Rajpal's Column

17th December 2000

Singapore: who could have seen this coming?

By Rajpal Abeynayake

But, Jayewardene apparently insisted that Singapore helps him launch the carrier. He also wanted a Sri Lankan pilot released from his job with Singapore Airlines so that the man could head the project. Yew observes wryly that he didn't know how a pilot could build up a business enterprise. ( He also says that Singapore wanted Air Lanka to defer the purchase of some airbuses at some point. But, the company went ahead, at which point Singapore pulled out of the project. )

With that as an introduction on how not to run a country, Yew apparently launches into more grievous concerns such as the ethnic conflict.

He believed that the key to economic development in Sri Lanka was peace and concessions.

(The man can be smug; he says he quite enjoyed the fact that Sri Lanka had modeled its economic development drive after Singapore.)

A great deal of water went under that bridge since Yew become Jayewardene's friend and economic mentor. Air Lanka metamorphosed into Sri Lankan Airlines, and has a managing partner now based in the Middle East.

But, Yew's style of economics and governance, though it did good for Singapore didn't take off here, even though Jayewardene's airline did. Jayewardenomics went down in a heap, partially because of the huge socio economic costs involved in the conflict.

To that extent Yew may have been right, but he also did not bargain for the fact that the Singapore example would eventually be taken over, by country's as large and as antithetic to Singapore as India for instance. (Bangalore will be made a Singapore, an Indian politician recently promised.)

Now, Lee can perhaps write another book and say why the Singapore model works only in Singapore, while every other country which comes under the force of the untrammeled market, seems to stumble headlong into conflict instability and crisis.

A Professor from a key Indian university recently told an audience that he believes we are all in this market economy, even those who are its key players who play the stock-markets and take rides in the evenings to meditation classes.

Those who are opposed to market economics still wear our Reeboks, he adds. It takes all types.

But, even with his breezy intellect, he is loath to identify what causes these problems of great income disparities and increasing poverty in the developing world.

His thesis is that we are all in it, the Reebok-set, the meditation-set and the stockbrokers.

At least Gandhi, with his godly spirituality knew who his enemy was, but in these market driven days even intelligent people are so confused that they seem to say everything is so amorphous, that even the enemy has disappeared. The meta narrative isn't capitalism anymore, or the forces that are arraigned against it. In those balmy days when he advised the Sri Lankan president, even Lee Kwan Yew couldn't have predicted this…..

End-piece: Kamal Addararachchi has a way of getting in and out of trouble. His ultimate claim to fame will be as a Houndidni who got out of some very narrow shaves with the law.

It is a good thing the man has been given the benefit of the doubt, and being called a cad in court is a very small price to pay in any event.

Adddrarachchi's acquittal comes close on the heels of the Supreme Court's reprimand of around five police officers who arrested some persons ostensibly for being involved in procuring sex. But the judges had said that intercourse is not prostitution, "though some of our police officers seem to think so.''

This is a country which got famous, during the anxious days when the AIDS epidemic was still new, for the arrest of a youth who was carrying a condom in his wallet. The rest of the world was distributing condoms to people, and a man in Thailand became famous for his condom distribution campaign. But in Sri Lanka they were still arresting young men for being in possession of the most innocent of prophylactics.

But, the AIDS epidemic, despite such anti-prophylactic measures did not hit this country.

A key officer of the anti AIDS task force, making a speech at the British Council some six or seven years back, predicted that Sri Lanka may end up like some sub-Saharan African country when the epidemic really hits us.

He said 'there won't be people to work in our factories.''

But AIDS never hit us. They still continue to douse lovers with water canon, and hound umbrella lovers despite the fact that AIDS never really ravaged this country anyway.

There is no way this country can have an AIDS epidemic when people get arrested for having sex, and have to go all the way upto the Supreme Court to clear their names. As someone said, sex should be made compulsory in this country — so that young people do not take so easily to arms.

The Special Report

Editorial/ Opinion Contents