Sunday Times 2
It’s business as usual for some of our ministers
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Just like all of you, my dear readers, I have been finding life increasingly difficult during these past months.
Since I no longer drive, I have for many years depended on my ageing legs to take me from A to B – and if A is a fair distance from B, I resort to three wheelers, Ubers and taxi cabs. But for the past several weeks, I have been confined to a 5 kilometre radius of my home. My wheeled chariots have been unavailable because all my usual charioteers have been patiently spending their days and nights in fuel queues.
The Prime Minister has told us that our country’s economy has hit rock bottom. We ourselves can see that the nation has ground to a halt. Those who have to present themselves for work have to take their chances in overcrowded buses or trains – or if at all possible, hazard a long walk to their workplaces. Others (such as those in the hospitality industry) may be fortunate to be provided accommodation at their workplaces – while a few of us, thanks to the experience acquired by working during the Covid pandemic, have learned to Zoom on to computer screens at home.
All of us have had to cope with a terrible situation and make do as best as we can.
But there are a few citizens of what was once known as Paradise Island for whom Business continues as Usual.
While school children have to live through this period — with schools shut down and classes conducted online as best as they can be — our Education Minister Susil Premajayantha grabbed himself a free “conference trip” to Bangkok during the first week of June. While some delegates attended the conference virtually, Premajayantha of course had to visit Bangkok in person – and so availed himself of our government’s money to fly and stay in Thailand. At a time when our children cannot get three square meals a day, when their exam results are continually being delayed, when teachers cannot even come to school because the country has no diesel and petrol, Premajayantha flies off to spend time at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok! And as if a trip to Bangkok wasn’t enough, at the end of June he did another overseas trip — to attend, we are told, the UNESCO conference in Paris.
The people have neither food to eat nor gas to cook — and the minister grabs the opportunity to utilise government money to put free trips to no less exotic places than Bangkok and Paris!
Business goes on as usual.
It seems that our ministers want to enjoy the perks of office as long as they can before they are thrown out!
Our thick-skinned young Minister Harin Fernando also took off on an overseas trip last month on the laudable pretext of promoting tourism from the UK and Europe. This is the man who wanted a ministry so badly that he was prepared to jump from one side to another, not knowing where to jump to but ready to jump on command when he worked out on which side his bread would attract more butter.
This is the man who started his political life in Uva as a UNP organiser and whose own Wikipedia page states that he “played a critical role in defeating Mahinda Rajapaksa at the 2015 presidential election”. At that time he strongly criticised Rajapaksa’s regime for its “corruption, authoritarian rule and lawlessness”. Today he is serving the same Rajapaksa regime – and has a Facebook page on which he posts pictures of himself addressing audiences in London, giving interviews to Deutschewelle radio service in Germany — and generally enjoying the status accorded to a visiting minister.
Again, Businesss goes on as Usual. While the people remain foodless, fuel-less and hope-less, the nattily dressed Minister of Tourim blithely goes off to tour Europe.
But the classic example of Business going on as Usual was made eminently clear this week by the case of Ports, Shipping and Aviation Minister Nimal Siripal de Silva.
In 2020, the government awarded a contract worth about USD 600 million to Japan’s Taisei Corporation to construct a multilevel terminal building at the Bandaranaike International Airport. This Taisei Corporation has been involved in many construction projects in our country –projects which it has completed efficiently and efficaciously.
When Ranil Wickremesinghe accepted the office of prime minister in May this year, he had to select his cabinet ministers from the low quality material available to him in parliament– and so had to accept then SLFP member Nimal Siripala de Silva (the man of whom photographs showing him fast asleep during parliamentary sittings have gone viral on the internet) as minister in charge of the important portfolio of Ports, Shipping and Aviation.
The Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa claimed the Japanese company Taisei protested that approval for one of their projects was dependent on a bribe.
When word got out, the president demanded that de Silva resign his portfolio while an independent investigation is carried out. The minister said he was resigning on his own volition.
Trips by Ministers to Bangkok, Paris, London and Berlin — officially deemed “work-related” but construed by us suffering citizens as joy rides — are bad enough. Soliciting bribes to approve contracts and projects on behalf of the government is terrible.
We are being governed by people who have no sense of integrity and no sense of shame. No wonder the citizens of Lanka are at the end of their tether.
For how much longer will they tolerate this type of sordid ‘Business as Usual’?-