Editorial

Either road users do not bother to read news alerts or they just do not care – or both. Despite early warnings of the Avurudhu season being the most dangerous for road accidents, the past week saw a spike recorded with an astounding 59 deaths between April 12 and 16 – an all-time high for this period.

There were 450 serious accidents reported to the Police and countless numbers went unreported. Most of these involved motorcyclists. Buses and tuk-tuks came not far behind. Speeding, reckless driving and drunk driving were the root causes. These Police statistics do not give the near-misses.

While the Police trot out these figures, it is the Police that stand accused of being largely responsible for the mayhem caused by irresponsible driving of the burgeoning vehicular presence on the streets. It is an open secret that errant road users feel they can get away by oiling the traffic policeman’s palm. Big-time private bus operators are known to have separate desks to deal with police stations along the highways they ply; and state run CTB drivers who were once the example of good driving now have to compete with private buses for passengers. Both of them step on their air horns and accelerators simultaneously in a race to the next halt – to hell with bus lanes and those who get in the way.

The Automobile Association blames the Police, though not entirely, for the increase in the number of road accidents. Lack of sleep of long distance drivers is another factor. They not only cause harm to themselves but also to oncoming vehicles and innocent pedestrians. But who’s to bell the cat? Expecting the Police to instill discipline on the road is expecting too much. Is it the Government? But who else?

New look Commonwealth

The Commonwealth Heads of Government summit (CHOGM) concluded this week in London with numerous bombastic Declarations and Principles, but as we said last week, these are only aimed at being used selectively by the ‘big boys’ of the 53 member-nation club to punish the smaller states, which are still meant to remain vassal states.

Take the hypocrisy of permitting a demonstration of a pro-terrorist group, waving the flag of a banned terrorist organisation (LTTE) on the streets of London while the Joint Declaration issued on Friday after CHOGM calls to combat ‘Serious and Transnational Organised Crime (terrorist financing) and ‘Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism’. However, with Britain returning to the Commonwealth fold post Brexit, let us hope for a new look Commonwealth in the years ahead.

Hell on earth for Syria’s people

What kind of world order is this, one may justifiably ask if three countries want to showcase their military arsenal by firing rockets into a sovereign country from afar without any by-your-leaves, not least from the organisation that is expected to maintain world peace — the United Nations.

The loose cannon of the US, Britain and France pounding Syria earlier this week has had more detractors than supporters, not just around the world but within their own countries. The ostensible reason being to destroy the chemical weapons the Government in Damascus is accused of using on its own civilians in a bid to save the country from total disintegration and capitulation to pro-Western forces in a civil war. This is not the first time Syria has been so accused – in 2013, the US made similar charges but stopped short of taking unilateral action.

Why the unholy trinity are so concerned about human rights in Syria is patently clear. It is not for holistic reasons, but raw geo-politics coupled with desperate efforts to shore up the plummeting domestic approval ratings of the three leaders.

Syria has been in the throes of an insurgency fuelled by the West for several years now. Its cities have been reduced to rubble, its people either refugees abroad or internally displaced. This is a sectarian conflict with the West’s arch enemies – Iran and Russia backing the Damascus Government, which claims it is on the verge of defeating the pro-West rebels.

Likewise, the US President in particular is domestically feeling the heat from ongoing investigations, and external aggression is a sure fix formula to get out of jail with your own voters in Western democracies. Successive US Presidents have gone to war in countries such as the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq over the years for this reason.

Sri Lanka knows better than most, how these same three countries tried to prevent the local Armed Forces from defeating terrorism once and for all because it did not comply with their agenda. No Tomahawk missiles could be fired here, but their Foreign Ministers and Ambassadors shedding crocodile tears were asked to intervene and put a stop to the fighting. And this, while these countries were bombing the daylights out of Afghanistan, Iraq and other nations, saying they were combating ‘terrorism’. If they were listened to, Sri Lanka would still be facing the scourge of terrorism.

Like Iraq, Syria is an ancient cultural seat of civilisation. Syria has cultured people. Damascus is the oldest living capital in the world. The Umayyad mosque in old Damascus is one of the oldest and considered by many Muslims to be the fourth holiest place in Islam. Bombs are exploded right around it. In Washington recently, the Saudi Crown Prince conceded that it was the US that wanted his country promote Wahhabism (the literal interpretation of Islam) to counter Communism though it has caused a deep sectarian rift in the Islamic world as a result.

Syria is not a democratic country. It is run by the military. But that is no excuse to bomb it to smithereens merely because it is not aligned to the West, does not purchase weapons from the West, and is not interested in trading in petro-dollars. Unfortunately for Syria, it has been caught up in a hegemonic relationship, a geo-political proxy conflict of the modern cold war between the West and Russia – and is a soft target.

And this round of slamming missiles into Syria was even before international observers could verify whether chemical weapons were in fact used by the Syrian Armed Forces against civilians. What was then, the indecent hurry?

And for the West’s ‘Coalition of the Willing’ which once misled the UN and the rest of the world saying Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction so they could invade the country on some baloney intelligence reports, how can the world be suckered again, about the reports on Syria?

The people of Syria do not deserve the inhumanness perpetrated upon them due to competing geo-political interests. They deserve better than the hell on earth they are undergoing.