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Those who lost must realize why they lost and act accordingly, whilst the victorious must be humble and act in terms of the eight fold path with wisdom, kindness and with commitment and a vision. Those who know how to respond to both success and failure will be able to do much in life for the common good of all. Even if they go wrong they will be open to correction. When we know that there are people who do not like us or if we have enemies, we must act with kindness and mercy to have the enmity removed. Even those who have lost must cultivate similar feelings with wisdom. We need to realise that in victory or in defeat we will have enemies.

To develop ourselves and to achieve our aspirations, we need to realise our own weaknesses and inhibitions. Those who are weak must take just and reasonable decisions and seek good advice. Have a circle of good friends, although it may be difficult to find them. But we have the teachings of the Lord Buddha to guide us in our correct selection.

Though we have various religious labels, we need to ask ourselves whether we are only talking about or acting on our religions convictions. If we live truly and speak truly, we could work things out through dialogue with others.

We need to listen to dissenting views. Families or individuals, whether powerful or weak, rich or poor, need to follow this advice. If we don’t love ourselves we cannot love others. We need to reject anger or ill will and spread kindness. We must maintain a balance and be moderate without causing anger and ill will among others. We must examine our past and realise where we have gone wrong, realise our mistakes and have them corrected, learn from our mistakes, and turn these into positive attitudes while taking measures to make ourselves useful to our family, our village and our country. This is my 2017 advice to people of all faiths. Let us spend at least one or two hours reflecting on our weaknesses in the past to put a good foundation to live happily in the future.

I wish to propose the following guidelines for the development of the country:

• Essential items which are not produced locally must be made available to people without import duty.
• Luxury items should be taxed heavily.
• People should be encouraged to buy local products as they do in most countries.
• Domestic industries should be encouraged. We must recognise the role of women and have deep respect for mothers.
• The import of foreign garments should be stopped.
• We must also stop the import of footwear, perfumes, and alcohol.
• Some imported toys lead our children astray. This also must be stopped.
• If alcohol is required for tourists we could import it for them. But alcohol outlets and alcohol should be banned at other centres.
• Without the permission of the Tourist Board, accommodation should not be provided for tourists in other places.
• Government approval should be made necessary for places providing accommodation overnight. All other centres should be closed down within 24 hours because even school children are abused in unauthorised tourist lodges.
• We must stop the killing of cattle. We could allow the import of meat products for hotels and foreigners. Import of fish products and tinned fish should be banned.
• In foreign countries, we should have only low cost consulates and not expensive embassies or high commissions.
• Gold and money should be allowed to be deposited at the Central Bank, and attractive interest should be paid with a daily or weekly lottery scheme to encourage deposits. This way the wealth could be used for public enterprises.
• We help in the eradication of both kidney and heart diseases. We have identified areas where soil and water have been affected. The food habits and condition of water are contributing to these epidemics. We are able to provide solutions.  We can eradicate these in couple of years. Those who are affected can call us personally. We can help them individually. If the government or public require our help we can provide relief.
• Instead of providing food in hospitals, if a payment of Rs. 300 a day could be made to warded patients, we could save on the labour and government expenditure and avoid lot of waste.
• “Janasaviya’ is one of our concepts. Today it is ‘Samurdhi’. If the fallow paddy fields could be allocated to Samurdhi people, the armed services and the civil defence units, the country would benefit. If we could spread the planting of paddy varieties such as Svangjaatha, Suvandel, Heenati there would be a good market abroad. This could earn us valuable foreign exchange
• Recently 60 forty foot containers of spoilt tea were released to us for making natural fertilizer. That is the state of the tea industry. If we could give a grant to tea factories to produce quality teas as was done earlier, tea industry could be saved.
• All those distilling illicit liquor or having it sold should be sentenced to life in jail and they must be told to do cultivation.
• The cultivation of paddy should be undertaken by the State as is done in Japan, so that at least a part of our food problem could be solved.
• Like in Singapore, our holidays should be limited to seven days. Even the Lottery industry could be run as is done in Singapore. Private lotteries could also be organised this way.
• We cannot totally stop consumption of alcohol and gambling systems. But we need to control them as done in other countries.
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