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Voters are much more educated

The leader of the opposition and the veteran politician Ranil Wickremesinghe is fully aware that the next Presidential Election is scheduled to be held in November 2006 as per the existing regulations of the Constitution introduced by his uncle and the UNP Government of which Ranil Wickremesinghe was a leading minister.

It is crystal clear that no attempts had been made by the Government to postpone the Presidential Election and there is no threat to the sovereignty of the people of Sri Lanka and their right to exercise their franchise.

The President, Prime Minister, Speaker or the Leader of the Opposition cannot fix a date for an election, except the Commissioner of Elections. No doubt, the actual date of the next election will be announced by him according to the Constitution which is the supreme authority.

A person who was a member of the seventeen years long UNP Cabinet in different ministries and as the Prime Minister should know the terms and conditions of the Constitution much better than the other UNP MPs who participated in the carnival parade from Matara to Colombo for several days.

It is not upto a Presidential candidate to mislead the members of the International Democratic Union in order to support for his own political agenda. On the other hand, the Australian Prime Minister has no business to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign States. John Howard should understand that RW is trying his best to establish a guinness record by losing 13 elections.

If the UNP candidate cannot read and understand the Section 32 (1) of the 1978 Constitution and Section 2 (d) (1) in the 3rd Amendment to the Constitution, what can we the Sri Lankans expect from such a person as the President of his country?

Please do not mislead educated voters who can understand the Constitution.

Search for the cause before the noose

Many are clamouring for the gallows. They seem to be convinced that it is the answer to our rocketing crimes. That once we start punishing people by hanging them, all those murders, rapes and kidnappings will be no more.

Yet, where is the guarantee of success? Can we give examples of when and where it has been proved beyond doubt that gallows is a deterrent to crime? They would say, 'Go back to the times when we hung people. We had less crime then'.

But aren't we talking about a then and a now that are different in so many ways from each other. The needs, temptations and the temperament of our society of those days have changed dramatically. Is it right to assume that the reintroduction of gallows will solve our problem just because it supposedly tackled it well sometime ago, though in a much different environment? Or, was it really the gallows that stopped people from going to the extreme in a crime?

We should not go by a trial and error strategy here and until we find answers to all above, it is not wise to bring back the gallows.

In the interim while, the responsible authorities find these answers (they had better be quick too), something should still be done.

The government should introduce new techniques into the areas of crime detection and forensics. The people convicted for trafficking in drugs, rape, planned murder, acts of terrorism, kidnapping and child molesting must be condemned to life imprisonment accompanied with hard labour.

Our prison authorities should ensure that people condemned to punishment of any kind would never be able to make prison cells their second homes with many amenities and luxuries that are somehow made available to some of them.

This disgusting, cowardly behaviour of some of our prison officials is brought up again and again by the concerned public. Yet, the rich and the powerful criminals still enjoy life even in their prison cells.

Educating the public in certain areas can be an efficient way to stop some crimes, sexually-related in particular. The national newspapers and other forms of mass media can play an important role here. The social stigmas attached to rape victims must be removed, so that they get sympathy and support from people and not disdain and disgrace, as it often happens today. This would also encourage these victims to come forward and help authorities to catch the offenders, fast.

Today, many crimes cannot be solved because of lack of witnesses. People are afraid to give evidence against offenders. Therefore, an adequate witness-protection programme must be designed to ensure safety and if necessary, even anonymity, of key-witnesses to serious crimes.

Furthermore, the law-abiding citizen trying to perform his citizens' duty by giving evidence becomes a victim himself of Police and legal bureaucracy, let alone of the offender. This state of affairs must be changed.

We still have many honest, dedicated policemen. Yet, many of them cannot do their job because of political interference. The criminals, who can muster enough political clout not only are committing crimes in broad daylight, but also are showing the other evil-minded, ways and means of getting pass the law. Therefore, any politician, who is found to be intervening in police matters even in the slightest manner, must be sent home, if not jail.

Unless we take such measures and also find ways to handle the ever-changing circumstances of our socio-economic environment, we will never be able to curb our escalating crime, gallows or not.

Encourage or kill competition among banks

The decision of Central Bank to increase the minimum capital of a bank by over 500 per cent to Rs. 2,500 mn is highly questionable to say the least. Above all, it will lead to a reduction in the number of banks as many of the smaller banks that have come up during the last few years would have to close down or team up with another larger bank.

The opening of several smaller banks became a threat to the bigger private banks and the foreign banks that have been operating a near cartel in savings accounts, money transfers, personal loans, housing loans and similar retail banking services.

Even though the new banks have their branches mostly in Colombo and suburbs, aggressive marketing of their services made it possible even for outstation customers such as ourselves to enjoy truly personalised services at very competitive prices, get a sympathetic hearing when we run into difficulty, get ATM facilities without unnecessary additional charges and many similar banking services.

Instead of waiting for customers to come to the bank, they sent their teams of smart reps to our own doorsteps to offer necessary services.

This obnoxious regulation of Central Bank will mean that these new smaller banks will have to wind up or become a part of a bigger bank that has no need to go out of their way to please customers.

Any layman will understand this is a harmful thing for everyone except the bigger banks, their powerful shareholders and their privileged staff who stand to gain from reduced competition. We can only question whether the Central Bank is looking after the customers who are pressed from all sides or the bank owners and employees.

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