I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. S. L.Gunasekera’s (SLG) comments in The Island of 27 July. I was traversing down Parliament way the other day and was amused by the sad spectacle of larger than life posters displayed on either side of the highway leading to the House by the Lake, obviously placed there by servile politicians at a huge cost to them.

I, however, beg to disagree with SLG where he claims that the imbeciles are relegating the President to the level of a hereditary monarch. In the mid-80s I was working for the United Nations in Kinshasa, Zaire, (Democratic Republic of the Congo) during the time of the infamous Mobuto Sese Seko, who grabbed power from an otherwise honest Joseph Lumumba. During that period of time in Kinshasa, an otherwise filthy and corrupt city, similar bill boards were displayed of Mobutu, who called himself the "Cock that no hen could refuse". Not many years thereafter, Mobutu who plundered the country to near bankruptcy met a miserable end, having being banished from his homeland only to face an ignominious end.

Let not history repeat itself here in our thrice blessed island. Our people deserve better than that.

The President would do well to have those posters torn down immediately.