Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 26, 2004

There were many parallels between the Indian Election results and the Sri Lankan Elections a month before. Now it seems the Indians have taken a right turn towards progress while Sri Lanka has made a left turn (hand brake turn at that) towards stagnation and dynastic empires.

Where as in Indian Mrs. Sonia Gandhi has refused to accept the post of Prime Minister, the Sri Lankan president is trying to stage a constitutional coup.so that she can extend her term.

While in India most of the ministers have been appointed on merit and qualifications, in Sri Lanka nearly every single member of parliament from the presidents party has been made a minister. Some of them don't even know their arithmatic.

Just after the election, Mr Lakshman Kadirgamar was tipped to become the Sri Lankan prime minister (In Sri Lanka the president is the chief executive, the prime minister is just a figure head, these roles are reversed in India). That would have been the first time since independence when a person belonging to an ethnic minority became the prime minister. It didn't happen. In india even though they don't have an Italian prime minister, Manhoman Singh does belong to a minority community.

While the current Indian Prime Minister is the man credited with setting of the Indian Economic reforms many years ago, one of the major partners of the Sri Lankan government is a Marxist Party (the JVP), while the president's own party lead the country into recession in 2001.

Posted by raditha at May 26, 2004 3:39 AM