The Redundancy Of “Naming Names”

By Emil van der Poorten –August 21, 2016

Emil van der Poorten

I have been, probably justifiably, taken to task for not specifying the names of those I’ve made thinly-veiled reference to in a recent column.

Unfortunately, for practical reasons driven by journalistic practice in the country, I do not find it possible to deviate from that practice.

As one who is compelled, from time to time, to deal with the permanently nose-to-tail nature of Kandy traffic, I continue to take strong exception to being poisoned by the result of the never-ending traffic jams that are a feature of this metropolis.

We have had a couple of ludicrous suggestions from a man who, obviously, if the current situation is to be understood, has the power, to the extent that human beings can wield such authority, to at least alleviate this state of affairs and CHOOSES NOT TO DO SO.

It is one of the less well-kept secrets of the hill country that a man who, literally, bought two elections to continue as the custodian of the most sacred of Buddhist relics simply calls the shots in this regard. His reason for ensuring the (air-conditioned) comfort of his official residence is that he doesn’t want the peace and quiet of that abode to be disturbed by the peregrinations of the hoi-polloi compelled to live in Kandy and to travel back and forth to a UN-declared Heritage City and Sri Lanka’s acknowledged hill capital. Up to the time that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam launched their very ineffective attempt to blast the Dalada Maligawa, traffic moved freely up and down what was then Malabar Street without let or hindrance.

Since the advent of the monumental corruption of the Rajapaksa regime (MR1) when “anything went” as long as you were prepared to pay obeisance, literally and metaphorically, at the feet of our plump potentate from the South, it suddenly became almost a capital offence to object to this new routing of traffic.

About six years ago, the last time Kandy’s air pollution index was checked, it was determined to be something like four times as high as Colombo’s. It is anybody’s guess as to what a similar comparison would yield today.

What is the reason for this state of affairs? ONE man deems it his privilege to live in quiet, air-conditioned comfort which hardly fits into the whole business of example in the matter of Buddhist practice.

Bad enough? Think the next step. The Minister deliberately involving himself, on more than one occasion with this controversy comes up with “solutions” that would place the term “ludicrous” up there with the efforts of his hairdresser to restore this particular Minister to the time of his (misbegotten) youth.

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