Now all eyes will be on the equally disgraced and implicated John Keells Chairman Susantha Ratnayake. His shareholders must sustain pressure on him to resign forthwith.

By forcing him to leave, at least belatedly, JKH would begin to repair the massive damage to its reputation resulting from the damning Supreme Court judgement.

And after all this, JKH can never again take the moral high ground and preach to others on good governance, can they? Talk about corporate fat cats in glass houses…

Like millions of other Sri Lankans, I too was under the impression that JKH was a good corporate citizen that not only returned dividends to its shareholders, generated lots of employment and paid its taxes to the state, but also engaged in some commendable
CSR. All this is true, but the company’s underhand, dirty deals – now
established beyond any doubt by the highest court of the land – detract very seriously from its brand and reputation. And a good name is as important, if not more valuable, to a company than all other bottomlines combined. Today, JKH stands naked and exposed, and they have only their chairman to blame.

JKH as a conglomerate is a leading advertiser in the print and broadcast media. This might explain, at least in part, why many sections of our mainstream media have been completely silent or surprisingly easy-going on the JKH’s proven guilt in the LMSL case, while harping on the role of the public official who has also been seriously implicated. The business media’s silence on JKH role is deafening as it is depressing — as far as I could make out, only LBR and Financial Times on Sunday have covered and commented on this aspect with any degree of consistency. We must commend this editorial independence at a time when advertising clout and PR agencies determine so much of what appears in the mainstream media — or is blocked out.

It augurs well for our media that at least there are a few courageous journalists and editors who have the guts not to bow down to advertiser pressure — and potential loss of custom from JKH — in demanding that bluechip companies practise what they preach in terms of good governance.

We have almost given up on our political parties to govern the country in the best interests of voters and all citizens. We were hopeful that professionals entering politics might clean up the mess, but instead most who did enter have chosen to help themselves and join the gravy train. Until now, we had a faint hope that the corporate sector would at least set an example, but with crony capitalism of the JKH style, that too is also dashed….

Do what is right………
If the order of the day is for you to act. Then, go ahead put your pen to paper.

Do not accumilate lame ducks like what Ranil did. People have fogotton how he played for time in many instances.
Ranil did not have a backbone but I believe you have.

Drop that live and let live policy.
If you have to rule by Presidential decree, do so.
But, first you need to Act.
We need to clean up and remove many stigmas that currently plague our society.