Burdens of being President
17 January 2017Remember that line, "It's good to be king" which portrayed the gloriousness of being the ruling party of a country/kingdom/monarchy? Yeah, the same cannot be said about the present days of a democratic society (HA!) with a President who is being watched, monitored, criticized from all possible directions – except during the tenure of the previous administration (you know what we are talking about – no need to spell it out).
Accountability and responsibilities go hand in hand. For if someone comes across a position of power it is obvious that he or she is entitled to some amount of responsibilities that have to be completed during that period of time. These responsibilities have to be completed with complete transparency and accountability. Such is the way of a democratic system – currently the one we are in, unless you've been living under a rock.
The President of the country already has too many responsibilities under his Modi outfit – one too many that makes the donkey break its back (no pun intended). And that one too many responsibility might just be the National Lotteries Board.
Recently it was revealed that President Maithripala Sirisena will be taking over the supervision of the National Lotteries Board and the Development Lotteries Board. The decision is still in the pipelines with the President waiting to meet and greet the representatives of the Lottery Marketing Representatives Association and the State Minister of Finance, Lakshaman Yapa Abeywardena.
The matter is very timely – the lotteries market has dwindled throughout the country with the ticket agents and sellers walking out of their day jobs in protest of the government's decision to increase the price of a lottery ticket without increasing the commission percentage received by a seller or an agent.
This decision resulted in the crash of the lottery market throughout the island with the beginning of New Year and continued for a little over a week with no proper results. Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake was audacious enough to threaten the agents saying that their jobs can be replaced if they continue to protest – a really bad idea on his behalf.
This protests and the nationwide demonstrations attracted the attention of the President who later on promised to give them an audience to discuss the matters, causing the protest to end.
That was two weeks ago and the government is yet to provide a solution to the matter.
The National Lotteries Board and Development Lotteries Board are currently under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance and its Minister Ravi Karunanayake. Therefore, the solution should naturally come from the necessary respective authorities and not the President. Handing over the supervision of the two Boards to the President is nothing but a ball pass, very much like the blame that is passed around when the government fails at doing something – either they blame it on the people or they blame it on the members of the previous government.
The President has enough to do as it is and handing over the supervision of these two crucial Boards would be impractical on a major scale. It is a solution that would not solve the problem but would only create more complications in an already complicated system.
The best the President should do is that he should intervene until his responsibilities come to a limit – specifically, advising the Minister of Finance and his ministry to take the necessary action to increase the commission of the lottery ticket agents and salesmen – a simple task, the Finance Minister is clearly not willing to take for some reason. Other than that, the President should stay away from 'collecting' responsibilities as a hobby.
Being responsible is a powerful thing. But being too responsible can lead to obvious irresponsible behaviour. This is a burden. And the President should keep away from doing so if he values his position as the top leader of the country. An irresponsible leader is the last thing this country needs right now.
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