Columns

Whenever a pep-pill is needed to invigorate you and clear the mental cobwebs for the day ahead there is nothing like reading all the news that’s fit to thrill from our island paradise. That is even better than following the American pantomime performed by the leader of the sole superpower, the irrepressible Donald J. Trump doing a nuclear dance with communist comedian Kim Jong-un.

It is far better to stick to our own for where else would you find such a panoply of humourists, or simply put, jokers, who make a right royal mess of the country as though the trail of broken promises strewn across our highways is not sufficient to keep the public bemused and troubled.

The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) sticking to their plans to block roads leading to Colombo city on Friday. Pic by Amila Gamage

Minutes before I sat down to write this column I saw a news report that members of an organisation which calls itself the GMOA but which is better known to the Sri Lankan public by far less respectable and more appropriate sobriquets, will surround the city of Colombo. It warned the public to be ready to be “inconvenienced.” How very thoughtful of the blighters.

The report said that GMOA Assistant Secretary Dr. Naveen De Zoysa “warned the government to brace itself for a backlash as the whole of Colombo would be surrounded by members of the GMOA and many anti-SAITM forces on Friday (15), thus causing the authorities much inconvenience if they did not solve the issue before that.

He advised the general public to get ready to be inconvenienced as a result or to avoid entering Colombo during the time the trade union action would take place” Now that our only field marshal is very much in the news, the GMOA’s military-like manoeuvre reminds one of Field Marshal Montgomery’s strategy to defeat the great German General Erwin Rommel at El Alamein during World War 11.

Of course Bernard Montgomery had not only 1,000 tanks and another 1,000 artillery pieces but also air power to support him on the ground, thus overwhelming Rommel with numbers. The GMOA’s ‘military’ masterminds preparing to lay siege to the capital must rely on a far smaller and more vulnerable armoured corps.

They apparently were planning to block roads leading to the heart of the city with their duty-free vehicles (mainly Japanese and Korean tin cans one suspects compared to the military might available to Montgomery and Rommel) obtained at great expense to the State and for more humanitarian purposes than crippling the city and inconveniencing the public.

What is so disgusting is that a set of persons who educated themselves utilising an educational system maintained with public funds, is prepared to harass the public and deprive people of medical treatment for which they are paid by the State to provide, and behaving like common or garden thugs instead of with the dignity that should come with the profession.

That noble profession for which public funds are expended annually has been increasingly perverted to the point of moral depravity by modern-day trade union leaders that have abandoned all ethical codes adopted since the time of Hippocrates only to fall at the feet of Mammon.

All the moralising that the GMOA leadership and its political supporters engage in is pure hogwash. The assault on free education that it claims to fight against is no more than sloganising. All these regular strikes-and some going on outside Colombo at the time of writing – amounts to the fear of there being more medical professionals in the field offering challenges and competition to those now raking in fees from private practice which they want to continue to monopolise.

This has little to do with professional ethics or professional qualifications. If the GMOA is a legitimate body safeguarding not only professional interests but also moral standards, why is it turning a blind eye to the unprofessional conduct of doctors who are doubtless members of its organisation?

Just the other day a senior doctor attached the Prison Hospital was accused of having admitted to the hospital two individuals who had been sentenced by the courts only hours before. That this woman doctor had gone out of her way to have admitted them to hospital even before the usual procedures had been completed was reported in the media quoting Deputy Minister Ranjan Ramanayake who urged that action be taken against such ‘witch’ doctors.

If there was a breach of procedure and this woman doctor had violated normal procedures, it was surely the duty of the GMOA to have inquired from the doctor concerned whether she had exceeded her mandate and warned her if she had, for bringing the profession into disrepute.

If she had already been transferred out earlier this year, as the deputy minister claimed what on earth was she still doing working at the Prison Hospital unless she has a penchant for pitying the inmates? And what were the health authorities doing without enforcing that transfer, if Ramanayake is correct.

