Leaders, men in rags and presidents! - EDITORIAL

These are days when we come across less affluent individuals demanding money from others who are walking on the road. Sometimes walking on the roads at present becomes annoying because a good number of the beggars that approach us are well-dressed. But they have sorry stories to relate; some of them good enough that we feel like giving a little more than what we would give a man in rags. 

But the question is whether these individuals are genuine and experiencing hardships or are they just lazy and don’t want to slog during these hard times where finding employment or for that matter just ‘work for a day’ is unthinkable?

If one studies the society closely families where both partners or husband and wife are employed are on a solid footing where living in Sri Lanka is concerned. Such families can think beyond putting three square meals on the table. But there are many families where there’s only one breadwinner and he or she is feeding at least two or more other hungry mouths at home. 

In this backdrop we see ministers with portfolios setting about their tasks, but sadly with nothing to show for the time they put in office. This has led to several social organizations to come to the fore and offer at least one square meal for the less affluent. These organizations have shown through their actions that it’s better to be a ‘leader’ and slog for the people rather than warm a chair which has been reserved for a person whose designation is ‘manager’. 

We spoke about Sri Lankan community kitchens for some time and then forgot about them. The good news is that they are still functioning. A leading community kitchen that operates as a religious life centre in Rajagiriya and fed 100-200 hungry people many months ago is now serving close to 1800 packs a day. This is progress; and should be lauded because this progress came at a time when the island was battling the worst of the recession period. This underscores an old saying ‘if there is a will, there is a way’. 
We Sri Lankans need to promote this need to have a ‘will’ at a time when the chips are down and people’s morale is low. We need leaders who say ‘you can’ rather than managers who say ‘I think this is not possible’. 

We need to end the mentality of promoting the other extreme too. A student who has attempted just one question in a question paper that has nine other questions and got a right for what he wrote must also be commended. At least this student has one problem less out of ten! 
Sri Lankans need to take baby steps towards digging itself out of the financial crisis it is in. We see so many politicians trying to offer leadership to the people who are eagerly awaiting a system change. The opposition political parties are also offering leadership and underscore the importance of this system change; this simplified means replacing the present set of lawmakers who attend parliament with educated individuals with clean track records. 

But there seems to be some little catch here. Have we negotiated the fact that humans have the potential to change for the worse when given power? Some of these untested individuals who are aiming at gaining political power may never have been in the ‘hot seat’ in parliament. Can they handle the power the title ‘politician’ gives them? And the second factor is that ambitious individuals who want to enter parliament and replace as many as 225 individuals- who had some role in decision making-have still not asked the people to change. We have forgotten quite conveniently that it’s we who are the people who cast our votes and sent these corrupt lawmakers to parliaments. We need to stop being selfish, over ambitious, cowards when we choose to be silent in the face of injustice and stand up for people’s rights and democracy. This was a nation full of citizens, who disembarked from their own cars and public buses when protesters waved at them from agitating sites and called for additional support. Why have these good and courageous habits died out?
This is why it’s important to state at this hour that we need solid community leaders and not just some people who are obsessed with a title and the power and perks such posts bring.