-By Eng. Sooriasegaram
(Lanka-e-News -06.Aug.2025, 8.00 PM) Dr. Jayampathy is an expert in Constitutional Law and a Presidential Counsel in Sri Lanka. He was also an old LSSP Central Committee member. Being a lifelong communist from school days, I knew him for a long time. Prof. Pieris was a well-known and highly respected Law professor, who later became a politician and served as a senior minister under all the notoriously repressive, corrupt and criminal Prime ministers and Presidents in Sri Lanka.
Both of them, having decided to support Sajit Premadasa for Presidency in the 2024 Presidential election, visited Jaffna to test the political pulse of the Tamil people. I came to know that they were having a meeting at Thanthai Selva Auditorium in Jaffna. Despite being sick of their political past, I went to see what they were up to. For them it is the start of a new honeymoon with their new partner, Sajit Premadasa. I thought it would be fun to hear them speak about it.
There were about 35 people in the room. First Prof. Pieris spoke for about 15 minutes. He confessed he failed to do justice to the Tamil people under previous presidents but this situation will be corrected under the Presidency of Sajit. Then Dr. Jayampathy spoke about 13 A and so on. It was a story of the same wine in a different bottle. The participants’ frustrations came out loud and clear. One after another questioned their unfulfilled promises in the past to the Tamils. Towards the very end I stood up and said:
I am not going to embarrass you with any further questions relating to Tamil issues because a) you were in power for nearly 5 decades b) you served as a senior minister under four Presidents c) you had plenty of time and opportunities to address them but failed to do so. You could not even implement 13 A, which could have kept the peace and avoided the war.
I am equally concerned about general as well as specific issues faced by majority of the Sinhala people and my questions to you and my disappointments are related to them. If you cannot address their problems on whose votes you depend on to get elected to power, how can we expect you to solve the problems of the Tamils.
It is my view that you have failed to address even their basic needs – poverty, unemployment, education, transport etc. So, you have failed not only on Tamils but on Sinhalese.
If you had succeeded in solving at least the problems of the Sinhalese people, I could give you 7 out o10. But you have failed miserably to solve any of their problems too.
Example 1
While the country is becoming bankrupt without engaging in local production and wealth creation, you chose to borrow heavily to spend on prestige projects which were neither revenue producing nor employment creating. You chose to build the Express Way from Colombo to Matara at a cost of nearly Rs. 10 billion for the benefit of a small minority of rich play boys and playgirls to joy-drive their luxury vehicles while millions of working people had to make their daily journeys from Matara to Colombo in the coastal trains, packed like sardines in all the compartments while many young people had to travel hanging dangerously from the hold bars at the doorways. My grandniece, a consultant anesthetist attached to the National Hospital, Colombo, told me that almost every month one or two young Sinhala men aged 18 to 25, fall off the train and suffer from fatal head, spinal and other serious injuries, brought by ambulance to her hospital to be anesthetized by her to undergo extensive brain and skeletal surgeries in ICU, directly as a result of having to journey dangerously in overcrowded long-distance trains. They either die or survive only to become permanently disabled. It was gross negligence and failure of your government and the Ministry of Transport to prioritize projects which are not beneficial to majority of working people, who actually produce the wealth of our country.
While travelling from Galle to Colombo in one of the trains referred to above, I met a Sinhala lady. During our conversation, she told me that she was travelling from Matara to Colombo, a journey she makes daily to go to work in Colombo. She gets up at 3.30 am, cooks for the family and takes a packed lunch to work, 2.5 hours journey in the morning and the same again in the evening. 5 hours travelling to work 7-8 hours daily to earn a small salary of Rs.30, 000 in 2009.
Your government’s central economic, development, employment and human resources planning is so appalling that a woman has to travel from Matara to Colombo to find a job. Why is this Colombo centric planning? Why not create jobs locally. No regional planning at all.
These are just two examples to show that you have failed to deliver anything good to the Sinhala people, let alone Tamil people.
You have failed to develop the economy, transport, education, agriculture, fishery, housing, national reconciliation etc. not only in Tamil areas but also in Sinhala areas. You kept on borrowing and squandered the money on projects which were not revenue producing and job creating, on militarizing the country, causing war and destruction. You are once again realigning with a break away UNP group which played a part to bring Sri Lanka to bankruptcy through corruption, mismanagement of funds, nepotism and a divide and rule policy.
Sri Lanka needs a complete break from the past failed policies to unite the country. It is encouraging to see that the present NPP government has opted to exactly take this path.
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by (2025-08-06 14:32:40)
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