The Disconnect Between Principle And Practice In Sri Lankan Governance
Emil van der Poorten
The fooforaw about the 13th Amendment to the constitution has effectively camouflaged the fact that all the indulgence in debating skills, real and pretended, conceals the fact that NOTHING in the matter of legislation or law is sacred in this country and that what passes for these two elements of governance is not, literally, worth the paper on which it is written!
The term “mind-boggling” is one of those that I have problems dealing with when used by others and one that I try to eschew when at the keyboard of my laptop. However, that is probably the most appropriate term with which to describe what amounts to the ignorance of or refusal to accept the “Sri Lankan reality” which goes beyond the farthest reaches of impunity in the matter of a select few exercising that which they assume is their God-given right to impose upon their fellow citizens: the kind of violence and intimidation that will never be tolerated in more civilized circumstances (read as “the western world”).
I know that invidious comparison or, rather contrast, is going to bring out the usual howling mobs of defenders of Sri Lanka’s current regime, but that is what is plain as a palm held in front of one’s face at high noon. Notwithstanding all the sleaze and deception of many of the governments in the so-called “western democracies,” there is at least an acceptance of what passes for “the eternal verities” – even if hypocritically – in the matter of how people live their day-to-day existences. Read More
