Opinion
Our lawmakers not honourable anymore
Dear Parliamentarians,
I cannot address you as Honourable Parliamentarians as per protocol for the simple reason none of you are honourable. You have lost your honour by continuing to remain in the current failed, irrelevant, impotent and useless white elephant of a parliament. In the present bankrupt, tragic and dangerous situation of the country, an honest and an honourable politician will resign the membership of such a parliament and join the people in their struggle; at least, to get back to the lifestyle (though still unsatisfactory) that was ante the current utterly failed Rajapaksa regime.
This letter is deliberately not addressed to your boss for if he cannot understand the two words “Go home”, the message and the demand of practically the whole country, how can he understand a letter of a few hundred words?
Let me explain to you what I mean by a failed, irrelevant, impotent and useless white elephant or your parliament. During the last 30 months can you show anything positive or successful that your parliament has achieved? You are lawmakers. Did you pass any law beneficial to the people or the country? One law was to allow dual citizens to become parliamentarians.
We got a dual citizen Finance Minister who quickly sold underhand the Kerawalapitiya power plant in the dead of the night to a shady American company. The Treasury began to dwindle. Then, you approved the 20th Amendment and made your President all powerful, and yourselves an impotent parliament. Recently, you amended a law to make unsolicited projects in the power sector to hand over wind power generation to an Indian company, without calling for tenders. And the chairman of the CEB let the cat out of the bag revealing to the whole world about Modi, Adani and Rajapaksa.
The management of the Covid pandemic was easy as we are a small island nation. But you first denied it, then like idiots tried to stop a pandemic with a Dammika peniya and throwing pots in the river. As there are no limits to your stupidity, we ended up with over 15,000 deaths. But, of course, your cronies made billions with RAT kits overpriced, black marketed vaccines, and exorbitant and compulsory quarantine hotel rackets. Yes, when it comes to rackets, deals and all kinds of thievery you are very successful.Then, gas cylinders exploded killing people and destroying their houses. What did the Parliament do? Nothing. Not a word of condolence. There were many such rackets like the sugar tax racket, the oil racket, the garlic racket, etc. People had to line up in queues for petrol, diesel, milk powder and passports. Nine senior citizens died standing in queues. Never a minute of silence in sympathy for them in the Parliament.
And, finally, the sudden halting of all imports of fertiliser and insecticides by a presidential decree was the coup de grace to Mother Lanka. She is weak. Agriculture is the very life of this island nation. Now, it is being strangled to death. The prospects of food shortages and starvation are frightening. Among the 22 million population of this country, the stupidest, most ignorant and most foolish moron is at the top; there is no doubt about it.
Dear Parliamentarians,
The above short description is enough for you to understand why your august assembly is a white elephant. In contrast, the Aragalaya – that the farmers started in our villages and paddy fields – came to Colombo Galle Face on the 09 April right in front of the Presidential Secretariat. It went from strength to strength till the 09 May, when they were attacked by the Prime Minister’s goons.
Now, this “Aragalaya” is the unique locus where the voice of the people is heard, respected and becomes meaningful. The voices in the Diyawannawa mansion are no more meaningful to the people, rather they are threatening the very survival of this country. It is this Parliament that brought the nation to its knees.
Your Parliament is destroying the country. All of you, whatever the party you belong to either in the government or in the Opposition, or a fence sitting independent, are destroying our motherland, its sovereignty, its wealth and its people. If you have any shame and a conscience you will resign your seat, and even your party, and stand with the people at the Aragalaya. But if your salary, perks and privileges (and a bribe here and a commission there) are more important to you than the country, you are certainly neither honourable nor honest. You are only parasites stealing the food out of the mouth of the people, driving them to poverty, starvation and death.
That is why all the 225 of you cannot be addressed as Honourable Members of Parliament as long as you continue to remain in that failed, irrelevant, impotent and useless white elephant of an assembly. May you receive the light to see the ugly truth, and the courage to take a brave decision!
You will not regret it.
Fr J.C. PIERIS
The first and only tsunami that Sri Lanka experienced was on Boxing Day(26th) of December 2004. My wife and I, as usual, went down to Modara in Moratuwa to purchase our seafood requirements of seafood from our familiar fishmonger, Siltin, from whom we had been buying fish for a long time. Sometimes we used to take a couple of friends of ours. But on this day, it was only both of us that went on this trip.
We made our purchases and were returning home and when we came up to the Dehiwala bridge, many people were looking down at the canal from both sides of the bridge. This was strange, as normally if there was something unusual, it would be on one side.
Anyway, we came home unaware of anything that had happened. A school friend of mine (sadly he is no longer with us) telephoned me and asked whether I was aware of what had happened. When I answered him in the negative, he told me to switch on the TV and watch. Then when I did so and saw what was happening, I was shocked. But still I did not know that we had just managed to escape being swept away by the tsunami.
Later, when I telephoned Siltin and asked him, he said that both of us had a narrow escape. Soon after we had left in our car, the tsunami had invaded the shore with a terrifying wave and taken away everything of the fishmongers, including their stalls, the fish, weighing scales and money. The fishmongers had managed to run to safety.
