Sunday Times 2
The world with Lanka is going nuts
View(s):Lanka, Taprobane, Serendib, Tambapanni, Eelam, Ceilo and Ceylon are the many names this island was called as it evolved down the millennia. It is still evolving. But some of the new names being suggested do not seem to be very complimentary, such as: banana republic and Island of fruits and nuts.
Whatever the nomenclature of the island may be, very many observers are saying that we as a people do seem to be getting fruitier and nuttier.
The most recent example of Sri Lankans going nuts is not metaphorical but quite real. President Maithripala Sirisena took umbrage on being served rotten kadju nuts while on board the national carrier. The First Citizen burst out at a public rally: ‘even dogs would not have eaten the kadju nuts I was served’ in the First Class of the national carrier’. Whether our fastidious dogs will refuse kadju nuts with even a worm or two inside, we cannot say, but this encounter of the president with kadju nuts pushed off from the headlines the price of coconuts in the market which opposition politicians were using as a hardy tool to batter the Yahapalana regime. This rage on the price of coconuts—an essential component of our rice and curry— is seasonal, with prices hitting record levels after every dry season. But any nut is good enough for the Pohottuwa agitators to clobber the government.
The talk of coconuts reminded us of a story about this nut not being such a blessing to our country as related by a university don of a neighbouring campus to our waterhole. Isaac Newton, he said, came to realise about the force of gravity, while sitting under an apple tree when an apple fell on his head. Imagine what would have happened if he was sitting under a coconut tree and a coconut came down. The great Newton would have ceased to be and how long would it have taken after that– if it happened— for the Laws of Gravity to be formulated? The don was illustrating the point that Sri Lanka’s climate, as well as its fauna and flora, were not conducive to intellectual development.
To avoid being called unpatriotic by an emerging pre-presidential election band of patriots, it should be realised that this phenomenon of going nuts is not confined to this island but appears to be fast spreading around the globe.
Global nuts
Take the leader of the Free World, American President Donald Trump. A great many around the world after watching him for almost two years in office think that he is ‘Gone nuts’ or ‘Gone bananas’ as the Americans say. His defence of the leader of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), on allegations of killing a Saudi Arabian Journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey is absolutely nutty. At first, it was something like saying that Khashoggi went through the front door of the consulate and went out of the back door or window and no one not even the king of Saudi or his son (the prince) who is the de facto boss, knew what happened. Trump was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. Later, the American president said he was killed, but he did not how or by whom and vowed ‘severe consequences’ against those responsible while also pointing out that Saudi Arabia is a friend of the United States, a strategic ally and the biggest purchaser of American armaments running into billions of dollars. At the time these comments are written, the best informed person in the world had said that the Crown Prince ‘is running things over there and so if anybody’s is going to be, it will be him’.
The American President certainly seems to have gone nuts or bananas.
Not gone nuts but deadly bizarre is the conduct of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who claims to have been a friend of journalist Khashoggi and is leading the campaign to reveal the ‘naked truth’ on the circumstances of the journalist’s disappearance. This staunch friend of journalists has had in the past two years, arrested 319 journalists, shut down 200 media outlets and detained 142,000 Turkish citizens. The defender of this Saudi journalist is world’s leading political jailor, one-third of the number held behind bars is in Turkey. Is Erdogan’s show of lamentation in Ankara staged for the love of his journalist friend or to embarrass his regional rivals in Riyadh or an instance of going nuts?
All is deadly serious stuff. For a lighter fruitier and nuttier variety we come back home. This is about protocol and diplomacy and bureaucracy.
Diplomatic nuttiness
The incumbent Inspector General of Police, Pujitha Jayasundera, has been featured in some bizarre incidents in the media, such as an allegation about an assault on a police lift operator for not abiding by his order to meditate in the morning and also of him dancing in the streets of Kandy in police uniform before perahera crowds. It is reported that he had been called a ‘joker’ ‘by those at very high places. Now it is also rumoured that he will retire from public service and thereafter be appointed as an ambassador to a country where many other IGPs had been posted before.
On the heels of this story comes a picture of an ambassador carrying the bags of two sturdy rugger players who had gone there to represent a Sri Lankan club in a rugby encounter. An ambassador, it is said, does many things for his country including ‘lying abroad for his country physically and vocally’. But does our Foreign Ministry protocol say anything about carrying bags of Sri Lankan visitors? These two visitors are not even VIPs but overgrown brats of an ex-VIP. This politically appointed ambassador by the current government apparently has taken to the functions of a bellboy to demonstrate his loyalties to a party-in-waiting, hopefully.
It may be the sovereign right of an ambassador of an independent country to carry bags of sturdy young rugger players — even those who have declared their intention of toppling the ambassador’s government. But bag carrying ambassadors are no credit to the mother country and that’s not what they are appointed for. Shouldn’t Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana break his usual reticence and make known his views?
The world led by Donald Trump and other strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jung-un, Nicolas Maduro, Bashar al Assad and Vladimir Putin has gone nuts and is taking us all towards an unknown disaster. Sri Lanka led by the Yahapalanaya and galloped behind by the Pohottuwa is heading towards an unidentified hell.
Perhaps ‘It’s better to rule in hell than go to heaven’ Every country in every age produces its own quota of nuts that takes humanity to the brink of disaster.