Thoughts from London

"Oh to be a politician and join in the fun"?
It turned out to be an enjoyable evening all right. The Channa-Upuli dance ensemble performed two nights in London after some days in Paris, with a mix of traditional dancing and the modern.

In February I saw something rather different at the Mount Lavinia Hotel where SriLankan Airlines hosted the best of their travel agents from London. When asked about what seemed like a trendy performance of dancing, somebody at the table remarked that it was cultural fusion. Seemed to me more like cultural confusion.

But the London evening was different. It was capped with the legendary Podi Appuhamy producing culinary delights in the way of a typical Sri Lankan meal that a couple of foreign guests appeared to find as heady as some of the dances.
It was all arranged by the Seva Vanitha Unit of the Sri Lanka High Commission in London that did a good job of putting it together so quickly and efficiently.

As a means of selling our culture and giving prospective tourists a glimpse of what to expect if they ever visited our shores, this kind of presentation might serve as an aperitif. But in today's world where flying on holiday is being hampered by a proliferation of Osamas and more recently SARS, we need more vibrancy and novelty in our promotional efforts. Only new ideas and new thinking can provide that magnetic pull.

The Tourist Board will tell you that more tourists are flying into Sri Lanka than some months ago. All well and good, if true. But what we need is not an increase in the trickle but a flood that would make our hoteliers, airline and tour operators wear grins that could eat a banana sideways.

Harking on the traditional will not do. Centuries of history we might, a favourable climate we might provide, ventures and adventures can be found. But the same old tourism blurb writers are churning out the same old slogans about sun and sand and sun and fun that the clichés are coming apart faster than Washington can find Saddam's weapons.

Think, think, think. What is it that we have in plenty in such vivid variety the whole year round, in numerous shapes and sizes and has never been explored or exploited because those mandated with the task of attracting foreigners to Sri Lanka have been thinking along the same grooves?

The truth is that every country has them in one form or another. Yet ours are unique and therein lies their incalculable worth. It is not everyone who can create an aura of fascination and fear, of ecstasy and errancy, of pride and prejudice, of innocence and incense, of inferno and Armageddon.

So much has been spent, by hook or by crook, on creating and nurturing a whole new class that fattens on Sri Lanka it must soon be declared pay back time. It is time they be asked to return to our country a fraction of what they have gathered to themselves all these decades.

It is true that every country in the world has them, in one form or the other. But it is equally true that the world will be hard put to find such a lot as ours whichever way one looks at them. I refer, of course, to none other than those faithful guardians of our country's resources and riches, our moral and ethical virtues and who, in the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, have unfailingly said: ask not what the country can do for you but what you can do for the country.

They are our politicians, the persons who because of their inherent patriotism and moral rectitude have come forward to serve this country. They, in their delusions of adequacy, believe they have literally saved the country from doom and damnation and made the future safe for the next generations.

Indeed yes. Those of us who have had the privilege over the years to write about the haps and mishaps of our politicians in and out of parliament have watched with awe the changing physical being of parliamentarians.

Many years ago, shortly after parliament moved from its previous place by the sea to its opulent and palatial presence by the Diyawanna Oya, I remarked to a colleague in the press gallery that you could always tell those who have been in parliament more than six months. By then a member's narrow waist and broad mind tend to change places.

Once when I said that those entering parliament should be measured round their waist on first arriving and then six months later, I was chided by a minister for trying to insult MPs. That was no comment on MPs, I said, it was a compliment to the excellence of the highly subsidised food at the parliament restaurant.

When history comes to be written, a question that would be surely asked is what politicians have done for the country and what they have done to the country.
Personally I have no doubt what the answer would be having been witness to years of political shenanigans and chicanery. This is, of course, not a commentary on all politicians. There are many I have respected and I respect now. But if some feel offended it might well be due to verisimilitude.

We have had 55 years of political experience since the country was given independence. If we divide that period by two - say from 1948 to July 1977 and then from July 1977 to the present day, any impartial observer who has lived through them would clearly accept that the country's political culture has deteriorated much faster during the second half.

It is not that corruption, misuse and abuse of power by ministers and MPs was unknown during those early days of independent rule. No, political thuggery, corruption, abuse, intimidation of the media and political opponents existed then too.
But the difference is that today it is not only so widespread that it has seeped to several levels below the political, but that such sheer abuse, corruption and misuse of state power and resources are tolerated, if not ignored by party hierarchies. It is like Mafioso who cover up for the family.

Most persons enter the political scene intending to make a name for themselves. And some of them indeed do, but it is not a name that I would want to use in public. I remember one parliamentarian telling me many years ago that he will be prime minister one day. Knowing the man, I felt one day would be long enough. Two days could have been a calamity.

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