My Two Cents…

I try my best to keep away from politics as much as possible even during with friends since I truly believe it’s a waste of time. All of us have our opinion which we think how the corruption should be ended and what could have done, but honestly for me those are just words since none of them stood against when things are going in the wrong direction, well until last week.

I’m standing with all my brothers and sisters who came to the road to protest against the corrupted, thug driven family business who thinks that the country is their property. It is heartbreaking to see that my motherland has become a joke in international politics and in trade due to decisions of… well, I stop there.

What I truly believe is that this is not a single point of failure or something happened overnight. We all know how was the situation of our country back in 2009. After the war is ended I, among most of the people really hoped that the economy would bloom since that’s the era of information technology boost and Asian dominance of manufacturing and we had enough space to make multi billions from our talented workforce. But what really has happened? Government spent all the money on infrastructure and mega projects which made them rich.

Have we done nothing against it until now?

No, in 2012 most of the fellow colleagues in IT field, other professions and university students joined a protest to increase spending for education to 6% of GDP. That was the first shock to the government who defeated terrorism and was starting to play the very same game as of today. But remember what happened to that movement at the end. Leaders of that protest betrayed their cause for their personal gains and finally opposition took it to their advantage.

Save Education protest 2012 Copyright – Damith Jinasena

This little one in the picture might be joining todays’ protests. I believe if we kept the momentum started in 2012, then our politicians could not act on their will and put the country on this situation.

But that’s the past and here we are after 10 years. What I request from all the brothers and sisters who’s joining the protests today is

Let this momentum run by people. Don’t let any political party take any advantages of the your sweat.
Use your heart and brain, not the anger and violence.
It’s not one mans’ or one day job. Be the change within.

My faith in Sri Lanka politics is very little and deep within me I fear that this momentum will be temporary and when the things calm down people will start behaving like nothing has happened and same political agendas will continue. Please, do not let that happen.