By: Niranjan de Silva Deva Aditya
Malignant self destructive mistrust of SriLanka by SriLankans can only be mitigated by the creation of a UN Special Trust Fund as with Afghanistan (STFA) to channel Aid funds for food petroleum medicines. Otherwise no money. With 20 yrs in EU I know it’s the only way says Niranjan.
Expanding his theme he said that the Sri Lankan body politic is fragmented. Suspicion of those in politics by ordinary law abiding citizens is at a phenomenal level hitherto unseen anywhere in the world. Trust which is the corner stone of representative democracy is broken into tiny fragments. If a general election is held now I dont believe even 10 percent of those now in Parliament would be reelected such is the damage they have done to themselves by trying to score points about Constitutional amendments while people are hungry and their basic needs unmet. Ranil Wickremesinghe 7 weeks into a new job as PM is trying to put humpty back together again when all the kings horses and the kings men can do no such thing. Yet to receive international assistance humpty has to be put into a functional role governing again. So how to proceed to show total transparency which the people demand while acting swiftly to raise money to distribute oil gas diesel and food that the population needs for normalisation. The only way forward as we did before in the EU in Afghanistan and other crisis states is to create a UN Trust Fund into which all new monies are placed to be administered under UN supervision. The need to raise money quickly without tendering if such a process takes too long for the sale of assets need no opacity if done in a totally transparent manner for unsolicited proposal by instituting in each and every case a Swiss Challenge where credible solidly financed counter bids are invited. Everything is possible if there is a will. Ranil Wickremesinghe certainly has that will to effect much needed change.
Niranjan de Silva Deva Aditya. UK MP (1992-97) MEP (1999-2019).
