SECURITY FIRST!  Social and print media journalists who ‘live to be liked’ often pen their thoughts to appease the majority – usually under the guise of being champions of democracy. And while these scribes play to the gallery with monotonous regularity, they seem to be missing the wood for the trees.

Consider this: Sri Lanka’s Western model of democracy has produced a litany of mishaps because the people – a majority, as democracy dictates – have continued to cast their votes for politicians who are unfit to serve them; be it because they’re barely educated, utterly corrupt or simply useless!

Sri Lanka’s list of heads of state since independence reads like a chapter from a funeral service. The ministerial list is even worse and fit only for a place we call hell. All of this has come about because of the ‘democratic franchise’ that we, the people, exercise – with so much pride.

Meanwhile, the radicals with blood on their hands (from the past – and nearly replicated in more recent times) are out there preaching like the politicians they say they want to replace – and to hell with education, calibre and all that jazz!

So when the head of state takes a tough stand on what he probably views as a violent protest in the making, the pseudo journos among us come out in their dozens – all guns blazing, so to say – in protest at proactive measures to ensure public safety rather than streets full of young and not so young roamers making a nuisance of themselves – and more often than not, threatening violence.

Does it make sense to ‘entertain’ these misfits and their supporters (be they here in Sri Lanka or living in the lap of luxury on foreign soil), and risk the progress that has been made on many fronts since April last year?

We don’t think so.

– Editor-in-Chief