Sunday Times 2
Coming colour not very good
‘Coming colour not very good no? (Enna paata honda Nah ne?), a perceptive political observer was saying in ‘Singlish’ on Thursday last week.
‘Eight weeks to go for the presidential election and they all are in a ‘mallung no?’ Gota is the Pohottuwa candidate, if his nomination is accepted. But Pohottuwa has no election symbol and what’s their colour? Red/blue or both? UNP has a symbol and colour but no candidate. Ranil and Podi Dasa still putting political ‘adi-pudi’ while Karu is also putting his hat to the ring.
Hell of a joke no, Maithri doesn’t know whether he is going or coming to go with Mahinda. He doesn’t know where 2 billion bucks for the Nelum Tower went. The only certainty is political uncertainty; we are only certain of uncertainties, the pundit complained.
We tried to make the picture look brighter. Look, it’s not so bad. London has the London Tower, Paris the Eiffel Tower, Malaysia has the Twin Towers, New York’s Twin Towers are no more and also almost every capital city has a TV tower. Now we have our own Lotus Tower. Maybe it will be renamed after someone or the other after elections but never mind, we have our own Tower now. “Isn’t that great?” we queried.
But of what use is the Lotus Tower to the people of Kaluwaragaswewa who have to climb trees at night to escape from marauding elephants smashing up their homes, devastating their paddy fields and even killing them. There are thousands of isolated Kaluwaragaswewas spread across the Dry Zone, Eastern and Northern provinces whose people share the same fate. These are the people whose fathers were the backbone of the Banadaranaike’s revolution. If the two billion rupees, Sirisena says has disappeared and much more spent on the Lotus Tower were invested to protect the people in these hamlets who still produce rice to feed the nation, would they be climbing trees at the dead of night?
There are multi-pronged strategies of development for a Third World nation, not only rural development; the Lotus Tower would result in better television reception to Karuwalagaswewa and better and faster mobile telephone communications to these people. Such communications are necessary perquisites for macro and micro economic development, leading economists have propounded, we pointed out. But the Singlish critic was not biting all that.
Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay were able to hear broadcasts of Radio Ceylon when they conquered Mount Everest way back in 1953 from the broadcasting relay equipment left back by the British after World War 11. They didn’t need a billion rupee Lotus Tower whose limits of broadcasting today do not exceed 70Km. The boys and girls of Kaluwaragaswewa will be happier taking walks in the jungle and making their love calls in person rather than having cell phones glued to their ears. Anyway the inhabitants would not be watching prime time TV debates at night from tops of trees, he contended ignoring the differences between Radio and TV technologies which necessitated the Lotus Towers.
Nonetheless, the visionary who envisaged the erection of the Lotus Tower, needs identification. It was initiated and work began during the age of the construction of massive monumental structures of the Rajapaksa regime after a 30-year-war which had left the body of the country and the national purse haemorrhaging severely.
The colossal narcissistic projects inspired with the objective of immortality – each named after Mahinda Rajapaksa – must have had his blessings. There was massive development with a harbour, an airport and an international cricket stadium, all named after him. There was the Port City which the UNP tried to scuttle and failed and last but not least the superhighways. All that in addition to school stadiums, schools, science laboratories and even a mausoleum, all with the Rajapaksa nomenclature, sprang up overnight.
People were unaware from where the money came and this strategy of development was only revealed when the Yahapalanaya government had to pay back the loans. They were mostly loans taken from China without the borrowers having the foggiest notion of how repayment was to be made by this war-torn country.
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s proud boast today is that his government paid back the loans together with accumulating rates of interest without the Pearl of the Orient being internationally declared bankrupt.
In contrast to this Monument Building Strategy for Immortalisation, Sajith Premadasa is following his father’s strategy of building small houses sans foreign loans for those in Kaluwaragaswewa hamlets and the like. Which strategy is better could be tested after the forthcoming election, if Sajith contests and wins.
Geopolitical analysts are also speculating about what strategically placed Sri Lanka’s foreign policy should be with the two competing powers – Superpower America and the Emergent superpower China –attempting to win over this island. Lankan pundits advise: ‘Deft diplomacy’ to outwit both the superpower and the regional power. This is like a scarecrow trying to play against two buffeting cyclones and hoping to survive, says a cynical observer.
China is the only country today that gives loans to countries in dire need to survive like us. India too with Uncle Sam as partner in the region opposing China is providing assistance to Lanka but will India be able to match China — punch to punch? Emergent India is now in difficulties with its economic growth stuttering. Also, Donald Trump, the rapacious capitalist, doesn’t assist any nation, rich or poor. His strategy is ‘to do deals’- pick-pocketing any nation. Will his deal be the two proposed defence agreements with Sri Lanka – ACSA and SOFA – for proxy India’s support? Already the US embassy and top diplomats have placed their bets on a prospective presidential candidate.
Viewing all this, our Singlish political analyst says: Eight weeks to go and all this ‘koloppang’. Certainly’ Coming colour not very good no? What to do, ‘napuru kalata’ (bad times).
What could we have said? ‘What to do, laughing also coming no?’