During a recent visit to a local fracture specialist the man while attending to the patient gave me a lecture on how and whom to vote on October 10. Forget about parties and their manifestos/promises when it comes to voting he said - look at the list of contestants for your District and make an individual study and use for the process of evaluation a sensible ‘check list’ for which credit should be given on a weighted basis. It is like a study of the form of horses due to compete over the weekend races on whom you hope to place your bets. Don’t you consider the many factors before you make up your mind on which horses to bet, he enquired. If, you don’t then you are just wasting your money, he chuckled.

His belief was that the three critical factors that should come into the evaluation equation were knowledge (education), ability and performance. While ability to debate successfully and personality should be given weightage the honesty factor should not come into the equation as no objective/accurate assessments would ever be possible for this parameter.

Select the MPs on this basis and send them to Parliament, if you want a future for this country, he added. Let there be a secret ballot to elect a speaker and Prime Minister. It is important that the speaker should be a man with a strong personality, preferably a lawyer. The MP should be a person with depth and vision and political experience.

The role of the President should be to examine critically and approve the plans/projects submitted for a five year period. A review at the end of every year should be mandatory.

Just imagine how the country will prosper if run this way, were his parting words.

Could this be the future Sri Lanka?
Cecil Fonseka
Kotte.