“First of all our Foreign Minister is not a suitable person to handle our Foreign Affairs. He has not done his job satisfactorily. I will give you a good example. How many times has he visited the United Kingdom? But has he been able to receive or negotiate any type of support from the UK government? No support whatsoever.”......................................................
By Our Correspondent in London
(January 21, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Dr Sampath Wickramaratna ( Dr. Vicky) is a political activist in the Sri Lankan Diaspora who represent the main opposition in Sri Lanka- the United National Front. Dr. Samapath was a carrier journalist and has worked for various news papers in Sri Lanka before moving to the United Kingdon.
He was appointed as the President of UK branch of the UNF/UNP. In an exclusive interview to the Sri Lanka Guardian, he openly shared his thoughts on the present political developments in Sri Lanka as well as about the Sri Lanka Diaspora.
“Only Rajapaksha & Co. is saying that they are innocent. I have no personal grudges with the President or his brother Gotabaya. But the President should know by now, that his family members have done something really wrong to the country,” he said when replying to corruption charges against the President’s band wagon.
Dr Sampath said, when questioned about the present economic debacle in Sri Lanka: “What we have to do is to stop all imports for another 2-3 years. But within the first two years, the government will have to make a plan to improve and expand the country’s own economy”
Here is full text of an exclusive interview;
How do you analyze our foreign policy?
First of all our Foreign Minister is not a suitable person to handle our Foreign Affairs. He has not done his job satisfactorily. I will give you a good example. How many times has he visited the United Kingdom? But has he been able to receive or negotiate any type of support from the UK government? No support whatsoever. The same applies to the United States of America and all other European Countries. He, as a Foreign Minister has not been able to convince any Governments to help Sri Lanka.
The same way, I will not be surprised, if President Obama says I do not know who this President Mahinda Rajapaksha is. But most probably, to my knowledge I think President Obama must be knowing Prabakaran very well than Mahinda Rajapaksha. The failure on the part GoSL is as a result of incompetence and inability of the Foreign Minister. If he has done his job properly, then our country would not have to face these types of pressures from the Western countries. When Kadirgamar was the Foreign Minister, he used to speak to all the heads of governments effectively. Bogollagama always uses third parties and he was always in contact with the heads of other governments with these third parties. To my knowledge, our Foreign Minister is only a “NO ACTION TALK ONLY” (NATO) person.
How do you feel about winning the war?
In our country lots of people are trying to get the credit for this. My question is did Mahinda Rajapakse suffer in serious way for the past 30 years because of this war? Never. He had and is enjoying all the privileges as a minister, prime minister, and now the president.
Only innocent people have suffered because of the war. The credit in fact must go to those people, NOT Mahinda Rajapakse. The President gave a promise to the people prior to the last elections that he will win the war when he becomes the president. Therefore, winning the war was part of his promise.
The only credit he can get is presiding over the war victory, out of the 100 promises he had made. He at least achieved one of them by winning the war. That's all. Then what about the rest of the promises. If I say about my feeling of winning the war, I can say that the real war in Sri Lanka has only started now. Financially we are down in the doldrums. Now, the government has to find the solution for the hunger the people are experiencing. All these years all the other governments sold the war for sundry, but the present government is selling it to the innocent people wholesale.
Lots of people are accusing the present government of corruption?
Yes! only Rajapaksha & Co., is saying that they are innocent.
I have no grudges against the president or his brother Gotabaya. But the president should know by now his family members have done something wrong to the country. If the president says ‘yes’ and that ‘I am going to inquire into those allegations’, lots of people will support the President. Even in the government, the ministers themselves know that they have no say or powers. The Rajapaksha family controls every thing. To me Mahinda Rajapaksha is a good leader but NOT a good ADMINISTRATOR.
What do you think about changing the executive power that is being manipulated by the President ?
You don’t have to change it. What you have to do is to add some more clauses to the constitution to make the president answerable to the parliament and to the Supreme Court. There is also another thing. Before we change the executive powers, I prefer if we change the parliamentary party representative system. We must put a stop to parliamentarians jumping like frogs from one party to another for their own personal gains.
They are elected to the parliament under one party and in order to cover up their all varieties of crimes and corruption, they change and sit with the government party. If you see the world, this behaviour only takes place in Sri Lankan politics in a big way. So how can you expect the general public to look up to these types of people and respect them. This is where the corruption begins. They know well that they can do anything and survive with this government.
All these years whoever elected to power, their first mission was to destroy the opposition. Even the main ambition of the opposition parliament members, is to find ways of recovering their election expenditure. For them the easiest thing is to join with the government. This is just like “MARRIED TO ONE WOMAN AND LIVING WITH ANOTHER WOMAN.” It is shame on us, who voted to elect these people to the parliament.
What do you think about the common candidate General Fonseka?
My feeling is he is a good gentleman. But he should understand that once he becomes the president, he is not a General any more. He will be the caretaker of 1.85millions of generals. (that is our population of Sri Lanka).
If he tries to implement the army system to control the ordinary people, he will not survive as a President for long. But in the meantime, he has to be a tough General to the parliament members. Otherwise they will not allow him to survive as the President. That's the attitude of most of the parliament members today. So he has to be extremely careful when he starts to lead the country.
The best example is our president Mahinda Rajapakse. Our president's only trustworthy supporter is himself only, and no one else. That’s the policy he too has to follow. For me, if the General becomes the next president, he will find it extremely difficult to lead and guide the common party ministers according to his methods and ideas because they themselves will have their own views. And also the common party ministers will have to struggle to bend and make the General to agree to all their views and ideas. This might lead to a major conflict in the country in the future, therefore, they will have to come to a common agreement beforehand.
Any solution to the economy?
What we have to do is to stop all imports for another 2-3 years. Within the first two years, the government will have to make a plan to improve and expand the country’s own economy. We will have to look at countries such as India and China as an example. See how proud they are about their progress. If our economy deteriorates this way, we will be the same or poorer than countries such as Zimbabwe.
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