Columns

So now we know, don’t we? At least some of us do. Bad enough we need to import many essentials, including medicines of questionable quality. Now we have taken to importing garbage from the land of our last colonial rulers. Recent media reports spoke of imported garbage that included human body parts lying uncleared at Customs warehouses.

It is as though Britannia did not leave enough garbage behind when it debunked after nearly 150 years during which it got away with some valuable artefacts, precious gems and historical pieces. Any doubts over this could be cleared with a visit to the British museum.

In fact, if all the historical items brought to London from various parts of the Empire were returned to their rightful owners, the museum would empty fast and maybe Minister Ravi Karunanayake, always looking more space to dump sections of his energy ministry, would love to get his hands on this.

Right now it is a matter of this British garbage, not to mention all the garbage that spews forth from the mouth of that ludicrously funny President Trump. He finds separating fact from fiction a laborious task, a habit he seems to pass on to his diplomats dumped here and there to make them feel the US rules the world.

Why we want to import garbage when we seem to have enough and more and cannot find appropriate places to deposit our own waste would surely make a fascinating story. See how much garbage we have collected in and round Diyawanna Oya. Before long, we will have a new lot dumped there at the expense of what might be called the citizens’ “privy purse”.

But as importers of such rubbish dispute responsibility for the stinking waste lying around in warehouses, a jaded public has finally found something to laugh over before being overwhelmed by the affairs of state and church.

Not since the Middle Ages when the state and church were engaged in struggles for power have I been so enthralled by this verbal tug-of-war over a bone.

Some might dismiss this as a minor surgical misadventure that would not have serious consequences on the affairs of state. Knowing something about politicians who have been at the epicentre of power in Sri Lanka or are preparing to do so as if destiny has bequeathed them with the eternal right to rule, this might sound like a minor skirmish.

But this bone of contention is over the backbone and that is no inconsequential part of the human body like the appendix which is of little use to man or beast.  Not, however, to some private hospitals which have found a tortuous route past liver and spleen to get to the appendix at enormous costs to patients.

Just the other day, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, while re-consecrating St. Sebastian Church that was badly damaged by the Easter Sunday terrorist attack, said during his homily that today’s Sri Lankan leaders have no backbone.

One is not certain whether the Cardinal was referring to a backbone for each leader or a collection shared by all whenever necessity demands.

Obviously taking umbrage at being described as a leader sans spinal column, President Sirisena hit back saying he definitely has what he has been accused of lacking.

President Sirisena argued that his victory at the 2015 presidential election was proof enough he was well armed with the 33 vertebrae that make up the bone at the back.

Some say that this is no proof of the presence of a presidential backbone. Rather,   those who voted for him were boneheads. That is an unfair judgement because from what I have heard many a time all those who voted for Sirisena did not do so because they suddenly discovered he had a spinal column but because they wanted to get rid of the incumbent.

As further proof President Sirisena reportedly said that his use of the constitution to sack his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and install the ousted president Mahinda Rajapaksa was sheer bravado that only a man with a real backbone could do.

I am not particularly au fait with the progress of medical science and the status of human transplants as I suppose Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne is about the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth.

But having read what President Sirisena has proffered as evidence even the Attorney General might be shocked into filing indictments for murder. One would hope that anatomical science would be speeded up so that existing spinal columns could be quickly replaced.

I am not certain whether this amounts to a cardinal sin but could we implore Cardinal Ranjith who had noticed the lack of a vital body part among our political leaders to pray that medical science rapidly acquires the skill of replacing the entire spinal column without our doctors shopping around Panchikawatte for a second hand vertebrae?

This brings me to another bone of contention, this time between the US and Sri Lanka over military agreements and what could amount to a related land issue. Following a habit made popular by President Trump with his dawn tweets, US ambassador Alaina Teplitz dismissed an analysis on an ongoing discussion on a military agreement first published in this newspaper as “blatant misinformation”.

Unlike Trump, she did not scream “fake news”– which in his scheme of things is anything critical of him or he does not agree with — but the meaning was all too familiar though her comment was injudicious to say the least.

Weeks after the Sunday Times first broke the news of an impending arrangement known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which until then remained confidential between the US Embassy and our Foreign Ministry like a previous agreement known as Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA), Ambassador Teplitz tried desperately to minimise the impact these would have on Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and other matters.

First, she changed the name under which this arrangement was being discussed from SOFA to Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) as though US soldiers and others coming to Sri Lanka would be tourists in uniform.

Now she says that this revised agreement is to overcome bureaucratic barriers and gives the example of aircraft bringing in emergency supplies during the 2017 flood running into red tape.

Well Ambassador Teplitz you can tell this to the marines when they get around. If she thinks that all the secrecy under which this deal was being negotiated with a helping hand from our US pandang karayas in government and the foreign ministry, the call for certain diplomatic rights and privileges — the right of US forces to operate in Sri Lanka in military uniform, carrying weapons and communication equipment and US land vehicles, aircraft and ships exempt from boarding and examination by Sri Lankan Customs and officials and other privileges — seems a rather peculiar and circuitous way of avoiding red tape.

I don’t know where Ambassador Teplitz has served before. But she sure needs a refresher course in diplomacy and truthfulness. It must surely be poor officials if they take so long to a draft an agreement that is supposedly trying just to get rid of red tape.