Rajpal's Column

Bastardisation and bawling between two airports

Changi recently won the award for the best airport in the world. Won it for the fifth time or so, he was told.

But, he didn't believe it when people said Colombo was going to give Changi a good run for its money. In Singapore, the airport is sprawling. There is art decor, miles of escalators and glitzy fly-trains between separate terminals.

There are attendants in all the toilets, and pharmacies galore all over the place, besides the duty-free shopping that invites you to shop till you drop.

But, yet, Colombo was going to give Changi a run for its money.

The New Zealander was enroute for the one-day series in which his country's team was putting on a very good show. He was expecting some good drama once he got to the venue, good sizzling sixes and some very sanguine cricket.

But the first shot he got to know of was not even fired at the Premadasa stadium. It was one that he heard just after he gave-in his passport to immigration.

He thought he saw shrapnel whizz past. It was like Sanath Jayasuriya in total combustion.

But then, someone yelled "quick get out of here." Oooh, this was better than Changi. They were even disposing of immigration formalities. 

But somebody rushed past him, a six foot three hundred pound Briton it looked like, bawling like a baby. The impact left him knocked-out on the floor, and our New Zealander was wondering "sure, Colombo wants to give Changi a good run for its money, but why this unholy hurry anyway?"

In minutes, he saw mothers crawling all over the floor, and babies giving instructions. "Get out of here uncle," one of them yelled. "They are attacking the airport."

"Yeah right," said our man from Wellington. "And Sanath Jayasuriya has just hit three-hundred and sixty six."

I met the man in a Colombo hotel on Thursday. He still insists that it's unfair Colombo was passed up for the best airport award. Singapore is all hype, he says, but where is the drama, where is the human element? 

Colombo has done everything possible, and more, to ensure that element. You know, the President announcing power cuts, the Airforce allowing the men inside for free, and all that. All that meticulous planning, and they still don't get the award. 

Life is unfair, but as John Kennedy once bawled out "who the hell said it was going to be fair anyway?"

But the sanguineness and the rushes of blood. That's the basic distance between Singapore and Sri Lanka. 

In Singapore, the fiddling is done in the cultural centers. There has been a lot of them established in that city, since the old Senior Minister Le Kuwan Yew wanted to culturise his otherwise parvenu country. In Sri Lanka, it is done all over the place. Especially when Colombo burns.

But it is not a grudge match, and the President here is not one for grudges. She has asked that there be an all-party conference, to look into the situation. What, there is a situation?

There is no crisis of legitimacy that this government is facing. What is this bastardisation that the press, the commentators, the pundits and the nattering mob want to father on this regime?

According to Harold Lasswell (1936), politics is the decision-making process of who gets what, when, and how. The UNP just doesn't get it these days. That's decided.

But does that make this regime legitimate? With a one per cent growth rate in the first quarter of this year, as opposed to a 6 per cent growth rate in the corresponding quarter of last year, this government's legitimacy would have been on the backslide.

Then came that piece of drama described above in which the New Zealander got caught. Theoretically, there is no economy now.

But, when there is no legitimacy, it has to be manufactured. Even the Tigers don't want to negotiate with this government, or are not so keen, they say, because they'd rather negotiate with a strong government than a weak one.

But, the Tigers did want to negotiate with this government. That's probably because of all the legitimacy that this government has manufactured.

The legitimacy can come out of the very bowels of illegitimacy, and the government can sing a bastard's ballad. For instance, the legitimacy of this government would have been further traduced by the events of last week and the airport attack. But the government says the attack is precisely why the opposition against it should be forgotten, and all forces should come together. It is not as if the government cannot handle the situation. It is just that the situation demands that the opposition backs off. Why should the opposition parties have a meeting with the government? So that President can have a secret meeting, and claim on TV the next day that the UNP asked for Cabinet posts?

All this is chicken-feed politics in a grim situation. But does a grim situation require this government to make it grimmer? (and if that's confusing, this just in: The Daily News reports that the article published in The Sunday Times is a good example of the media Mafia at work. There was no flight from Singapore to Colombo at the time the attack on the airport took place last Tuesday, and even if there was, there were no New Zealanders on the passenger list. Some more legitimacy instantly manufactured.) 
to be put here

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