On Believing One’s Own Sycophants

By Emil van der Poorten –July 19, 2015

Emil van der Poorten

While there is no gainsaying the value of political supporters who fit the category of zealots in most circumstances, there is a “down side” to that equation for the Rajapaksa Regime that has coasted on such support for a long time.

The reason for such myopia would be obvious to anyone who observes the human condition no matter how cursorily.

In the last analysis, the truism that “If we don’t hang together, we will hang separately” is the bedrock of the movement to restore Mahinda Rajapaksa to his throne with all that entails.

There is absolutely no doubt in the minds of any observers of the Sri Lankan political and financial scenes that a very impressive web of absolute corruption has been built in a relatively short time, considering the extent and tensile strength of that web.

That the totality of the siphoning of public funds into private pockets may never be known is something that the very nature of the enterprise would suggest.

“Massive leakage” would be a polite term to describe what has occurred over the last ten years. “Haemorrhaging,” would probably be more accurate terminology. And that embezzlement of public funds has not been confined to any (privileged) stratum of the ruling clique. In colloquial terms, “every mother’s son” has been dipping into the public purse and I am talking here only of simple acquisition of government funds not of the more subtle “commissions” and “santhosams” that accompanied so much as the establishment of contracts, leave alone their execution.Read More