As referred to in my previous blog
entry, the only matters necessary for satisfaction of life from which every
other form of happiness emanates is being able to have access to clean water,
to breather clean air, and eat food devoid of pollutants. These are the core
TRINITY that youth know is essential, and realize that the generation ahead of
them have in their haste for personal greed, and division, forgotten, and hence
have done everything possible to POLLUTE!
The debate should be how this fundamental
human right is enshrined in the Constitution to hover above all else. Freedom
of thought, expression, and beliefs all amount to a hill of beans if this is
not guaranteed, as we are on a slippery slope to self destruction, unsure if at
the current rate of destruction, we will survive at all.
In similar fashion, we must try and
predict future problems of National Importance that could divide the nation,
and make appropriate guidelines to deal with them within the Constitution,
rather than leave it to political grandstanding as in the past to hold the country
to ransom resulting in some of the past internal conflicts.
A case in point is the huge unfunded pension
liability of the Public Service, which in 5 years will be a severe strain on
State coffers, that will inevitably create a situation of mayhem, internal
conflict and social schism if NOT resolved now, leaving no ambiguity to clarify.
In true Sri Lankan fashion, this problem
is left until it needs immediate resolution by which time war would have been declared.
What are the facts? The Govt. cannot meet this pension liability in the foreseeable
future in its economic plan.
In short Sri Lanka cannot afford to pay
pensions to its retiring state employees. The only course of action is to
increase the retirement age to 75, and hope due to the worsening quality of
life, due to breathing polluted air, drinking poisoned water, and eating food
full of pesticides, that people will die before retirement and save the state
this liability. I know this is a cynical approach, but that is the true state
of affairs, that the mischievous politicians will use, as a political tool to
fool the public, saying they will pay the pensions that the reality has shown
is not possible.
How would people be fooled. The people
will believe the politicians and vote for those who promise NOT to increase the
retirement age, and promise to pay the pensions. Those who know better will
lose, and so when money is printed to do so, the Economy will tank, and take a
Country down a precipice, because we have voted in a party that has promised
the impossible. Sounds like we have heard this one before! De ja vu once again.
After all there is still a huge population who
believe it is the Govt.’s responsibility to provide Govt. jobs, even by giving
appointments to people without even a place of work, merely to satisfy the
voter out of a promise that will and actually has proved to be treasonable, due
to the inability to sustain this with income, borrowing money to pay the Public
Sector wages, let alone pensions.
Unless there is a Constitutional safeguard
to prevent this, what is the point of a Constitution? The Constitution is a
means of governing a nation. If its elected representatives, borrow and get the
Country into debt just to pay the wages of a bloated bureaucracy, is that
governing? I don’t think so.
I can assure the reader that this kind
of Constitutional safeguard to quantify the unfunded liability and provide
funds to pay this pension now, is NOT EVEN in their dreams as being necessary for
inclusion, which would only mean a field day for scaremongers to take power,
over the truth tellers in future!
That is why it could be argued that
dummies have so far drafted the Constitution, and experts in each of their
fields have been excluded from the framework of drafting. The experts don’t know
how to inform the drafters of the need for this eventuality within the
Constitution, as they have tunnel vision in knowing only their subject matter,
but don’t know how this should be included by way of building a provision
gradually to cover this eventuality, with a combination of a rising retirement
age, (a politically impossible policy, best left for the Constitution) and
pension provision.
I have only referred to ONE small
matter, and there are many life and death scenarios like this that MUST form
part of the discussion, and a compromise solution enacted. We are so fixated
with the ethnic issue which in reality is a non issue, as we are all ethnically
the same despite our desperate need to differentiate it out of some man made
spoke called religion and race and language.
To put to bed once and for all, this
ethnic conundrum, introduce gene tests for all politicians immediately so that
we can prove that all of them have a different ethnic makeup to that which they
so vociferously espouse. It will also shut the Diaspora up for good, when this
is outed! Wait till we realize we are only part of the Human Race, all other
definitions are so last century to suppress, and strangle.
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