Sri Lanka It's Happening

August 23, 2005

It is said that according to the Sri Lankan constitution the Prime Minister is nothing more than the President's Peon. The late president Premadasa while prime minister certainly acted the part. And when premadasa became president his own prime minister played the part even better than Premadasa did.

The only time during the past 28 years that Prime Minister tried to take on any responsibility was when Ranil Wickramasinghe was Prime Minister with CBK as the president.

All other prime ministers have been content to spend their time visiting as many temples as possible. The prsent PM has made this into a fine art, finding the time to visit several temples each day. Then he still has time to attend to all kinds of other functions as well.

He was seen at the finals of the recently concluded Indian Oil cricket tournament. And managed to walk into the presentation stage as well. When Sri Lanka won the Cricket World cup, the then sports minister barged his way into the award ceremony as well. In a T-shirt. Now he is in prison garbs.

To the viewers of the awards ceremony it was blatantly clear that the head of Indian Oil was scheduled to give away the winner's trophy. But having the PM on the stage looking like a wall flower, the presenter had no choice but to announce that the PM and the Indian Oil chief would be giving away the prize. Indian Oil for it's part spent millions to sponser the tournament. The PM for his part has not done anything for sport in this country.

Since the award ceremony the price of Lanka IOC, the Sri Lankan subsidiary of Indian Oil has slid by about 15% (in a bull market). The reason the government owes a massive $57 million to LIOC and it does not look as if the money will be paid any time soon.

Posted by raditha at August 23, 2005 2:55 AM