But instead of trying to safeguard the ethics of the profession and maintain its reputation, the GMOA is more concerned with taking to the streets and inconveniencing the public as it readily concedes will happen when it blocks the city. It is fast becoming a habit in this country that politicians or influential individuals when remanded or convicted go from the courts to hospital as though the courts of law and hospitals are linked by some peculiar kind of umbilical cord.

How is it that doctors are permitted to act with such incredible speed on such occasions but work at snail’s pace when genuine patients seek treatment at State medical institutions? Why is nothing being done by the government to stop such unseemly practices? Is it because politicians fear that some day they too may need to resort to such short cuts to comfort when their turn comes along?

If this government which speaks in such high moral tones cannot act to curb such crass practices, it is time that a public and especially patients who are deprived of needy treatment and are ill-treated whenever these so called doctors take to the streets, decide that enough is enough and deal with the GMOA with appropriate and proportionate retaliation.

It was not too long ago that some fuel filling stations refused to provide services to striking doctors. If all sectors providing similar services deny serving recalcitrant doctors until they start behaving like civilised professionals and not publicity seeking and money grabbing hoodlums the sooner they will learn that they cannot dictate terms often on matters that do not directly concern them.

What actually happened on this Black Friday I cannot, of course, say. But if these despicable doctors behaved with little or no concern for the public as they have done before then they deserve more than mere condemnation. Unfortunately this government is so brittle and some of its leading lights possibly have connections with some medicine men and women, that little is done to clamp down on them.

One is reminded of the swift and meaningful action taken by President J.R. Jayewardene when doctors of the day threatened his government with trade union action. The previous night ‘JR’ invoked the Public Security Act and declared the provision of medical facilities an essential service. The Act provided for the confiscation of the private property if necessary, of those who violated the law. That stopped the doctors in their tracks. They did not want to lose their assets.

Unfortunately loud-mouthed politicians and equally loud-mouthed and rather empty headed doctors work in tandem in a disgraceful display of political thuggery. None of them would have dared challenge JR had he been holding the reins of power. Consider politicians such as Udaya Gammanpila who seem to have nothing to do but hold news conferences on every conceivable subject. Last week he made the strange claim that “Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka has put the lives of over 300,000 soldiers in danger by stating that he will provide evidence against military personnel who committed war crimes during the war,” one website reported.

“Speaking to the media at a press briefing today, MP Gammanpila stated that the only way to save the lives of the soldiers is to diagnose the field marshal as a mental patient”, the website added. How the lives of “over 300,000” could be endangered is not only a mathematical inexactitude but downright silly unless Gammanpila is conceding that the entire armed forces have in fact committed war crimes, which I do not think is what Sarath Fonseka actually said or anybody believes.

It is this kind of hyperbolic nonsense that those like Gammanpila are capable of and, in this case, indirectly condemns all soldiers who they repeatedly glorify. In these circumstances some might well ask who should actually be certified for mental disequilibrium not “diagnosed” as Gammanpila reportedly said, unless this loquacious politician can call on a GMOA doctor to do so.

It is this sort of political jocularity that makes one’s day. Last Sunday, for instance, this newspaper wrote that the education minister who apparently prefers the multi-barrelled name of Akila Viraj Kariyawasam, carried hilarious instances of employment provided by him to party or personal supporters.

In one instance a driver has been appointed to a school in a place called Naula in the Matale district. The problem is that the driver has nothing to drive except perhaps the headmaster crazy. The school has no vehicle. Then again he is said to have appointed two cooks to a school in the Dambulla district. Now that school has two many cooks with nothing to cook. It has no kitchen. Perhaps the minister will soon deploy them to cook somebody else’s goose.

Since his UNP leader not so long ago promised a million jobs, this is probably the education minister’s contribution to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s worthy cause of solving the unemployment problem. Such economic whizz kids are surely necessary. Now the education minister having educated himself on problem solving can proudly turn to his leader and say “Hail Ranil, I come bearing thee worthy news”.