Sunday Times 2
The Land of the Blind and Dumb
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I was reminded this month about that old Sinhala saying ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’ – and musing about the fact that this observation is so true in our own country today.
It is not that we citizens of Sri Lanka are simply blind – we are blind as well as dumb. We see what is happening around us and yet we do not see. Even if we see, we just accept the sad state of affairs and don’t say anything.
When Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected president in November 2019, we citizens felt relieved that we would finally see an end to the internecine strife that was taking place between Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe. Our country could ill afford the political mismanagement and gross lack of responsible governance that went by the name of Yahapalanaya. Rajapaksa promised us ‘a safer country’ and was going to ‘usher in a new journey for Sri Lanka — acknowledging that all Sri Lankans are part of this journey’.
Sadly, the enthusiastic voters who elected him to office and subsequently provided him with a two-thirds majority in parliament, have come to realise that the political situation in our country is even worse than it was during the impotence of Yahapalanaya. Today we see that the vast majority of politicians in power tend to place self and family before country and not country before self and kin. Pistol-packing behaviour last month was a clear example of this use of political office for personal aggrandizement.
Today, politicians disregard the dignity of us ordinary citizens and show scant respect for the rule of law in this country. Many seem to be following the philosophy attributed to one of our former prime ministers many years ago who advised his supporters “As long as the spoon is in your hand, keep on serving yourself!”
Our current president served in the army where he rose to be a battalion commander and retired after an illustrious military career. He developed a reputation of being able to get the job done, effectively implementing his commander’s intent during the time that his brother was Commander-in-chief.
As a battalion commander, he would have selected capable subordinates from the trained and experienced junior officers under his command – but as president he seems to be selecting the people he needs to perform responsible jobs from a different short list. This is a pool of unscrupulous political manipulators and unqualified torch bearers.
For someone who epitomised the popular American saying ‘When the going gets tough the tough get going’ – or even the motto of the commando regiment නොහැක්කක් නොමැත (Nothing is Impossible) – this former army officer.
I myself can remember 1952, when the US elected as its president Dwight Eisenhower — the famous ‘General Ike’ who led the Allied armies to victory over Germany during the Second World War. Ike was a popular president who had no time for political manipulation. Ike left politics to his wily vice president Richard Nixon while did the job of President. Not being beholden to the political establishment, Eisenhower was able to fill the senior ranks of his administration with people who had achieved distinction in such fields as the military, business, law and education. Almost all his cabinet ministers were quite affluent – rich enough in their own right to afford to be honest.
Eisenhower felt that government would be well served by successful men — because failure to utilise such capable people, he later wrote in his diary, would result in him having to appoint as members of his administration only ‘business failures, political hacks and brief-less lawyers’.