Columns

The people were given a saccharine coated, jasmine scented fast-relief puff of a breather from the suffocating traumas of daily strife when the government went into celebratory mode on Friday, to relive Freedom hour in splendorous style with all the pomp and pageantry it could muster at its command.

Under the prayer like theme of wishful hope — the long winded ‘An affluent tomorrow and prosperous motherland with challenges overcome’ slogan — the gala national event had, behind its charm façade, been stage-managed much in advance to ensure a spit and polish parade to showcase liveried national pride.

LANKA’S INDEPENDENCE DAY SHOW: The boast of heraldry and the pomp of power lined up in regimental file

Held in the midst of frantic health warnings by the Director of Health Services of COVID variant Omicron’s present unstoppable rampage, the events committee had earlier announced the impressive show card of the ceremony. Heralded by the cannon booms of a 21 naval gun salute off Galle Face Green, it featured 6500 armed forces personnel marching past the presidential enclosure at Independence Square in regimental file, with 26 jets of the Air Force fleet staging a fly pass in the sky.

And then the cultural dancers, an impressive bevy of girls in colourful attire, showing off the nation’s artistic style and grace, were also included in the lineup. All this, it was assured, would be ‘held in keeping with the healthcare guidelines’, though none of the nearly 7,000 at the event wore masks.

But if the intention was to give the masses a right royal taste of the ecstatic joy the nation would have felt that sunlit morn, three score and fourteen years ago, when she wriggled out of her colonial skin and stepped forth to breath freedom’s sweet air, it remains to be seen whether the slimy ruse of Roman Caesers to keep the masses happy with bread and circus will work anymore in present day Lanka.

The circus is there in plenty but where’s the bread?

Where’s the dough, the money, the cash, not locked in some Pandora’s Box off shore but bereft in the people’s purse, to buy the bare necessities for survival? Where’s the oil for transport, the medicines for illnesses, the three square meals on the table, the milk powder for the nation’s seed and blossom?

Elsewhere, beyond the celebratory grounds, the stark horrors of the nation continue unabated and almost every facet of life lies besieged. The tumbrils of doom are arriving at the gates and none are so deaf as those who refuse to hear its baleful tread. For the nation is reaping the whirlwind, having recklessly sown the winds of hate, deceit, injustices and the inveigling creeper corruption; and can do naught but stoically endure this present torment without end.

How different it is today to 74 years ago when the nation stood in that sunlit hour to keep her tryst with destiny?

When the British handed Ceylon her independence and the gift was lapped up with joy, did those then present ever think that the nation, 74 years on, would possibly rue the day it was granted?

The new found freedom presented the islanders the chance to be the masters of their destiny and develop this bounteous land, to forge unity among the races and lay the lasting foundation to build upon and see a nation’s Phoenix rise from the ashes.

Instead, its dynamics were used to sow discord and to settle old scores and, with a cry of phony patriotism, to deny the main minorities of their inalienable right to equality. Later, iconic Sinhala kings, who had driven out South Indian usurpers, were resurrected from the past and paraded as heroic avatars, with not even Buddhism spared, to whip up nationalistic fervour to a patriotic frenzy.

If the British had laid claim to be of superior stock, the Sinhalese proclaimed they were the chosen seed, blessed by the Gods to rule the land. And, if a genealogical record was needed to prove pedigree, they held up their Mahawamsa Annals to proudly show, sans blush, they were the descendants of an exiled vagabond Indian prince, born of an incestuous relationship, whose parricide father and mother had been the result of bestial sex between lion and woman.

Thus while the nation’s energies were expended on creating hate, the task of creating the nation’s wealth took a back seat; and begging foreign countries for her materiel needs became a Finance Minister’s past time.

For all their past exploration, when the British left in 1948, they, at least, did not leave us pauperised but richer with a clean balance sheet, with a healthy forex reserve, with a system of laws based on justice and fairness, a universal language, a competent civil service, thriving exports, notably that of branded Ceylon tea, and a trove of goodwill among the league of civilized nations. What better start for a reborn nation to make capital out of her inheritance, the shining role model and envy of ‘less happier lands’?

