Obstacles To Ranil’s Destiny
By Somapala Gunadheera –November 15, 2016
Somapala Gunadheera
I was tempted to write this piece by the outspoken remarks of an Islandeditorial under the title “O tempora! O mores!” After highlighting a list of failures by a young minister holding an important portfolio, the editorial raised the question, “If it (the Government) had been really serious about developing vital sectors … it would have got very senior Cabinet members to helm the relevant ministries without turning them into playpens for politicians still wet behind the ears.”
It is public knowledge that the level of performance of the current executive is below par. Youth and inexperience, as pointed out by the above editorial, is only one of the reasons that have downgraded its output. While some operatives are ‘wet behind their ears’, at the other end of the scale are found some others who are ‘long in their years’. Listening to their trembling voices on the electronic media, one wonders how they could deliver the goods expected of them effectively. While all other vocations have an age of retirement, politics has become the exception in which one can stumble up to his death. It is hoped that the promised code of ethics, when it appears at last, would fix an inviolable upper limit to those who live by their votes. Fixing a minimum age limit for ministers and deputies would also control the scramble for portfolios, bringing our mammoth Cabinet within civilized standards. In addition, the move will act as a barricade against greenhorns who aspire to use their connections to handle portfolios in which they are out of depth. 
There are yet other Ministers who continue from crisis to crisis but they carry on unchecked in the face of sanctions and criticism. They appear to depend on old school ties. A fourth category is supposed to be under a cloud but they are allowed to continue in office without any visible investigations and indictments. These shortcomings have left a negative impression in the public mind, depressed by the belief that nothing positive happens, despite the immensity of the management team entrusted with a distribution of duties that has many gaps alongside duplications. The only activity that is conspicuous to the man in the street is a plethora of arrests and remands of prominent members of the last regime. Not one of those thus exhibited in public have been convicted by a Court of Law, so far. People are getting fed up with this exhibitionism and if any prosecution is successfully concluded at some future date, no one would take the matter seriously. A typical case, in which the process defeats the purpose!