This had been about five minutes after we had left. So, it was a narrow shave to have escaped the wrath of the demining tsunami( the name many Sri Lankans came to know after it hit our island very badly}
HM NISSANKA WARAKAULLE
Sri Lanka has recorded a staggering 375 elephant deaths in the past eleven and a half months due to a multitude of causes, according to the Department of Wildlife Conservation. U. L Thaufeeq, Deputy Director – Elephant Conservation said the deaths include 74 from gunshots, 53 from electrocution, 49 from hakka patas (explosive devices hidden in food), seven from poisoning, 10 from train accidents, three from a road accident, and six by drowning. It makes such diabolical reading!
“The causes of other deaths are due to natural causes or causes that could not be identified. Most of the elephants that died were young,” the official said.
Meanwhile, the human-elephant conflict has also taken a toll on people, with 149 human deaths reported this year.
Accordingly, human-elephant conflict has resulted in 524 deaths of both elephants and humans in 2024.
In 2023, a total of 488 elephants and 184 people have died consequent to the conflict, according to Wildlife Department statistics.
The human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka has escalated to unprecedented levels with reasons like habitat destruction, encroachment, and the lack of sustainable coexistence measures contributing to the issue.
This is an indictment of the Wildlife Department for just giving the sad yearly statistics of shocking losses of our National treasures !
Given the fact that Sri Lanka boasts of 29.9% of the country declared as protected forests, Sri Lanka is a haven for nature lovers. Boasting 26 national parks, 10 nature reserves including 3 strict nature reserves, and 61 sanctuaries, the national parks in Sri Lanka offer an incredible variety of wildlife experiences.
Taken in that context, the million dollar question is why on earth the Wildlife Department is not being proactive to capture these magnificent animals and transport them into protected sanctuaries, thus effectively minimising dangers to villagers ?
Being a Buddhist country primarily, to turn a blind eye to these avoidable tragic deaths to mankind and wild elephants, we should be ashamed !
As a practising Buddhist myself, I think our clergy could play a major part in calling upon the Wildlife Department to get their act together sooner rather than later to protect human elephant conflicts !
Sri Lanka being a favourite destination amongst foreign tourists, they are bound to take a dim view of what is happening on the ground!
If the top brass in the responsible department are not doing their job properly, may be there is a case for the new President to intervene before it gets worse!
All animal lovers hope and pray the New Year will usher in a well coordinated plan of action put in place to ensure the well being of wildlife and villagers !
Sunil Dharmabandhu
Wales, UK
This has reference to the article from the Aircraft Owners and Operators Sri Lanka, titled ‘Closer look at regulatory oversight and its impact on Tourism’, published on Tuesday, 24th December 2024.To explain further, in the beginning there was the Air Navigation Act No 15 of 1950 which was followed by the Air Navigation Regulations (ANR) of 1955. This was long before the national airline had acquired pressurised aircraft, intercontinental jets, sophisticated navigation equipment, satellite communication and automatic landing systems, and ‘glass’ flight-deck instrumentation.
Today, civil aviation in Sri Lanka is governed by Civil Aviation Act Number 14 of 2010. Yet the Air Navigation Regulations (ANR) promulgated back in 1955 remain in force.
These outdated regulations still stipulate rules forbidding the carriage of passengers on the airplane’s wings or undercarriage (landing gear). In short, they are neither practical nor user-friendly. In contrast, the Air Navigation Regulations of other countries have progressed and are easy to read, understand, and implement.
To overcome the problem of outdated regulations, as an interim measure in 1969 the then Minister of Communications and Transport, Mr E.L.B. Hurulle issued a Government Gazette notification declaring that the Standard and Recommended Procedures (SARPs) in Annexes to the ICAO Convention signed by Ceylon in 1944 shall be made law.
Even so, nothing much was done to move with the times until updating of the Civil Aviation Act 14 of 2010, while the Air Navigation Regulations remained unchanged since 1955. However, these regulations were modified from time to time by the promulgation of Implementing Standards (IS) and General Directives (GDs) which were blindly ‘cut and pasted’ by the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka (CAASL), from the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) Annexe ‘SARPS’ without much thought given. To date there are literally 99 IS’s starting from 2010.
The currently effective air navigation regulations are not in one document like the rest of the world, but all over the place and difficult for the flying public to follow as they are not regularly updated. This sad situation seems to have been noticed by the current regime.
The National Tourism Policy of the ruling NPP states, “Domestic air operations are currently limited due to high cost and regulatory restrictions. The current regulatory and operational environment will be reviewed to ensure domestic air connectivity to major tourist destinations. The potential of operating a domestic air schedule with multiple operators is proposed. Additionally, domestic airports and water aerodromes in potential key areas will be further developed, for high-end tourism growth.”
“The tourism policy recognises Sri Lanka’s potential to develop Sri Lanka’s aviation-based specialised tourism products, including fun flying, hot air ballooning, paragliding, parachuting and skydiving, and scenic seaplane operations. To facilitate the growth of these niche markets, existing regulations will be reviewed with the aim of attracting capable investors to develop and operate these offerings.”
It remains to be seen whether the NPP government lives up to those promises.
Note:
That OPA report talks of two funds: ‘Connectivity’ and ‘Viability’ for a limited period like three or five years to help jump-start the domestic aviation industry.
The ‘Connectivity Fund’ will cap the seat price for local passengers to a more affordable value to destinations while the ‘Viability Fund’ will assume that all seats are occupied and compensate the operator for any unutilised seat. The intention is to popularise domestic aviation as a safe, quick and convenient mode of transport.
Capt. Gihan A Fernando
RCyAF/ SLAF, Air Ceylon, Air Lanka, Singapore Airlines and Sri Lankan Airlines.
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