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Sri Lanka: Waiting for Godot in the Theatre of the Absurd
In the abject manner natives of the British Empire’s far flung islands used to wait for the mothership to arrive bearing the essentials for their survival 200 hundred years ago, the sighting of a fuel ship off Colombo’s coast last Sunday, raised so much excitement that it made the headlines on the national TV’s evening news.
With only a few days of stocks remaining, the arrival of the 40,000 oil shipment – this, too, only good for a week, as the Energy Minister said – was glad tidings indeed.
But, alas, it turned out Lanka didn’t have the USD 35 million needed to pay for it.
On Monday, Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila told Reuters, his ministry was in talks with the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank to release the funds. He said: “Even with this fuel, we will only have diesel for six days. We are heading for a serious fuel shortage because we do not have adequate foreign exchange to pay for fuel imports.”
Eventually the money was found and paid on Tuesday night for the oil shipment, the Energy Minister Gammanpila said on Wednesday.
Phew! Saved by the bell to scrape the coffers another day. And the day will not be far off. By the minister’s own reckoning, the 40,000 tons cargo of black gold will not last a week.
The last minute payment was effected after orders went out from the cabinet room on Tuesday evewhere the cabinet was meeting in an emergency session summoned by the President. In attendance at the 4 hour meeting which began at 5pm, were also the Treasury Secretary and the Central Bank Chief.
THE BLUNT MESSAGE: Thousands of motorists faced a hard struggle to keep the motor on the road
Like a bankrupt spendthrift reading out the measly possessions left after running through his inheritance, Gammanpila cut a sorry figure on Thursday when he delivered his state of the nation address in Parliament. The woeful list revealed, the country had – apart from the more expensive 95 Octane Petrol which is estimated to last for 40 days – stocks of the main fuel used, namely, 92 Octane Petrol for only 10 days and both Lanka Auto Diesel and Super Diesel only for the next 8 days.
The people were left to stare at the stark nightmare that fuel, the lifeblood of the economy and social life, will run out by March 6. That by next Sunday, all economic and public activity will enter shutdown mode.
But the Energy Minister did not spell out his pathetic inventory without offering hope, the one commodity of which no shortages exist but only a surfeit that fills the oil-less Sapugaskanda tanks to the brim. Gammanpila assured that more stocks of fuel were expected in the coming days.
And that’s not all. On the light front, we are in for more power cuts with the Public Utilities Chief Janaka Ratnayake warning this week that if sufficient fuel stocks for March and April are not secured, a three to five hour daily power cut can be expected.
The Association of Private Pharmacy Owners warned this week, that a greater crisis, worse than the present shortages of essentials, is in the offing with a massive drug shortage expected once the existing stocks of medicines are exhausted within three months.
The Government’s quest for dollars is the quest adopted by beggars in their search for their daily bread. Apart from flagrant beggary on global scale, which has earned it nothing but international disdain, it drifts aimless from one meal to the next in hope. Having no master plan, no credible blueprint for the nation’s resurrection, it’s reduced to showing its putrefying wounds to the neighbours to ask for more. How long can this state of affairs go on? How long must the people suffer this strain, endure excruciating pain, before their backs break upon the torturous rack?
In the absence of any viable alternative, seeking refuge in an IMF bailout — however complete an anathema it maybe for this government — may be the only way to prevent the nation from going bust.
This week Dr. Harsha de Silva declared that ‘independent economists and the opposition have repeatedly stated that home-grown solutions will not fix this and we need to seek international support immediately’. On Monday, SJB’s Eran Wickramaratne warned that, ‘if the UNHRC adopts another resolution against Lanka next month in Geneva, the economy will suffer further blows.’
So what then? What if the resolution leads member states to do its worse and impose trade sanctions, even oil embargoes, against Lanka? In that respect, none can blame the Government for training the masses on how to meet any disaster and how best to survive in an embargo hit economy, by conducting street drills in advance, with mass scarcities of the bare necessities already set in place.
This then is the projected course for the future. Unless reason returns from long exile and places the nation on track again, it will stagger on past steam inexorably toward the beckoning sunset.
In the meantime, Lankans will be like the two old men in Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Waiting for Godot,’ who meet each day at a park bench under a leafless tree to await the arrival of the mysterious Godot who sends word each day he will arrive but never does, promising, through a messenger, to arrive the following day. The two men pass the days away, discussing various issues, expressing their fears, their problems and their thoughts, believing that Godot will provide the answers when he arrives.
