Sunday Times 2
Attempting a Happy New Year
Ruminating in these lonely Covid days on those merry days of our youth, the lines of a favourite rhyme came to mind:
Kisses blown are kisses wasted
Kisses are not kisses, unless tasted
Kisses spread germs and diseases
But kiss me honey I am VACCINATED.
A knee-jerk reaction caused by this last line made us shatter our silence and cry out: Where the hell is the vaccine?
No. it was not the sudden urge to kiss — not in our dotage. Even in our toddling days, we didn’t like kissing at all, we have been told. We were certainly not a ‘Georgie Porgy who tried to kiss girls and made them cry’. But right now, we want to be vaccinated soon and roam freely like in the pre-Covid days instead of being threatened by decorated policemen on TV of the consequences of breaking sacred Covid regulations.
Where the hell is this vaccine? we ask.
On state owned and privately owned TV, anchor women in breathless prose (no full stops) keep rattling away with pictures of old women, elderly statesmen, thugs in uniform, around the Globe being vaccinated. But in this paradise island, we are only told that the vaccines are ‘Coming Soon’ — like blockbuster movies –perhaps well into this year.
We are aggrieved. Being in that ‘vulnerable age group’ (It should have been ‘Venerable age group’) we are entitled to be at the top of the queue. But no pompous authority on TV says on which day or even which month the vaccine will arrive
Minister Pavitra seems to have finished her task of tossing pots of water into rivers from bridges. And she with Minister Sudarshini and other tough-looking male state ministers, we hope have finished sipping the Dhammika Paniya on TV and got down to bringing in an effective vaccine be it: American, British, Russian , Chinese or of any other kind.
Perhaps an innovative go-getter like Nivard Cabraal, too, can help. He is a daring exhibitionist both in his thinking and action. Instead of only blaming Yahapalanaya guys for Lanka’s billion-dollar debt and trying to use it to prop up the Rajapaksas, he is quite cheerful and casts away the debt burden gloom. There are billions of Yuan in direct foreign investments in the pipeline for the Colombo City and Hambantota projects and it will be all hunky dory for Sri Lanka, he assures.
A cynical critic of the government, however, points out that the enthusiastic Cabraal is an economist and that ‘An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why things he predicted yesterday did not happen’. This is quite an unfair criticism. All politicians know well why the things they predicted before being elected failed to materialise afterwards.
If Cabraal is too busy with fluctuations in the global economic trends, why not deploy a top-ranking military man to expedite this all-important lifesaving task? Military men are reputed to ‘think out of the box and perform miraculous things.
Nonetheless, the Rajapaksa government is in a precarious situation. Even though Cabraal and the Central Bank Governor, Colombo University’s former Vice Chancellor Prof. W. D. Lakshman, have assured that despite the billion-dollar debt burden, the government can go ahead with its ‘Visions of Prosperity’ on the basis that the United States, Japan and Singapore have much greater amounts in foreign debts than Lanka but are carrying on merrily, international credit agencies won’t buy that. They keep giving grades such as ‘A, B, C’ like our college masters did to their students. Recently we were downgraded by Fitch ratings from B to CCC.
It’s no use berating these rating agencies because like in College, masters are believed by the headmaster and those above him, but not the students. Western governments will accept credit rating agencies recommendations but not Pohottuwa arguments that they won a two-thirds majority at the last election.
So, what can we do? Think out of the box like what Bhutan did in the 1970s and say that it’s not the GNP (Gross National Product that matters but the GNH (Gross National Happiness) as stated by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. The basis of this philosophy is that economists, whose ultimate objective should be to achieve human happiness for the people, have shied away from this and instead the whole focus is on material progress as measured by the GNP. But if that argument is adopted, rich nations and lending institutions will point out that since money is not the creative factor for happiness, Lanka could be happy without monetary infusions. But the immediate need is finance, to pay our debts and buy vaccines to prevent our population lining up for crematoria.
One way to show the world that Lanka is happy or at least 50 percent or more are happy is to hold the impending provincial council elections. A clean sweep of all provinces by the Rajapaksa party is on the cards and that is why the government is keen to hold elections despite some influential monks calling for the abolition of provincial councils in their entirety.
But how sure can the ruling party be in sweeping the polls? With Ranil and Sajith still at each other it would be a repeat of the last parliamentary election, say pundits. But if they unite, what? That would depend on what Mahinda decides, says a closet pundit.
A clean sweep of all provincial councils will be positive proof to the world that Lankans are all happy with the Rajapaksas particularly if the first-past-the-post system decides the winner not the proportional representation system.
How about the North and East? Will the People’s vote indicate that they are a happy and contended with the Rajapaksas? What of the Muslims?
A constitutional pundit says that at a democratic election, no single candidate or political party scores 100 percent of the registered votes. True, President Saddam Hussein polled more or less 90 percent of the total number of registered voters. There were no other contestants. President Hafez Assad of Syria and his son the current President Bashar al Assad, too, have polled over 90 percent without opposition candidates and last month in Ivory Coast President Alassane Outtara, president since 2010, was elected president for the third term with a majority of 95.95 votes — the Opposition parties boycotting the polls because the constitution permitted only two terms of presidency for an individual.
We conclude these comments as the year 2020 draws to a close.
Are we happy? We would have been, if a recognised vaccine was given to us and we could have confidently ventured out.
Dhammika’s Paniya won’t do. We will settle take the advice of that Persian sage Omar Khayyam and greet the New Year with a Loaf of Bread (Kurakkan), a jug of wine — and nothing else.
(The writer is former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and former consultant editor of the Sunday Leader)