Don’t buy into Ravi K bashing

Ravi K bashing appears to be de rigueur these days with almost all, yes, even the earlier harassed private newspaper groups joining in the fray like a pack of hyenas going for the jugular. What about TV channels? The less said the better, seriously! One should realise that many of the newspaper groups have been bought over by pro-MR lackeys who benefitted hugely by their unabashed support to the notorious ‘Family Rule’ of almost a decade: those for MR thrived, those neutral or against were in the dog house at best or slapped in the ‘cooler’ or worse, having made to have a tryst with the grim reaper!

They say that the Sri Lankan voter is fickle, as fickle as the weather these days – pardon the cliché – yet isn’t that the reality? Barely a year ago the average voter was fed up to his/her back teeth with all sorts of no-hope scenarios; the newspaper groups had been battered to subjugation; those brave enough to speak were zeroed in on – tracked in a myriad uncivilised ways, tortured, kidnapped and literally killed in the most brutish manner imaginable. Many sought refuge in ‘friendly’ countries. In the meantime, the ‘RF’ (ruling family) went along as if the entire country was their fiefdom, really.

Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake presents 2016 Budget in Parliament

The ‘RF’ even emulated some of the recent despotic one-man shows that have been now consigned to the abyss of history – SL was fast gravitating towards ‘achieving’ such dubious ‘honour’ – thankfully all that was reversed with the 8 January ‘Silent Revolution’. Expectations were heady – we need to deliver, once again to a spoilt, fickle populace fed with rosy pictures incessantly.

Ravi K’s overarching Budget is unprecedented. The multiple challenges that face little SL are simply mind-boggling – what Ravi K has proposed, so genuinely and in detail, would be applauded by all and any right-thinking person regardless of whatever political hue he or she may subscribe to; and there’s the rub.

Here’s a straight question: How many of you have studied Ravi K’s Budget proposal? In terms of a ‘ball park figure’ like many corporate phrases would glibly spew out, a good 95% would have read or ‘heard’ about just a fraction of its real contents. Yet whatever real or imagined phrases that ‘might be inimical’ to the pampered masses, or to the point the ‘State Sector Employees’ have been drummed up on a daily basis with sickening regularity, now reaching a crescendo – with even some ‘farmers’ displaying their nether regions a la ‘amudes’ joining the band-wagon with placard waving protests (obviously being ‘controlled’ by their political masters who love to play ‘spoil sport’) – a national pastime by those bankrupt left-leaning pseudo nationalists really is the bane of progress in post-independence Ceylon/SL.

In this context, let me delve into a bit recent history. How many of you are aware that entry to ‘ASEAN’ was offered to Sri Lanka in 1967 on a platter? The then PM, Dudley Senanayake’s close friend, the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, the late Tunku Abdul Rahaman had insisted that Sri Lanka become a member of the ASEAN. Dudley Senanayake had reached the airport to embark on the flight to take him to the conference. Yet fate decreed otherwise: He aborted the mission at the 11th hour on being informed of dissension by some left oriented parties. Reportedly the commencement of the ASEAN meeting had been postponed for some six hours assuming Dudley Senanayake’s flight had been delayed. The rest as the hackneyed phrase goes, is history. Tragic indeed!

Should we still have to wallow in this quagmire of simply resorting to populist measures as a means of pandering to the vocal minority? We need to make pragmatism our guiding light, if we really wish to forge a new un-trodden path. Change may appear foreign; but change we must. There is no option.

 

Dyan S