Hakeem asks Prez to filter out Rajapaksas and safeguard national interest

SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem, in Parliament yesterday, called on President Ranil Wickremesinghe to ensure that national interest took precedence over the interests of the Rajapaksa family.

Participating in the debate on the interim Budget proposals, presented to the House by President Wickremesinghe, the SLMC leader said that the President had shown an interest in using cricketing idioms to explain the predicament in the country and the latter’s reactions to the developments of the political process.

Hakeem said: “The President recently identified himself as the Night Watchman. As we all know, a night watchman is the name given to a player sent to the ground before the night fall by the batting side. That player is mostly selected from the lower positions of the batting order and the intention of sending him to the wicket is to save other batsmen from losing their wickets in the same evening. The job of night watchman is to stay at the wicket till the following morning. There are occasions when the night watchman performs so well that he may go for even a century. I remember our national team player of the past years, Lalith Kaluperuma, did so. Kaluperuma was an off-spinner and he was often sent to the ground to bat as the night watchman. I remember occasions where Kaluperuma performed so well that he scored centuries. In the same way it seems that our President, too, is determined to perform well and is trying to go for a century as it were.

“We have IPL matches where the cricketers play for the franchises. Playing for a franchise is different from playing for the national interests. President Wickremesinghe is now playing for the Rajapaksa franchise. We expect him to play for the country and perform well rather than for the ensuring interests of the Rajapaksa family,” Hakim said.