{"id":36297,"date":"2014-12-17T19:08:26","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T00:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=36297"},"modified":"2014-12-17T19:08:26","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T00:08:26","slug":"presidential-secretary-lalith-weeratunga-gets-passionately-emotional-while-extolling-the-virtues-of-mahinda-rajapaksa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=36297","title":{"rendered":"Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga Gets Passionately Emotional While Extolling the Virtues of Mahinda Rajapaksa"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By
\nMarisa Wikramanayake<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lalith Weeratunga, longstanding civil servant and Secretary to the country\u2019s Chief Executive, yesterday turned passionate at a public forum when explaining what set President Mahinda Rajapaksa apart from other leaders. <\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Mahinda Rajapaksa is decisive, transparent and always prioritises people\u2019s interest and consults the public,\u201d Weeratunga said in his comments at the concluding panel discussion of the first-ever synchronised forum for business and professional leaders in four hotels in the city.<\/p>\n

The Secretary to the President also recalled four different agreements and treaties that had been decided upon in the past in secret without the public\u2019s knowledge or approval and sometimes without presidential approval as well.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut President Rajapaksa has always made sure that the people know what he plans to do,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is the way you do things in a democracy. In fact, I use the archives a lot and I often send people to find certain things for me and I have found four instances of when there were decisions made on which the public were not consulted, all during the regimes of previous governments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The four occasions he listed were the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, the Ceasefire Agreement signed in 2002, the Interim Self-Governing Authority or ISGA that was proposed in October 2003, which would have given the LTTE the ability to self-govern a separatist state and the P-TOMS agreement signed after the 2004 tsunami.<\/p>\n

The Secretary to the President, referring to President Rajapaksa\u2019s speech during the Momentum forum where he said he would do as he said he would and that he would always consult the public on what he planned to do, stated that it meant there was no need to fear that the public would not be consulted on any major decisions and that due process was being followed.<\/p>\n

In response to the panel discussion moderator\u2019s question about what set President Rajapaksa apart from other previous leaders, Weeratunga said: \u201cPresident Rajapaksa is decisive. Whenever he has to make a decision, he makes it. Previous governments and leaders, I cannot name them, but I can tell you that he is more decisive than they were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Momentum was organised by the Professionals for a Stable Sri Lanka as the first synchronised forum in Asia held across four venues \u2013 the Galadari Hotel, the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel and Hilton Colombo Residence \u2013 and had an audience of over 2,000 delegates from the business community and public and private sector who had a chance to debate and discuss the way forward with a focus on peace, political stability and continuity in development.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:DailyFT<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marisa Wikramanayake Lalith Weeratunga, longstanding civil servant and Secretary to the country\u2019s Chief Executive, yesterday turned passionate at a public forum when explaining what set President Mahinda Rajapaksa apart from other leaders. \u201cPresident Mahinda Rajapaksa is decisive, transparent and always prioritises people\u2019s interest and consults the public,\u201d Weeratunga said in his comments at the …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga Gets Passionately Emotional While Extolling the Virtues of Mahinda Rajapaksa’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36298,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36297\/revisions\/36298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}