Sunday Times 2
There’s a Hole in the Bucket Dear Sir, Dear Sir
The answer to the persistent query of Sri Lankans in the last two years: ‘Whither Sri Lanka?’ has been finally resolved. It is the withering away of Sri Lanka.
This is not the ‘Withering of the state’ Marxist prophets — Marx, Engels and Lenin — wrote about when the socialist utopia was reached: ‘The state will simply wither away…. It is something quite different.
It was perhaps best explained in a remark of an aged lady listening to one of those TV talk shows — going late into the night where Sri Lankan political pundits and fake pundits keep talking and talking.
“Aiyo this is like that old song of Harry Belafonte ,no….’There is a hole in the bucket… dear Liza, dear Liza….’
“There appears to be a big hole in the Treasury bucket and they don’t know how to fill it… and keep talking nonsense without saying so….,” the old lady claimed.
She, we think, was absolutely right. Every Lankan knows it but very few like the old lady come out with it. There is a multibillion-(US) dollar hole in the Treasury bucket and it is getting bigger with time. The mighty rulers who drummed themselves into power, pledging the security of the state, saving Sinhala Buddhism and claiming that they had the magic wand to meet any contingency like how they ‘Won the War’, just can’t fill the hole in the bucket.
In simple language, what she meant was that the money of Sri Lanka had gone through the hole in the bucket and without that money there was no gas, no fertiliser. Prices of sugar, vegetables bread and rice had gone through the roof and that was why people were protesting by the thousands in the streets.
That is the status quo despite the verbiage of the pundits and fake pundits
This political season is remarkable in that astrologers have ceased making political predictions, at least in public. Political pundits having swallowed more than a fair share of their own words and are looking at family trees to jump across to like in the former amphibian era when tree jumping was a popular sport among political toads and frogs. But there is only one family tree standing now and non-indigenous (family) species in it are threatening to jump clear out of it. Thus, the pundits are now limited to making proposals based on their ‘principles’.
The Gotabaya Rajapaksa-led national crisis is tragic in that every viable proposal that could haul them out of the abyss they are now in is knocked out by their election slogans and pledges with which they won the Presidential and Parliamentary elections. Their short-sighted election propaganda is disastrously boomeranging on their proposals for recovery.
A devastating propaganda slogan of the Rajapaksa Party was the hypocritical, purblind, ultra-nationalistic slogan against the splintered opposition parties (the UNP and the SJB): “We shall not sell our ‘national treasures’ to foreigners or foreign organisations.” This was the clout on the head of the UNP leader Ranil Wickremasinghe for leasing out the Hambantota harbour to China being unable to pay back the mounting billion-dollar debt incurred by the Rajapaksa government to build the harbour that was bringing in no income.
What were these national treasures? This writer pointed out at that time that these ‘national treasures’ were the ‘Black Holes’ of the Sri Lankan economy, some of which had made a countless millions of foreign currency disappear. One of them was SriLankan Airlines headed during the Rajapaksa regimes by President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother-in-law.
Some other black holes were: the Mahinda Rajapaksa Magampura International Harbour and the Mahinda Rajapaksa Mattala International Airport. For some years hardly a ship docked into this harbour built at great cost even though ships were sailing on one of the busiest shipping routes in Asia, a few miles way. The airport was described in international journals as ‘ the loneliest airport in the world’ with only an occasional Ayah Flight of SriLankan Airlines taking off from Mattala.
The Karma committed in calling these ‘black holes’ as ‘national treasures’ is manifesting itself on the perpetrators. Since the sale or leasing of Sri Lankan property to foreign interests was declared to be treasonous by the Rajapaksa leaders, the Rajapaksa followers consider the proposals for sale or lease of Sri Lankan property to foreigners even by the Rajapaksas is high treason! This blocks the main avenue, Direct Foreign Investment (FDI), through which developing countries have pulled themselves out of poverty.
Many long-term and short-term proposals which cannot materialise or bring forth the immediately required money are hotly debated. IMF assistance, a national government, sale of ‘black holes’, a military dictatorship, full powers to parliament, and give the JVP a chance are among the many proposals that will run into two major obstacles.
One major block is the consolidation of power within the Rajapaksa family, a near two-decade-long exercise, now complete. Vital decisions affecting the nation can be taken over the family dinner table. The family is getting more powerful and bigger stretching into the third generation and is in no mood to surrender this nepotistic power.
The other is President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Though elected on a democratic mandate, he has shown many inclinations towards an autocratic leadership, ignoring parliament on key issues. Having made vital decisions that have gone haywire, he has shown no inclinations to rectify his mistakes and has declared his intention to rule for six more years although the country is in a severe political and economic crisis. He wants a new constitution that would further enhance his executive powers — power which no leader of Sri Lanka has had.
The political opposition is in shambles but the people, trade unions in particular, are rising and demanding their basic rights on the streets.
That is how we see Paradise Island as the Sun breaks out over it for 2022 and we welcome it with Harry Belafonte’s entertaining song in futility (truncated)
There’s hole in the bucket dear Liza, dear Liza
There’s a hole in the bucket
dear Liza there’s a hole.
So fix it dear Henry, dear Henry fix it
With what shall I fix it dear Liza, dear Liza.
……. fix it with what
With straw dear Henry, dear Henry…….
But the straw is too long dear Liza, dea Liza…..
So cut it dear Henry, dear Henry…..
With what shall I cut it dear Liza, dear Liza with what
With an axe dear Henry, dear Henry……..
But the axe is too dull dear Liza, dear Liza…..
So sharpen it dear Henry, dear Henry……
With what shall I sharpen it dear Liza with what….
Use the stone dear Henry, use the stone Henry….
But the stone is too dry dear Liza, dear Liza….
So wet it dear Henry, dear Henry wet it….
With what shall I wet it dear Liza,dear Liza….
With water dear Henry, dear Henry
With what shall I carry it dear Liza, dear Liza
With what…..
Use the bucket dear Henry, dear Henry…..
But there’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza, dear Liza.
There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza there’s a hole.
(The writer is former editor of
The Sunday Island, The Island
and consultant editor of
the Sunday Leader)