Sunday Times 2
Let’s hang all the people on the Kadju Puhulang Tree…
Ah fill the cup: what boots
it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow and
dead Yesterday
Why fret about them if Today
be sweet!
- Rubiyat of Omar Khyyam (Edward Fitzgerald-First Edition)
Forget about ‘filling the cup’ and all that. Think in the context of the state of Mother Lanka today.
What’s of relevance are the lines: ‘Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday; Why fret about them if Today be sweet’?
Was Lanka stillborn yesterday or would not be born again? And all that could be done is to enjoy ‘Today’?
Sounds like the jolly old Kotahena baila — ‘Kapalla, beepalla jolly karaplla; heta marunath sithata sapai ada jolly karala’.
Consider the state of the country right now. We are all agog on whether those drug dealers sentenced to death but reprieved by successive presidents of the country and held in a high security prison should be hanged or not because they are alleged to be carrying out their drug smuggling with deadly efficiency from prison. The do-gooders, humanitarians and the like are strongly opposing bringing back the hangman.
And a great majority of us are at one another’s throats whether ‘to hang the drug barons or not’ depending on whether it is politically advantageous to the Rajapaksa gang or the Yahapalanaya. That’s the final criterion on which all major issues are decided.
No one has bothered to ask why the drug barons are kept in the high security prison at great cost to the state if its business as usual for the Barons — inside or outside.
That question obviously is not to be asked because the guardian angels of the nation’s morals and security will say that those opposing hanging are in cahoots with drug barons.
A colleague has attempted to broaden the debate by suggesting that since politicians are said to be patrons — if not the kingpins — of the drug Mafia they too should be hanged. The trend of hanging people is becoming increasingly popular.Why not doctors who endanger poor sick patients at government hospitals be honoured with the hangman’s noose? some have proposed . Others suggest that drunken drivers deserve the same.
‘Hang the drug lords’ lobby claims that these suggestions are a massive conspiracy — an international conspiracy — to dilute and confuse a simple solution and save the dubious barons.
The European Union is threatening to cut off the GSP Plus while Amnesty International and our local NGOs are all against the return of the hangman. Only Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has fired message of congratulations to President Sirisena. Perhaps he may suggest that the hanging is too tortuous and cumbersome process. Bumping off not only drug barons but even delinquent addicts is a shorter cut.
Our colleague’s proposal to hang the politicians appears sound but there is a snag. Who elects politicians that enact all the cockeyed legislation resulting in all the tommy rot? Isn’t it, ‘We the people’?
We throw out the incumbent rogues and elect the set of rogues we threw out earlier and keep repeating the cycle! That’s Sri Lankan democracy.
So why not hang all the people, as an old big match song goes: We will hang all the people on the Kadju Puhlang Tree…..
Yes, all the people who will elect the next government.