Asian Tribune
Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa-most popular politician in opinion poll
Tue, 2010-10-05 03:14 — editor
By Santhush Fernando in Colombo
Colombo, 05 October, (Asiantribune.com):
Prof. Dammika Ganganath Dissanayake
Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa-most popular politician finds out an opinion poll titled "Preferences of modern youth generation" conducted by a top Sri Lankan university don among varsity students. The survey had been conducted by former Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC) chairman and a senior lecturer at the Sri Jayawardenapura University, Prof. Dammika Ganganath Dissanayake, among Sri Jayawardanapura University fresher’s during the first two weeks of admission.
Sarath Fonseka at the bottom with 0.6% popularity
Objective was to ascertain the likes and dislikes, level of appreciation in the spheres of arts, media, and politics of youth and their future ambitions. The questionnaire had been given without any prior notice, while only the interviewee’s gender and residence were recorded.
The results of the poll are as follows.
Most popular politicians-
President Mahinda Rajapaksa - 31.73 %
Dayasiri Jayasekera- 25.15 %
Wimal Weerawansa- 17.36 %
Mervyn Silva- 7.18 %
Sajith Premadasa- 5.39 %
Late Jeyaraj Fernandopulle- 4.79 %
Namal Rajapaksa & Ranil Wickremesinghe- 2.39 %
Maithreepala Sirisena- 1.79 %
S W R D Bandaranaike, Nishantha Muthuhettigama & Duminda Silva- (each polled) 1.2 %
Sarath Fonseka- 0.6 %
Favourite newspaper item- Horoscopes (58.27 %)
Favourite novel- ‘Bonda meedum’ by Sujeewa Prasannaarachchi
Recent-most read novel- Yugaanthaya
Favourite attire- Denim trouser and shirt
Favourite politician- President Mahinda Rajapaksa (31.73 % )
Favourite sportsman- Kumar Sangakkara
Favourite actor- Sanath Gunathilake
Favourite singer- Amarasiri Peiris
Favourite female singer- Nanda Malini
Prpf. Dissanayaka commenting on the results, as reported in last Sunday's
Rivira newspaper had this to say.
“A person who sees these results might be frustrated that our present youth generation is only left with denim jeans, Hindi films, and many other unwanted things. But what one must do is not criticize the reality but to take remedial action if our youth is ambitionless,”
“We selected university students- a group in our society thought to be intellectual and intelligent What are the preferences of those who are unable to enter university?” queried Dissamayake.
“The main reason for this is that students are restricted to books within our present school education system. If we speak to parents we can clearly see that students don’t have time to read a novel, watch a stage play, to dance or perform, to sing a song and therefore lack ability to innovate and do creative things. So the school curricula must be formulated in a manner so that there will be room to appreciate arts, literature, media etc. On the other hand they must be encouraged to participate in these more and more," he opined.
“Furthermore even today there’s a significant population living thanks to the Samurdhi (social subsidy) and welfare handouts. This is still a poor country. So where the works of arts are ‘sold’ beyond the buying power of the general public, they naturally become distanced from arts. This gives rise to vanity literature. There’s no point in taking works of literature in processions,”
“Education must be modernized so as to make our children face new challenges, do new things, make arts meaningful, and face the modern world. If this is the level of appreciation of arts among those who learn Sinhala music, dancing, media and arts, I shiver to think what the levels of appreciation among science, maths or management faculty students would be,”
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