Sri Lanka should import proven leadership talent: business executive

Nov 03, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka should consider importing people with proven track records to run government as native leaders have consistently failed to deliver and develop the country after independence from Britain, a senior private sector executive has said. "When a company fails and has continuous losses, what do you do? The management just won't shrug it off," Rienzie T Wijetilleke, chairman of privately owned listed bank, Hatton National Bank told senior corporate leaders at the LBR-LBO CEO Forum.

"What we say is, we have failed and get someone on contract from outside."

Wijetilleke said he even suggested getting Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore or Nelson Mandela from South Africa and giving them the power to govern the country for 10 years with parliamentary sovereignty.

Sri Lanka was a stable country, ahead of most of Asia, when it got independence from Britain in 1948.

But today it is lagging behind other nations, though it has made some progress after the economy was re-opened in 1977.

Sri Lanka's slide started in 1950 with the establishment of a money printing Central Bank in 1950 by then finance minister J R Jayewardene after abolishing a currency board arrangement that had kept the rupee fixed and inflation tied to that of Brita