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Construction
or confusion? The report card for three months is far from satisfactory, notwithstanding the President's recent faux pas, the claim that "not even five cents" of pledged aid money has been received. (…was it an escape clause for her, or an idle rant?). Three months on, confusion - not construction - seems to be the operative word. To date, the Government has not made known its accounting procedures -- which is cause for scores of accountability related queries, especially from overseas, regarding foreign funds being sent to Sri Lanka. There is a squint in the eye abroad when they talk of funds for the Government of Sri Lanka. The ballyhooed tsunami early-warning system on the other hand is spoken of less today than in the early weeks of the disaster. But, politicians are back in business as usual. They are in clover, doing what they are best at which is plotting referendums, elections and Constitutional Amendments to hang on to power -- or else, where the tables have turned, in trying to bring down the Government. This then is the situation at the end of three months, when most of the bereaved must have just completed the sad ritual of the three months almsgiving. We can only imagine the fate of these victims in the months and years ahead, when what we have at the end of month 3 is a large pool of crocodile tears, copiously shed on their behalf. National resurrection from a disaster of this enormity has to be carried out with evangelical zeal, but there isn't anything coming close to that. What's there, on the other hand, is in-fighting at the highest levels, snowballing bureaucratic incompetence, and alas, a bushel of non-transparency. Pulling
out the Washington plug Ambassador Devinda Subasinghe was a younger, enthusiastic ex-World Banker who knew the Washington scene, with special links to the Republicans through the Heritage Foundation, their influential think-tank. He knew ‘who was who’ in that powerful city, and within weeks he played a crucial role in US-Sri Lanka relations reaching very special -- indeed sometimes too special -- levels. Subasinghe, though serving his nation's interests, maybe sometimes seen as weighing too heavily towards Washington, or even the World Bank -- as a treasury heavyweight recently was heard to complain to the President, despite having praised the envoy previously as being efficient. But it's Colombo's role to ensure that the cosiness with Washington does not mean we are Washington's puppet on a string. What Colombo has done instead is to 'kill the emissary' by replacing Subasinghe, who spoke the Washington language of the Bush Republicans, with a career diplomat with high integrity no doubt, but lacking the ability, at least for a long while, to dare pick up the telephone and speak to the US Secretary of State, no less. Diplomatic postings have been the Government's fairyland where it exercises its sovereign prerogative to dump the party faithful, irrespective of their abilities in the fine craft of international relations. Now, there is an added dimension to these games of patronage. Envoys are being put in place to canvass for the UN big seat. To play putty with the world's centre-of-gravity, the crucial diplomatic posting in the most powerful nation on earth by removing our best man in Washington, whether we like it or not, is therefore an anti-national act by this Government. The UNP must surely be secretly pleased over this monumental blunder by the UPFA, because it saw one of its appointees serving the new Government with equal commitment. There is so much to be done in Washington - re-engage with a new more hard-line set of decision-makers; re-instate the LTTE on the Foreign Terrorist Organisations list and stick to the hardline approach on Sri Lankan terrorism; conclude trade concessions to face post-quota era in textile exports etc., etc., but what does the Government do? Change the horse while it's galloping the home stretch. |
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