World needs honest leaders: Ex-south African MP

WE NEED INTELLECTUAL GIANTS

The world today needs honest leaders whom people could look up to as guiding lights at a time like this where it is burdened with small minded and self interested leadership, Former South African MP and Acting Secretary General Liberal International Gordeon Mackay said yesterday.

Mr. Mackay said this while delivering the eighteenth Dudley Senanayake memorial lecture organized by the Dudley Senanayake Foundation and Friedrich Naumann Shiftung last evening. “Sadly at a time we need intellectual giants we are burdened with small minded and self interested leadership. Reinvention of liberalism is possible. there are honest leaders who we could look up to as guiding lights. Late Sri Lankan Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake is one of them,“Mr. Mackay said. “When it comes to global security, the alliance of liberal democratic states was used to destabilize Middle East and North African Regime since 9/11. Migration poses political and social challenges and its stretching Europe’s human rights to almost breaking point. Even in most liberal states anti immigration parties had taken some form of elected office and work from inside the system to turn indigenous citizens against migrant new comers. Identify politics where one group strives to use politics for its interests also create issues. Instead of generating useful compromises, the debate becomes outraged. Identity politics threaten individual liberty. Identity politics poses a real threat; it fragments common interests and results in polarization in our societies. This polarization paralyzes governments and undermine democracy,” he added.

Chairman Dudley Senanayake Foundation Minister D. M. Swaminathan said late Prime Minister Senanayake was a lovable leader who even wanted to leave politics as a result of a rift with his own father Late Prime Minister D. S Senanayake. “the late Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake went against his own father’s decision to back the British during world war 2 questioning as to why should Sri Lanka support an army which is occupying its lands and also why would Sri Lanka get involved in the war. He was to leave politics but changed his mind following his father’s advice that he had a bright future. this was the kind of principle which Dudley Senanayake stood for,” Mr. Swaminathan said. He said Mr. senanayake was a simple man who loved to drive his vehicle by himself.” He drove his vehicle to Nuwara Eliya once and the engine broke down. His security personnel had to come to his rescue ,” Mr. Swamnathan said.