Government must take hard calls now or risk fading into oblivion

Right now, if there is one politician in Sri Lanka who is endowed with emotional intelligence and armed with a clear mandate to carry through major change, then it is the current president, Anura Kumara Disanayake

- By Ronnie Peiris

consider the difficulty and the importance of the job of ministers, to think what quality of people you are looking for to be ministers and to look at what capable Singaporeans are earning in the private sector and pay commensurately to get the best team possible for Singapore.'

Politicians' remuneration has been a point of much discourse in recent times. Unfortunately, the objectivity of the discourse has been clouded by our innate, and justified, belief that politicians make undue money in ways other than through normal remuneration. Against this background, any argument for pay increases for politicians would meet opposition. Corrupt, opportunistic, slimy, manipulative, and incompetent are adjectives which are used in describing politicians. Despite such sentiments and despite Sri Lanka's appalling social and economic achievements in the last five decades, we, the voters, have continued to elect and re-elect serial miscreants. So much so that we seem to say that we are willing to tolerate an extent of dishonesty in our politicians.

New political culture