For the Lankans, now in the twilight hours, by the time Godot finally shows up with the answers, if he ever turns up at all, it will be far too late to be saved from their accursed fate.
| Will India do a ‘Russian Ukraine’ in Lanka or China one in Taiwan? Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine at 3am GMT on Thursday morning after its leader Vladimir Putin had broadcast a speech announcing a ‘special military offensive’ to ‘demilitarize’ and ‘denazify’ Ukraine. Beneath the euphemism, what it boiled down to was the Russian invasion in Ukraine had begun. By Friday night, Russian tanks had rolled into the capital, Kiev. Not that it was not on the cards. For some time, Russia had been sabre rattling over Ukraine’s alleged plans to join NATO, and had claimed, the US backed European alliance planned to base missiles on the Ukraine border aimed at Moscow. Understandably, they held such a threat on their door step as unacceptable and began laying plans of invasion while ostensibly engaging in diplomatic talks. In 2014, Russian funded and armed separatist rebels controlling 30 percent of two provinces bordering Russia, Donetsk and Luhansk, had made a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). These two declarations were, on Monday night, recognised by Russia, alone among nations to do so.  THE RUSSIAN INVASION: The first theatre of war this century A new theatre of war has opened in Eastern Europe, with diplomatic and military experts predicting the full blown invasion as one that could trigger a third world war. Though confined to East of Europe for the moment, it has all the ingredients necessary for its fall out to besmirch Asia’s landscape; and might be just what the doctor ordered for its regional powers to grab the chance and, citing the Russian example as a precedent, do a ‘Russian Ukraine’ to the neighbours it has long coveted. It showed that, despite technological advances, the IT revolution made in the last two decades, which had transcended geographical borders and swept through national frontiers to turn the world into a global village with nations so interdependent on one another to minimize the risk of war, there still remained infinite space on the world stage for a naked aggressor to jump up and give a violent display of his histrionics. The strategy is very simple really, especially for India if she has any plans to invade Lanka. The Russian model is a perfect fit for any designs India may have in that direction. Consider the modus operandi: Arm and finance a small group of Tigers still lurking in the northern undergrowth. Get them to declare a unilateral declaration of independence in the North-East province already carved out in the Tiger map as the state of Eelam; even as Perumal, the head of EPRLF and then Chief Minister of North- East Provincial Council, did when he announced the establishment of a separate Eelamist state on Lankan soil on 1 March 1990. Recognize the State of Eelam, even if no country will. Just as Putin did with Donetsk and Luhansk, it will not matter. Cite Lanka’s rapid continental drift toward China under the two Rajapaksa regimes, along with China’s overwhelming influence over Lanka. Beat the war drums and tell the world that India cannot afford to have Chinese missiles pointed at her on her doorstep. Then hours before the invasion, Modi to deliver a speech, announcing a military operation will soon begin in the north of Lanka to ‘defend the people who’ve been ‘subjected to years of genocide by the Sinhala regime; even as Putin declared his objective was to ‘defend the people in Donetsk and Luhansk who had been subjected for eight years to genocide by the Kyiv regime”. The script has already been written in Russian. For India, it only needs to be translated and enacted. For China, it’s even simpler to invade neighbouring Taiwan which it had held to be an extension of its mainland. Taiwan had been the refuge of Chiang Kai-shek, military ruler of China, who fled to the island in 1949 at the approach of Mao’s Red Army to Peking. Taiwan has survived so far due to heavy American backing though a Chinese take over in 2025 is imminent. Today, China can use the Russian doctrine of ‘enemy on the doorstep’ – first used by Americans in 1962 when the Russians secretly planned to base nuclear missiles in Cuba – to invade Taiwan without much fuss. No wonder then that, while many countries have rushed to condemn the Russian invasion, China and India have kept an ominous silence. China’s refusal is, perhaps, understandable. But why has India, this world spiritual leader of ahimsa, this incarnate avatar of nonviolence, who has the Buddhist symbol of the Dhamma Chakra emblazoned on her national flag, not condemned this gross act of violence? Neither has Lanka condemned the invasion but timidly has only echoed the Indo-Sino dictum and called on both the victim and the aggressor to exercise maximum restraint. The Foreign Secretary said on Friday night, the Government is waiting for the region or even SAARC to issue a condemnation.
That Russia is a major buyer of Ceylon Tea must, no doubt, be taken into account, but for a small island, living next door to a giant and vulnerable to be gobbled up in similar fashion as Ukraine was, not to lodge a formal protest against Russia’s invasion, seems to lose the broader picture of safeguarding her future survival as an independent nation; and, instead, to focus on fleeting economic gain which may be lost anyway due to fickleness in taste, strikes as short sightedness. Especially, when the 1987 instance of Indian ‘parippu drops’ and the deployment of Indian troops in the North and East of Lanka till 1990, done under the deceit of an invite issued by the then Lankan President, is still indelibly etched in living Lankan memory and tends to act as a warning that history often repeats. Lanka has played into India’s hands by remaining mute while India has covered herself by not condemning the invasion. But the power of diplomacy to protect Lanka’s independent status must never be underestimated. The Government made the biggest budgetary allocation, a thumping Rs 373 billion, an increase of 14 percent from 2021, for the defence sector, more than the combined amount it made for health and education. It was justified on the basis that the nation must be ready and armed to defend itself against any foreign aggressor. But as things stand today, Lanka’s defence forces will be unable to muster even a token defence against any foreign aggressor, with the soldiers confined to the barracks, with troop movement crippled by fuel shortages. Thus it is clear that the only possible chance we have to defend Lanka’s territorial integrity is at global forums, | |
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