And what did we do? In the spendthrift manner of a prodigal son, we squandered it all, we bust the lot.

Take a look at the desolate wasteland.

n Instead of a healthy balance sheet we now have a mountain of debt with our foreign exchange coffers down to the last dollar.

n Instead of a justice system where all are equal before the law, we have selective law enforcements with some more equal than their peers.

n We have politicised, and, since of late, militarised, the once competent civil service, and turned that straight upright backbone of the nation into a bending, twisting, bowing flexible spine of a performing circus contortionist.

n We have neglected our agriculture and scorned the rich bounty of this fertile land. With an ill thought carbonic policy going terribly awry, we have laid our fields to ruin, brought our famers to the brink of despair and the nation dangerously close to face the prospect of looming starvation.

n Industrialisation has not brought the economic gains it was expected to bring. It has remained locally focused, severely handicapped by the size and purchasing power of the local market, with its constant clamour for protectionism, revealing its inability to compete globally.

n With this Government’s  off the cuff, ’play it by ear’  foreign policy, we  have squandered our good will amongst the civilised nations of the world, and today, have more fingers than necessary on our hands to count the few left. We have endangered the ties with our regional powers by playing the double game of running with the Chinese and hunting with the Indians, seeking to play off one against the other to squeeze them both dry. But now exposed, the exultations of friendship are limited to diplomatic jargon with both China and India blatantly indicating by their recent arm-twisting tactics that they are in only for the spoils.Already both China and India dominate our strategic ports while the Chinese will be legally occupying the Port City for the next 99 years.  It’s no wonder, highfalutin glib talk of sovereignty is rarely heard these days, with this precious sceptre of state having been sold down the river for a mess of pottage not so long ago.

n The State has used the freedom it gained from the foreign yolk to systematically crackdown on the freedoms of its citizens; and its sordid track record on human rights has placed it in the dock of international legal forums, with the UN’s Human Rights Commission maintaining a special unit to monitor and update its dossier on Lanka.

n In the field of human resources, our number one export and pride is the shipping of ‘live’ cargo: Lanka’s men and women, crated in their thousands, to slave away in the Middle East and elsewhere as blue collar workers or as housemaids. The value of their annual remittance of USD 8 billion is such that it has become the mainstay of the Lankan economy.

n But the distress behind their toil, the adverse impact on the family structure and the damage to children caused by long separation from their mothers, though documented are never addressed. That’s the last of concerns to the authorities whose only interest in these exploitable cash cows is how many dollars can be extracted to provide a steady flow for the nation’s bare sustenance.

n Showering them with praise as ‘Rata Viruwan’ or the heroes abroad and short-changing them by paying them less for their dollars, they are asked to send more. But the question is never raised as to the causes for this recent exodus. The 8 billion dollar question stays unasked: Why they see, in the dusty deserts of Arabia, pastures greener than that of Lanka?

Why, after 74 years of independence, nearly 20,000 people, from every strata of society, leave Lanka each month to work abroad? And why, given half the chance, the rest are in so much rush to migrate to any clime — even Afghanistan, to the most desperate — rather than remain in their motherland, which the Gods themselves have forsook?

For all the patriotic cry of being the masters of our own destiny and blah blah, which ring every year at the Independence Day celebrations held for the leaders to  bask in reflected glory, this intensified  migration frenzy, spurred by a stark hopelessness, stands, perhaps, as the truest testament of exactly what independence has brought  for this country’s citizens.

Now at the very nadir of a slide down the slippery slope, the damning narrative shows how nepotism and family bandism sucked the nation of its lifeblood; how it inevitably led to mass scale corruption and gross abuses of power to condemn its people – if this revolting system continues for long – beyond the pale of economic redemption.

Lanka has made a pig’s breakfast of the independence granted on a platter. No wonder the people were in no mood to celebrate this year’s Freedom feast. In this winter of discontent, they await a new dawn to spring.