Columns

That was unfair, terribly unfair, burdening some of our super-class diplomats (no cracks please) to go find a sturdy rope to serve as a hangman’s noose. True, our patriotic thinkers from the frontlines of Sri Lanka’s diplomatic corps have, over the years, performed many tasks, which their professional counterparts from some capitals of the world would have cringed at doing, if they did them at all.

They would have helped send various packages with undisclosed contents to the highest in officialdom in the country. At other times other precious cargo would have been dumped on our national airline to carry home to Colombo, while officials heading the airline’s office are chastised and despatched in a different direction to mind the airline’s business which was losing altitude fast due to dubious high-ranking officials at the controls.

There are many strange things the guys and dolls that bear our standard in some of the strangest places have been asked to do.

But for the love of me, I have never heard one ministry asking another to get their frontline agents away from the cocktail round and their fingers out of the serving trays of hors d’oeuvre and go looking for a hangman’s noose.

I mean it is really demeaning to ask those who have been sent to various capitals to wave the country’s flag to go round the marketplace, asking some trader whether he had an unused hangman’s noose that can carry a weight of 200 kilos for sale. They would be damned lucky if the man doesn’t wait for our worthy diplomat in search of a deadly noose to depart and then rush to the closest police station and spill the beans or whatever he has to spill, while a bevy of well-fed policemen are beating the daylights out of a cocaine smuggler who had failed to share the loot with the strong arm of the law.

Don’t blame the tradesman. How on earth is he or she to know that the high- ranking diplomat travelling through the marketplace with a sword-holding lion emboldening our national flag fluttering in the breeze is not planning to hang his attache’ or trying to frighten some teachers at a school in some desert emirate or even hang himself — which would cure lots of illnesses including a swollen head.

Now, according to this newspaper, which broke the story last Sunday, it was the Justice Ministry that wrote to the Foreign Ministry asking for its help to find a suitable rope to do the job that President Sirisena is anxiously waiting to inaugurate with possible invitations to the diplomatic community and cutlis and patis all round while members of Amnesty International and International Commission of Jurists parade outside in an understandable gesture of condemnation at Sri Lanka’s violation of its own vote at last year’s UNGA in favour of the moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Now if President Sirisena who has been boasting of his readiness to restore the death penalty is so keen to have the job done expeditiously, why is it that he did not instruct the Sri Lanka delegation to the UNGA to eschew voting in support of that agenda item?

The fact is that Sirisena is one-dimensional. He was scheduled to speak and that is what he will do, never mind if there are only a handful of delegates from 192 member-states to listen to him and less even to understand what is said.

Any intelligent and interested leader would ask his delegation what is on the agenda and what issues are likely to be discussed and voted on. After his job is done, it is show time for him and extended family at the Big Apple.

Imagine the consternation and embarrassment if our envoy to the Court of St James was stuck in the milling crowds at Alperton, which sells most things Indian, including perhaps a hangman’s noose or two, and so missed an audience with the Queen.

After all, instructions from the MFA on a matter of utmost urgency for the elected executive president of the paradise isle who wishes to hang a few of his citizens is surely more important than paying homage to the Head of State of a once powerful world power but now a fast declining nation that seems more divided than Gaul in Caesar’s time.

Who would put off such an important assignment when the Head of State has a deadline to keep somewhere in March? His own Ides of March may not be far away from what we hear on the grapevine.

Remember what happened to our envoy and the rest of our embassy staff, save one, in a continental European country once ruled by the Austrian Hapsburgs? Apparently the embassy staff seemed to have been afflicted with collective deafness and failed to hear the phone ring and answer a telephone call from our own Hapsburgs (something like the junior branch of the mighty monarchy).

Fortunately, our envoys to Vienna and London have not been ordered to swing into action and go in search of a hangman’s rope as this practice has long been abandoned in human rights-conscious Western Europe.

They have been saved by the bell, as it were. The Justice Ministry letter has said the noose should be imported from countries that would likely have it. The letter apparently names Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Singapore where this is practised. Yes practised but not that they keep hanging some poor chap several times until the proper weight and measure is achieved and the person is declared dead.

The problem with Austria is that dear Adolf was born there long before he took to his pleasant ways. Not that some find it an issue. One might recall the incident last year when a senior Buddhist monk who had heard that a possible aspirant to the seat of the local Hapsburgs was being chastised as a potential Hitler exhorted the man so condemned to act like one and take a few lessons from Hitler of “Mein Kampf” fame.

It was probably the only complete book that “Adolf the Ignominious” wrote. Whether this was because Adolf’s ghost writer suddenly disappeared leaving the Fascist leader writer-less or the printer who had missed a few commas and full stops in the final text of Mein Kampf was last seen being pushed into a white van (a Volkswagen, naturally) which was later found burnt and abandoned, like what happened to a well-known local ruggerite, according to some information in wide circulation.

Let’s leave Hitler and his antics aside and dwell on the oncoming spectacle of hanging leading drug pedlars who are still in the business from their well-equipped prison cells, and other miscreants who are fast developing the art with the help of prison guards and other uniformed types.

I am not certain why the Sirisena presidency wants to run around looking for a 200 kilogram stone. One can think of several ways of acquiring a sufficiently heavy object for the purpose.

One can keep gazing at the sky in the hope that passing space craft will drop a few parts which could be used. This has the added advantage of showing the public that our Rodrigo Duterte-admiring president was keen to carry out his promise to hang his drug lords high but that space craft sending nations are not co-operating with him. In this way Sirisena could quietly drop his idea before dropping a prisoner six feet.

There is, of course, another way to solve the problem. Without waiting for those digging the ground to remove soil and boulders for other purposes such as constructing high-rise buildings or hotels, one might look much closer.

I have noted while watching the tragi-comic scenes in parliament or listening to sermons by the president to the legislature, that there are some lawmakers of sufficient girth and weight to help the president out of his present contretemps.

There could well be persons from his own party, which does not seem to be much, but patriotic enough to lend a hand or neck or whatever part of the anatomy that is used to test a hangman’s rope.

We all know — or at least some of us do — that weight is a recurring problem for almost every parliamentarian. Quite understandably one parliament lift refused to operate. That was due to overweight and it was the lift’s only way of protesting.

Over the years, I have suggested that every MP admitted to parliament should be weighed on the first day and every six months thereafter. Maybe a new Standing Order would be useful.

And could we cut down on the heavily subsidised food served to MPs. That would be much better than spending millions on new lifts to move some obese parliamentarians.

This is suggested with good intentions so that some MPs could be preserved for posterity to view in awe.