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Monday
night mayhem It's always better to be safe than to be sorry and that's the cliché which rings true in the circumstances. A warning in some shape or form is always better than none at all, but there is also the ' wolf factor' where the fable has it that one cries "wolf; wolf'' all too often, so that when the real wolf comes along no one takes the alert seriously. The Early Warning System spoken of at the highest levels of world Governments in the immediate aftermath of the Dec. 26 disaster should be an issue taken up in the light of the above. The UN chief in Sri Lanka in an article written to this newspaper today focuses on the international implications of rebuilding etc., but more importantly, scientists say that if there such is an early warning system in place, there is no need for panic reactions such as there was last week in Sri Lanka where ten people died in panic evacuations, and in Indonesia and Malaysia where a few deaths were recorded in road accidents resulting from panic fleeing. Whether the highly contentious 100 metre buffer zone is necessary if an early warning system was in place is also moot. It will be a hundred metres of inconsistency anyway if implemented, as the Government will be breaking its own rule by continuing with the construction of the Marine Drive in Colombo. In Lunawa 72 fisher families have been settled in the Lunawa Hospital and in Unawatuna the authorities have built a state boatyard where a school was -- making a nonsense of the mandatory 100 metres "law", which appears to be in this context a device designed entirely to multiply the headaches of ordinary folks. Last Monday night's tsunami drill was not an organised one -- it was a chaotic run for life, where each man woman and child was for himself (or herself) and God was meant for all. Even by way of understatement, we have to say we are not the most organised nation on Earth, but with seismic activity continuing, and other natural disasters such as floods looming, a little more organisational acumen is mandatory. We welcome the Parliamentary initiative -- even though belated -- for remedial action, and commend the move to bring the multi-faceted Disaster Management exercise under one roof, or one Authority, to avoid confusion and streamline information, as has been the longstanding demand of the experts such as the Institute of Engineers. The
legacy of the Pope For young Catholics below the age of 30, they knew no other Pope - the Holy Father - the Numero Uno - of the 1.1 billion of Catholics worldwide, and the 1.5 million in Sri Lanka. Pope John Paul II was nicknamed the 'Travelling Pope', the crusading evangelistic traveller emulating his biblical namesake Paul, and arrived in Sri Lanka too in 1995. The traditional secrecy associated with the election of the Pope, about which much has been written and said over centuries, will not reveal much, but the elevation of the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be Pope John Paul II, 26 years ago was pregnant with significance at the time. In the 1980s and 1990s, the world was witnessing a major upheaval in the politics of Europe. Communism - an archenemy of the Catholic Church - was shaking at its foundations. Communist Poland was the catalyst for change. Pope John Paul II and the Vatican played a major role together with the Ronald Reagan US Administration in the 1980s and 1990s, presiding over the collapse of the Communist Empire in Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, and replacing those authoritarian regimes with democracies, which included religious freedoms. A controversial issue on which Pope John Paul II however did not get that much acclaim was his inflexible stand on birth control, which was seen as conservative to the extreme, though it was based on strict spirituality. Though not un-accustomed to controversy, the Catholic Church today is ravaged with problems ranging from paedophile priests in their ranks, to accusations of forcible conversions, to threats from new church groups with traditional churches closing down in their hundreds. Towards the latter part of his years, the 84-year-old Pontiff was unable to address these issues with the same vigour he would have focused on the downfall of Communism in Europe. But these are nevertheless issues for the future. |
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