Making this country, the best

Professor Roshan T.A. Mayadunne

I have lived the better part of my life in a first world country. I was an economic migrant who had no money, but wanted more money (to be honest), a comfortable life, who wanted the children to have every comfort. There are many like me and is there anything wrong with that? If I had a comfortable life in Sri Lanka, the past would have been different.

How many of affluent Sri Lankans leave the country leaving behind a cushy life in Colombo? But for a moment if anyone said that there was no love for the country, he or she is totally wrong.

Those maids who send us much needed foreign currency leave their hearts and minds behind. Living through the recent times overseas, I know first hand how much every one of us cheered for every inch our Army advanced in to LTTE territory.

I know how we all felt and I know how proud we were to be Sri Lankan. We were there angry burning inside when the Westerners wanted to bail out the LTTE leadership, yet in our hearts and minds we appreciated the ‘gutts’ our political leadership had to shoo away the these pests, take the pressure on themselves, sometimes politely the way we are used to and had done for decades after independence, saying “sorry sir, we have to complete this” but most importantly when the leadership was brave enough and had the guts to say it not-so politely and loudly: ‘get lost’.

When the British Foreign Minister arrived, with sinister thoughts in mind, have we not treated him well, given him a good helicopter ride to a Southern town, to show what Sri Lanka looks like, nice beaches in Hikkaduwa and most of all how it felt to be in the open sun in full suit, minus a tan of course? Can anyone express the sense of pride and satisfaction gained out of this incident, for treating him well, as we are truly a nation who knows how to show gratitude and ‘aganthuka sathkara’ to friends and to foe in indifferent ways and at the same time be firm to say ‘NO’. We have come a long way following our colonial masters and it is time to delete the word ‘sir’ from our vocabularies.

I am not in the business of bragging the President because he is the President. I believe it is of no concern to anyone, including myself, ‘who’ the person is. What is key, is ‘what’ he is and what ‘character’ he has got to make a ‘difference’ for all of us, we Sri Lankans.

We have seen the fifth term of the Presidency resolve perhaps the biggest national problem we ever had easily in the recent history, perhaps in the whole history of Sri Lanka: the war against a terrorist group.

As we all know it was not just a terrorist group but was the best and the most equipped in the whole world, with plenty of help from powerful nations and labelled by the FBI as the deadliest terror group in the whole world.

How many true leaders have we lost because of this group, the most closest to my heart being Lakshman Kadiragamar, who was a gentleman, a visionary, a leader and a true patriot of our country. It is true what many critics say; the war effort was collective.

There is no doubt what so ever that those leaders who led the war have not lost a thing but it is those who have laid their life for Sri Lanka and those who have been maimed for life have made the supreme sacrifice for our country.

There is no one, I mean no one else, who can take more credit for the victory other than those valiant soldiers. However, without the leadership those lives would have been wasted and that must be acknowledged.

The leadership had two campus during the so called ‘humanitarian mission’ (what a brilliant strategy): the campus being military and political. If either one failed the war effort would have failed. For the former we had many who prosecuted the war to the finest detail and we need to salute them.

Among these were the Defence Secretary, the three commanders of the forces, and possibly the commanders in the field. Alternatively, the latter credit must go to the person by the way was officially the Commander in Chief, but more importantly the President of Sri Lanka at the time, who had the will, the courage, the stature to stand up against many powerful nations to give political strength to forge the war ahead.

We had a great, disciplined Army, Navy and an Air Force for a long time, but we never had a ‘good maniac’, a ‘genius’ leader to use forces effectively.

In addition, during the term of the fifth President we have seen many major development projects commence, some revived from a sombre state for years.

The Hambantota harbour Project, the Weerawila Airport and the Southern highway is amongst a few of many.

The important factor here is that these projects commenced and prosecuted at a time we had huge crisis in the North; the war effort and in Colombo, with dwindling foreign reserves.

These were times when the world’s powerful nations were influencing world monetary bodies not throw in a life line for us, even though we thoroughly deserved what was being offered.

To be continued