Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 27, 2004

When the president first appointed ministers after the recently concluded elections she made nearly every MP from her party a minister. A few were left out. These people were expected be made the speaker, deputy speaker, leader of the house etc.

One guy made a big show of refusing to accept the post that he was offered. It was all a show to hoodwink the gullible masses by pretending to be man of principle. After all the fuzz had died down and the smoke had cleared, he happily president's accepted the deputy minister post that he was offered.

As for the others, when the government spectacularly lost the vote for the post of speaker, to cover their embarrasment they struck a deal with the opposition to share the other posts. Since the main opposition party the UNP is a gutless wonder they gladly accepted. What all this meant was that a handfull of members of the president's party remained as lowly MPs. The solution of course is trivial create a few more ministeries. (However it would have taken a good imagination to make up names for these new ministeries since all the good onese were taken).

One of the new Ministers wasn't even on the nominations list at the elections. He made his way into parliament because one of the elected members were forced to step down to make way for him. If the UPFA has any respect for democracy they have a strange way of showing it.

Posted by raditha at May 27, 2004 5:04 AM