Making change the Vasu way...

In an interview with Diane Silva in today's Daily Mirror,  Vasudeva Nanayakkara, the former Leftist firebrand that as an undergraduate I would brave a crowded Arts Theatre to listen to, says

I take the 18th Amendment in its totality and in its entirety and therefore I cannot give the positive features and the negative features separately because the terms are all interwoven into one whole. Therefore my position is that I disapprove of the 18th Amendment in substance.
He explains that he voted for the 18th Amendment  in Parliament because the political strategy of his Democratic Left Alliance was to continue its engagement with the UPFA and that that meant that

we had to vote along with the Government while stating our position very clearly.... I am a member of one of the constituent parties of the alliance, and therefore if we had not voted in line with the Government, it would have been incongruous, conflicting, incompatible and impractical.
Incongruous, conflicting, incompatible and impractical - all instrumental words, not much to do with morality and values, it would seem.   I suppose many of us get called to make decisions about whether we should try to effect change from within;  whether we should remain loyal to the organisations we work for and go along with their policies irrespective of our personal opinions while trying to influence our colleagues and bosses to make changes.  Some of us can't hack it after a point, so we resign, write books, decry what our institutions are doing and our (former) role in them and make as much money (or more) out of the royalties.  Some of us just go on  banging our heads against brick walls until it does irretrievable damage to our heads without shifting a single brick.  [Definitely, material for a cartoon, if I could only draw]

The same newspaper has another item

It was revealed at a meeting of four election monitoring bodies in the country on Tuesday that the cost of the last two elections including the abuse of state resources is more than the country’s education budget for 2009 which was Rs 4.6 billion.

So think Vasu is going to have his work cut out, trying to ensure that elections continue (he sees not having elections as a fundamental reason to part ways with the UPFA) while at the same time ensuring that the government increases its support to "education, health and matters relating to nutrition".  Good luck comrade!  There is always that book that you can write!

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