That they are…

Good point, anon.

I regularly interact closely with all different types of people in Sri Lanka – the “ESE types” who seem to be such a popular topic on this blog, so called middle class sri lankans, and people who live in in remote areas, in abject poverty, both Sinhala and Tamil.

One common desire expressed by almost all of these people I meet is a desire to emigrate, either permanently or at least temporarily, to to try and make some money to secure their future. Even within the army, soldier ranks who had access to a senior officer would often express a desire to be sent to Haiti.

There are people who could easily find a job overseas, but choose to stay here of course, but I’d say they are more the exception than the rule.

After the news broke of that poor lady who’d been tortured with nails in Saudi, a lot of the comment threads in the sri lankan news websites demanded that we stop sending women overseas to work in the capacity of housemaids. I don’t suppose these people realize how dependent we are, as a country, on these remittances from our people doing menial work overseas. I suppose a better option for them would be to become “garment kello,” another set of people who make an invaluable contribution to our economy (some of whom were incidentally fucked over recently by our government) and are subjected to all manner of abuse by our own people. Yes. That’s much better.

If things are looking so rosy for the kingdom of Sri Lanka, why the hell does everyone seem to keen to leave?

Anon, it not merely a measure of output. Just check the financial statement of all the public firms here. Profits are exceptional so are capital gains. The idea that sri lanka is growing because of public spending is baseless.

The price of bread is tied to the price of flour which we don’t produce. And wheat prices have gone up considerably. The big measure of cost of living is inflation and that’s under control, despite the substantial growth. That’s clearly a significant achievement by the government.

Generally the MR administration has been far more egalitarian than the UNP, especially if exclude premadasa. Alot of the benefits of development are mostly going to the rural areas where people are poor. Agriculture subsides have gone up dramatically. Rural roads have been developed well, this helps alot because earlier there was so much wastage due to transportation problems and these losses were generally passed on to the farmers one way or the other. These have gone away. Genreally speaking the accusation that mahinda era development has caused an income disparity is a lie. The simple evidence for this is that the Gini coefficient of sri lanka hasn’t changes from 2002 to 2009/10

The World Economic Forum has upgraded Sri Lanka’s global competitiveness ranking from 79th to 62nd place among 139 nations for the year 2010-2011. Sri Lanka showed a remarkable improvement of 17 places.

Mongolia, ranked 99th in the latest report titled WEF Global Competitiveness Report, was the highest gainer climbing 18 positions, followed by Sri Lanka, which gained 17 positions to be 62nd. Other significant improvements were in the case of Indonesia(44th), Vietnam (59th) and Tunisia(32nd).

Sri Lanka’s rise is attributable to improvements across the board. Between 2003 and 2008, annual GDP growth exceeded 5 percent (slowing to 3.5 percent in 2009). As a result of this healthy growth, Sri Lanka’s GDP is rising and the country is now transitioning from the factor-driven to the efficiency-driven stage in the GCI framework. Sri Lanka needs to bolster the foundations of its competitiveness, while improving on efficiency-enhancing factors, which are becoming increasingly important given this level of development. And this year’s performance indicates that the country is making some important improvements to this end.

Sri Lanka achieves higher scores this year in every measure of the public institutions category, improving its position from 73rd to 55th in the institutions pillar. Among other things, the perceived level of security is increasing (106th), although threat of terrorism remains a serious concern (134th). Other areas of improvement include health and primary education (35th, up 12) and financial markets (52nd, up 13). Sri Lanka also continues to benefit from impressive business sophistication (39th) and innovation (40th), particularly for a country at its stage of development.

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=6408

Sorry to have to be the one to point this out, but you’re a bit of a dumbass, poobalam.
If Sri Lanka suffers, Tamil people suffer. I’m assuming that you’re not in Sri Lanka, but almost 2 million Tamils call Sri Lanka home – and they don’t really need idiots like you, who spread racial hatred. People like you are just as much to blame for Sri Lanka’s problems as Sinhalese who discriminate against Tamils. Sure, the Tamils were wronged, and Tamil people suffered. This was wrong. But now we need peace and reconciliation. We don’t need idiots like you, whether they are Sinhalese or Tamil, trying to create more tension between our two races.

Dear Poobalam,
My my, it seems i’ve struck a nerve. the kiddie brigade was real, denial is not going to make that go away. I never said LTTE=tamil that was one of your projections, and there is nothing narrow minded about asking a question buddy. An ill contrived & unnecessarily aggressive response on the other hand says a little.

not really. have you seen me call anon & myil low on logic.

My responses tend to be proportional the quality of your input.

I see.

A matter of opinion, of course, to which everyone is entitled to, including you.

I personally agree 100% with lefroy’s comment above.

“The only people who don’t care about this country are Mahinda, those bastards who crossed over, and everyone else who supports this amendment”

The reasons I agree with this sentiment may or may not coincide with lefory’s intentions in making the statement, but nonetheless, we are in agreement on this.

I will not pretend to be an expert on the sri lankan constitution, but as far as I know, if the President was to succumb to some unfortunate illness or accident, then the Prime Minister is appointed as the acting President until Parliament convenes to elect a successor to the President under the terms of the Constitution.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.

If the president was to appoint someone like ww or vermin as pm in the future for some invaluable service rendered (as a temporary measure of course, until he installs a rajapakse as pm) and then suddenly dies (not that I wish this upon anyone of course, but then death does come to us all), then where would we be?

Can you imagine?

“Dr. Silva” the king and malaka the crown prince??!

Perhaps the hypothetical situation outlined above is unlikely.

But the constitution should take into account all possible eventualities, and ensure that it does not set the stage for anarchy – because an uprising or coup will be the only option left to the people if the sweeping powers of this new and improved executive presidency were bestowed upon some self important imbecile.

However, we may not have to wait long to see such a situation – the current regime is corrupt, self serving and completely lacking in integrity, a situation that is only going to get worse, with this new amendment to the constitution. Who knows where this will all end?