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TIMES POSTCARD
Who says prices are rising?
By Rajpal Abeynayake
The President says she will do anything to save the Mechanism.A friend of mine says that he will do anything to keep his television --- because, the way the bills are going up, the tube will shut itself off.

There is nothing to see on the tube except those who say "Mechanism Mechanism Mechanism.''
But, still my pal wants the television on.
It's like the fireplace in his house.
He says it gives him warmth.

He has noticed that things are getting rickety and rackety in the country. Train services, bus services - most public services are creaking.
But it's the television that is keeping him un-informed of these developments, but informed of the Mechanism.
The President, he heard, said sometime recently that the Mechanism is not a Mechanism at all.

But since everybody calls it the Mechanism anyway, he has figured out that the Mechanism is tied to his fuel bill.
Each time the fuel bill rises, the more times various people on television say "the Mechanism'' is important.

His three-wheeler driver keeps talking of the Mechanism.
By the time the three wheeler gets to his destination, he invariably says "mechanism'' in so many ways, that my friend is convinced that it is his Mechanism also, to make sure that his price increase is not just appropriate -- but over and above the increase slapped on fuel.
In Kandy they opened a car park when I was there over the weekend. Pirith was chanted, and a foreign friend was left wondering what a car park opening has got to do with a ban on the sales of beer.

It's propitious to declare open a car park on a day when fuel prices are raised. Few really can remember for which time it was raised?? 6th wasn't it? It doesn't make a difference.
Even as the car park was being opened and the fuel prices were going up in Kandy, there was another Mechanism matter going on.
A monk was fasting.

People went mechanically by -- as if they were afraid that stopping to catch the scene will keep them from their busy schedules - - which will keep them from using their cars, which in turn will keep them from using their spanking new car park.

But in Kandy itself, everything seemed to happen so mechanically and so predictably that it seemed that Mechanism was not just an utterance that trips off the tongue of politicians such as G. L. Peiris or Samamraweera. The President came - - they closed the roads. The car park came, they closed the bars.

A monk began fasting, and Kandy had all the events it could take. It wore an air of a happening city - - with the net result that when people woke up they found suddenly that that oil prices and electricity prices are all either going or are already gone through the roof. But they had been almost mechanically made immune to such developments. They walked. They listened, as more politicians said Mechanism over television many times over.

Mr Weerawansa said the ceasefire is something like a motor, which is wired to explode. He said it so passionately that a lot of people mechanically went for the remote control. But every channel said Mechanism. There was no point controlling it - no one had a remote chance. As the JVP says, maybe pulling the plug might help.

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