The path we tread

It is almost four years since the fighting ended in May 2009, perhaps it is a good time to pause and to ask if the country is headed in the right direction.

The future is never easy to foretell, but reflecting on recent events should tell us if the path ahead is rocky.

On the Governance front, in October 2010 we had the 18th amendment, in November 2011 the expropriation act, and in January 2013 the impeachment of the CJ. Three very significant moves that have altered the politico-economic landscape radically, for the worse.

There were other events, mysterious, unsolved events that people have all but forgotten. The killing of beggars in 2010/11 for instance. The PM is reported to have claimed that the beggars were from the LTTE, whether this was true or if it was part of the Colombo beautification project we will never know, but thankfully it stopped, after an outcry.

Winding back the clock a bit, the kidnapping of Tamil and Muslim businessmen was all the rage in 2007/8 (see wikileaks for some titbits on this). Many millions were paid as ransom, fortunately that too seems to have died down. At the time, analysts pointed out that there were two types of kidnappings: the political and the commercial. The commercial kidnappings were thought to be 'freelance operations' by the same teams that carried out the political kidnappings. No one knows for sure, but that too seems to have died down, although the occasional political kidnapping still seems to take place. The political kidnapping died down after a botched attempt on a minor political figure, seemingly exposed some of their links.

The strange thing is that these mysterious events generally cease after an outcry in the media, locally and overseas. It is never a case of the police investigating or the system of justice working to eliminate the problem. An outcry takes place and then the culprits go back into the wood work. The problem of course is that since the root cause is not addressed, the worms only await a suitable opportunity to return.

Sometimes I think it is good to just sit back and join the dots, the incidents I've picked out are just some of the bigger ones. There are a myriad others that could be cited.

Any way one looks at it, the picture that emerges is not an encouraging one.