CHOGM Balance Sheet

By Bandu de Silva -November 30, 2013 |

Bandu De Silva

One might say it is too early to draw up the balance sheet of the CHOGMheld in Colombo between 15^th and 17^th November 2013 and other events which were associated with it which the Government of Sri Lanka claimed were all part of the CHOGM programmme. This is because the results of some of the extraneous events like Commonwealth Investors’ [Business] Forum might take time to gestate and produce results. Many wheels would have to turn before the Investment Forum could bring results. What would have happened at the Forum is mere exploratory talk as usual with such events. One is familiar with BOI’s past claims and performance. If what was said by it all true this country would now be flooded with foreign investments. For example, how many investors’ forums have we had with the major investor country Japan in Asia but not a single full scale investment is yet to materialize from that country.

It is then just as well that with available information that one tries to draw up at least a tentative balance -sheet to see if the grandiose spectacle for whose success the government placed all its aces in recent times was not what our small time businessman would call “Jaan bera-gattha” or, on the contrary,  “Athatath Paadu-una” affair, but one with rewarding results as the government might wont to present it. As some say, it has been very rewarding to a few. Let’s not talk about that here. For the risk taking business community, big or small ones, such risk-taking experiences are not unusual. They consider the risks are worth taking, “Giyoth Satha pahay: Aavoth JP Pattamay”, as our erudite scholar Late Prof G.P Malalasekera often repeated. In this case, of course, the ‘going” (giyoth) stakes were not “satha-paha” for the postage -stamp but billions of Rupees, enough to build two more sea ports or such big ventures, not forgetting the closed-down over hundreds of schools for lack of funds to maintain them; and “coming” (Avoth) is the far more prestigious Chair of CHOGM for two years. Cannot one see the accolades coming from the provincial politicos with their “maharajaneni” posters and full page newspaper advertisements, of course, done with tongue in cheek, hoping for a betterpattama for them next time, like a promotion to central politics with a deputy Ministerial post at least, to start with. Such is the greed for power and climbing in the country.  Remember the Sinhalese adage “Vaedi Aacharaya Hora”. That helps to understand the poster people today with their own picture (stamp size) down below that of the larger portraiture of the President leaving much climbing space in the means while, both literary and metopherically speaking.

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