A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, June 12, 2017
Horse Trading While Sri Lankans Are Drowning
The contents of the middle pages – reputed for balanced commentary – of
an English-language Sunday newspaper contrasted very starkly with a
piece on the travails of those who were inundated by flood-waters in
many parts of the country on the very next page. Both pieces were
authored by respected journalists who have a reputation for accuracy and
objectivity, eschewing bombast.
The
centre pages contained a description of the sniveling to and fro-ing of
political “brokers” in the current coalition trying to hold together an
agglomeration of discredited politicians who have displayed a penchant
for doing little other than promoting their own well-being.
The
work of one Wickremesinghe confidante in particular in running back and
forth trying to put out this fire here and that fire there, can only
provide amusement to someone with a penchant for gallows humour. The
fact that Kabir Hashim –
one of the few UNPers who has hitherto displayed at least a smidgen of
principle – ended up with the short end of the stick in the matter of
departments under his Ministry being taken away and delivered as some
sort of peace offering to another high-profile Minister affected by the
shuffle did not surprise me. Mr. Hashim stands to lose several pivotal
departments in his Ministry to a man whose connections to the head
honcho of the previous regime came to the fore again when our
wannabe-potentate was the first (and only?) prominent politician to
commiserate with the high-profile Cabinet Minister rumoured to be in
line for what amounted to a demotion of sorts. The scurrying back and forth of Hashim (the biter who got bit!) and Malik Samarawickrama has
to be viewed against the backdrop of a nation reeling under the
devastation of a flood of historic proportions. It epitomizes the “Nero
fiddling while Rome burns” predilections of this government. Worse yet,
it provides proof, if proof be needed, that we are governed by a group
of self-seeking and unprincipled individuals to whom personal
aggrandizement takes precedence over attending to a national calamity.
How else can the conduct of our ruling politicians be described against the backdrop of current events?
The
other column in the same newspaper provides a harrowing picture of what
is happening in some of the areas devastated by floods and landslides.
It
is cause for some amusement (again invoking gallows humour!) that some
of the key players, or those who should have been, were out of the
country and displayed no great urgency in the matter of returning to
their devastated home turf. That
our Prime Minister should be in the Excited States of Amnesia accessing
private medical opinions not available to the rest of us, the great
unwashed of this country, epitomizes the status quo in Sri Lanka. It did
provoke a wry grin in one who, not so long ago, underwent the travails
of treatment in a Teaching Hospital in this country, putting him at
death’s door for almost a week because a consultant chose to “outsource”
a procedure to a less experienced doctor who proceeded to make a
“non-surgical procedure” into a life-threatening situation!
Let me, at this point, disassociate myself from any suggestion that I am one of the lynch mob howling for the blood of Anura Priyadarshana Yapa. To
do so would be to simply find a (very eligible) scapegoat for the sins
of an entire government (and its predecessors). No, that would be only
too simple and would beg the real issue: a government (and opposition)
totally lacking in principle, morality and ethics. I will not hesitate
to repeat, ad nauseam if necessary, the need to bring those three
elements into this discussion once again because, without their practice
no democratic government can fulfill what those who elected it expect
of them.