Election promises and track records
 

BY LINCOLN Wijeyesinghe

ELECTION time in Sri Lanka is a time of hilarious entertainment provided by some candidates who seem to be mere clowns trying to deceive the voters with impossible promises or trying to rouse divisive passions for their advantage.

Selecting a president is an extremely serious matter that has to go beyond party politics in view of the tremendous power over the future of the country and its people devolving upon the elected individual under our Constitution.

His character and track record in his political career has to be the prime consideration proven ability to carry out a cohesive and consistent programme oriented towards realistic and definite objectives for the short term relief and long term development we need with job and income generation and the peace process taking pride of place.

Jokers who desperately promise everything to every party (some of which are One Man Parties and No Man Parties) hoping to deceive them all, those without consistent principles, those struggling to produce non-existent programmes and manifestos, those who do about turns on long professed policies, those who do not have the intelligence to learn from past disastrous mistakes and repeat the same, hoping to attract more votes, we cannot hand over our future to such unprincipled patently dishonest individuals. However long and loud their cheap promises which if honestly intended could have been implemented over the long years in power.

When we consider the history of the Presidency under the much maligned J.R.J. Constitution and analyse the good and bad resulting there from it becomes apparent that the bad has come not from the Constitution but from the individual implementing it.

Hence the supreme importance of selecting the right person as our President, a man with vision, principles, courage and dignity, unblemished record of honesty, a track record of achievement in the economic development of the country and in the cession of a civil war that has claimed sixty thousand lives and many prominent persons who were National Treasures of our country.

We are not alone in this world. He has to fit into the international community of rulers to get their co-operation and assistance for a better future for our people.

It is the duty of the voters to forget Party Politics and use their almighty vote to appoint a President who will lead the country to a better future.