The people call for new political model

• Following is a response to an article titled, ‘The president calls for a new economic model’ (https://www.ft.lk/top-story/President-calls-for-new-economic-model/26-738376), which was published in the Weekend FT on 6 August

By Dr. Ruvaiz Haniffa

The people of Sri Lanka for the past few months have declared that there can be no reliance on old politicians and political models any longer and there should be innovative thinking while paying prompt attention to global changes.

The Sri Lankan people have been making these demands for the past few months in non-violent, peaceful means which was provoked into violence by the State and the discredited politicians who use the engineered and provoked violence to brutally quash the legitimate demands for change in the political culture in the country.

As such the people should not pay any heed to calls by a President who does not have the people’s mandate to make any requests, demands or pleas on the people.

The current president may be president in the eyes of the constitution or law – but he will never be the president of the people in spirit.

Furthermore the political circumstances which culminated the current President’s ‘selection cum election’ to office by the vote of 134 members of parliament alone necessitates an urgent and immediate change in the ‘political model’ practices in Sri Lanka.

As such we the people call on the President to recognise the root cause of the current economic crisis in the country as being indeed a political crisis and call upon him to play his role in solving both the economic and political problems by resigning immediately and make way for a ‘new political model’. Therefore his call for a new economic model does ‘not’ make any economic or political sense in the absence of introduction of new political model as demanded by the people.