The only strong commitment he made in this speech: I WILL NOT RESIGN. EVEN IF THE COUNTRY BURNS TO THE GROUND. Mark my words: send this man home now, or Rajapakses will return. #GoHomeGota#SriLanka
And if you don’t want another one like him, vote to abolish the presidency NOW. Change parliamentary standing orders if necessary. But do it now.
Every president, prime minister, party or politician in #SriLanka who promised to abolish the presidency over the past 30 years has broken that promise.
MPs that get in bed with this man (or any man with this power) is taking a grave risk, both for the country and for their own political careers.
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"Is #GotaGoGama and the violence of the 9th evening orchestrated by left-wing parties?" -- A THREAD.
Those who know me, will identify me as historically right-of-center, pro-west, pro-free-enterprise and generally anti-communist. #SriLanka 1/
I am a vice president and shareholder of a global tech company (previously VP of a fortune 100 corporation) and a graduate of Moratuwa University, then heavily opposed to IUSF. Read these comments through that lens. 2/
I (and many other tech company leaders) joined the protests to help create an environment in #SriLanka that can retain our best minds (who are now leaving), without whom I have no job. 3/
We got to #GotaGoGama around 2.30pm yesterday. By then the lawyers had done their job. We were allowed to move through two heavily armed lines unhindered. Was unable to livestream due to bandwidth issues in the area.
Crowds were thin at first, but soon the cavalry arrived. The Cardinal spoke from the barrier soon after.
GGG began to receive reports of the Temple Trees crowd’s buses being attacked around 4pm. Gladly the violence did not reach GGG. Only as we went home in the night did we see the full extent of the carnage.
"Won't general strikes make it even harder for people? shouldn't we be working more, not less?" A thread. When those in power absolutely refuse to listen to all other appeals, and there is no election on the horizon, a general strike is how a population votes. #SriLanka
The source of a nation's wealth are the people who live and work there, not the elites, who usually "manage", "invest" or "provide vision". Once in a generation, the elites forget this fact and start to think they're the source of wealth, and that regular people are stupid.
They start dealing directly with those in power, trading money for favours that benefit them directly, at the expense of the population. They bypass democracy. Eventually, the population suffers, and concomitantly, the economy suffers.
In my field, there is a concept called "agile", which basically says: "don't plan or attempt grand projects; instead break them down into small goals; focus all energy on achieving the first goal before going to the second". Something, perhaps, to be applied to #ProtestLK
Economic recovery plans, software systems, education -- all those are necessary future steps. However, none of that matters if we don't have a functioning cabinet right now. For that, people (and opposition) are calling for #GoHomeRajapaksas.
For *that*, we need to pressure MPs to abolish the executive presidency (because impeachment will fail). And for that, last month is proof that the best strategy is massive protest. Protests achieved in weeks, what "plans" couldn't achieve for decades in #SriLanka
A superstitious man might say that the curse that befell #SriLanka started with the end of the Civil War: rather than reconciliation and equal rights, we chose to signal minorities to "know their place"; 1/6
Rather than demilitarizing at the end of the war and investing in economic growth, we chose to find yet another minority to demonize; 2/6
We mistook road-building for "development", not realizing that without factories and power stations to run them, there won't be money to buy fuel to drive on said roads; 3/6
A thread on the most amazing hack I have ever heard of. This exploit hacked an iPhone by just sending an image to it (recipient doesn't even need to open it).
1. iMessage has a feature to send and receive GIFs...