’s war and communal violence in recent time, international companies did not come to Sri Lankan rather they went to Bangladesh and Vietnam and some other countries. Moreover, our education system is not updated to produce professionals for international market. Today there is a good demand for some professionals in western countries. IT professionals, high tech professionals, health professionals, educational professionals and some business professionals have demands in western countries. yet, our universities and colleges do not produce all these professionals. High skill migration brings a huge amount of money to India, China and other countries. Our politicians and policy makers must think about this rather than sending housemaids to Middle East countries. Singapore has Branches of many international companies, banks, research centres and universities. Unless, we attract international investors and companies, there is no way, we could see economic growth in Sri Lanka with limited natural and human resources we have. Of course, tourism is one of the most income making avenues we have in Sri Lanka. Tourism development in Sri Lanka needs some strategic planning and international marketing.

 

I think that Sri Lanka could consult and seek advisors of some experts from Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and other countries to develop our tourism and other industries. Today, tourism is a competitive market in this modern world. Historical places, tea plantation, beautiful beach and natural resources of Sri Lanka are ideal for tourism. Our climate and natural resources are ideals for tourism industry. Yet, we have not managed to attract more than I one million tourists per year. That tells a lot about mismanagement of tourism industry in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country and there are over one billion Buddhists in the world today. This includes China, Japan, Koreas, Burman, Vietnam and other countries and yet, we have failed to attract Buddhist tourism? Why? Sri Lanka has got some oldest historical and religious places and yet, we have not attracted these tourists.  Likewise, so many Arabs now visit Sri Lanka. we must give them a good impression about our country. If an Arab goes to Japan, Japanese hotels provide them with prayer mattes and prayer compass to find out direction of prayer. We must give them some such facilities to attract Arab tourism.

 

Diaspora communities:

 

Sri Lanka has utterly failed to make use of Sri Lankan expatriate communities abroad. Politicians make political rhetoric about these people and they invite them to come back. But they have no mechanism to make use of these Sri Lankans who live abroad. Over 1.5 Million Sri Lankans live in many western countries. Successive Sri Lankan governments have utterly failed to benefit from this sri Lankan migrant communities. Sri Lanka has failed to use their talents, skills, experience and their capital investment. Countries such as India, Bangladesh and Pakistan get a huge of amount foreign remittance from Western countries. Yet, Sri Lankan has failed to attract capital investment from its own citizens in western countries. our dual citizenship concept has not attracted expatriate Sri Lankans to come and invest in Sri Lanka. In this digital age, Sri Lankan immigration and High commissions in Europe are working in stone age style. They are working in old fashions. For a Sri Lankan expatriate it will take more one year to get a dual citizenship certificate. There is not any efficiency in immigration department back home in Sri Lanka to speed up this process. Because, many officers do not do their jobs on time for some obvious reasons. If it is the case, how could Sri Lanka expect to benefit from 1.5m expatriate Sri Lankans? The Sri Lankan immigration department needs some radical change with some new innovative ideas to speed up its process in dealing with public.