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What is truth, asked Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, of Jesus. But he did not wait for an answer, history tells us.

That is not at all surprising. In today’s world surfeit with all types of politicians and other noxious breeds, it would be farcical to expect an answer, for “truth” is what politicians avoid even more than Civid-19.

Listening to Dominic Cummings, a former senior advisor of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, slate his former boss as a “liar surrounded by liars” in evidence before a parliamentary committee last week, many claimed this could not happen in that country like no other.

While Cummings who was sacked by Prime Minister Johnson earlier this year, was continuing his tirade castigating ministers and senior civil servants for mismanagement of the government’s response to the pandemic and concern for the economy and business cronies over the people, Johnson was being grilled in the Commons at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Asked by Opposition leader Keir Starmer whether one of the remarks attributed to Johnson was in fact made by him, the prime minister called it a lie.

So who is telling the truth — politician or his one-time close aide? One thing is certain. There would be no such parliamentary committees where disgruntled top aides could make such searing criticisms over a seven-hour appearance charging the prime minister’s governance as total chaos and No 10 inheriting a prime minister who was “not fit for the job”.

Certainly not in our Resplendent Isle, not unless a whistleblower or one perceived to have done harm to the now ruling side or its buddies is determined to do a disappearing act!

This is only the beginning of a beautiful friendship gone badly sour. More political mismanagement, u-turns, corruption and other shenanigans like JohnsonWs fiancée allegedly trying to fix jobs for friends, will surface and spread like the Covid virus seemingly leaving the political future of several public figures dangling precariously overhead.

In the midst of the chaos and confusion in that country like no other where violators of  lockdowns are locked up, where motor vehicle horn-blowers are treated like whistleblowers, where a wheel barrow-pusher is arrested for not wearing a face mask while other powerful types are in public view and in widely circulated pictures face mask-less but untouched by the forces of the law, whether this is a side effect of a mishandled pandemic as medical professionals and experts say or 2500 years of civilisation in a state of asphyxiation.

And what of the other VIPs — also known as Very Ignorant Persons in this era of pandemic — seen in the salubrious climes of Nuwara Eliya trying to compete with horses, looking spic and span in the colours of their stables but no face mask of any kind.

Perhaps they are worried that the citizenry would not recognise them as those holding the reins — not the horse’s but the one round the public neck as it awaits to receive the anti-virus vaccine said to be short by 600,000 doses.

For all the shortcomings pinpointed by Dominic Cummings there is some fairness and justice here. Even the Royal Family especially the younger members of it, had to wait their turn to be vaccinated. True also of the prime minister and cabinet ministers, according to an equitable scheme worked out by the health authorities. No jumping queues, no trying to push ahead saying I am so-and-so’s kussi amma.

While watching the “Cummings and Goings Show” and the Johnsonian antics over here in London we have naturally been following with increasing trepidation reports of large sinkholes  on the road near the Kotmale dam and earth tremors close to the Victoria dam. Local astrologers with little to do in lockdowns reach for their outdated charts of the solar system, and other unemployed soothsayers make up horoscopes of the high and mighty.

Others tired of all the rigmarole planned by the rulers including wayside gymnasiums presumably to develop the muscle power of the public at a cost of Rs 625 million, as though this is a priority at a time when the virus infection rate is increasing exponentially and many people are searching for their next meal, are saying damn it all (Kotmale and Victoria included) and are turning to draft their next satirical piece to the social media.

In this miasma of falsity, deceit, and lack of concern for the larger public at a time of perceptible social convulsion my mind goes back to Peradeniya University and the first lecture in Greek philosophy. A formidable lady professor told the assorted gathering that philosophy is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which is not there.

Meanwhile the uninitiated (as the medicine men and women repeatedly say) mandate to stop the pandemic at the doorstep of the airport arrivals area and the gatherings of intellectual advisers with PhDs, DSCs, MADs and other signs of brainpower pinned to their shirtfronts, so to say, meet in their numbers for economic and social discourse to solve the problems they themselves have created.

Those exchanges of ideas that end up like a search for the nonexistent black cat make the conventicles of Socrates appear like a Boy Scouts camp. They have produced u-turns on the import of luxury vehicles for the comfort of the peoples’ representatives who represent themselves first if the public comments one reads and hears are true, do a double take on the ill-thought of hasty decision to ban chemical fertiliser, provide bunk beds to climb for the Covid-infected who probably have  breathing problems, unload Russian tourists having earlier off-loaded hundreds from a Covid-infected Ukraine under a Udayanga Weeratunga grand plan by ‘importing’ visitors that only our diplomatic Metternich and the big guns of tourism want.

Add to this continuing pantomime of governance, the emerging big power appears on the scene as the saviour of our sovereignty by producing land from the sea wherein Baron Rothschild and children of others of the billionaire class can invest their fortunes while those with ill-gotten gains ponder whether to bury it in the Colombo Port City or dump it in the water now infect with debris from a burning ship.

And just in case Chinese billionaires from the Communist Party Politburo lose their way in the reclaimed land with their money bags, there are signs identifying Central Park for instance, in three languages including Putonhua that should gladden any patriotic heart from Tiananmen Square as the 30th anniversary of the “June 4 incident” as Beijing used to call it, is only a few days away.

But not everybody is willing to place wagers on how the departing Attorney General Dappula de Livera’s heart pulsated when he espied the plaque announcing the opening of the smart library or whatever it is called, when along with the Chinese ambassador he declared open this gift from China.

There are stories supposedly circulating that at next year’s Nuwara Eliya “season” there will be Chinese Trojan horses running at the local Grand National. While that might titillate those silly chaps who turned up last month wearing top hats and morning coats imitating the outdated and outmoded toffs “back home” they are nothing compared to the more disturbing one doing the rounds.

It says come the August anniversary of the SLPP’s election victory an extraordinary gazette would be issued making it compulsory for all Sri Lankans to eat their meals with chopsticks. Extraordinary indeed but then its only fake news!

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)