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However much money Central Bank Governor Cabraal prints or how much is squeezed into Finance Minister Rajapaksa’s bowl by neighbouring India during his mercy mission this week, the country still needs hard currency. Right now Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves are hovering round $1.3 billion, it is said, and ready to dip further.

What is terribly disconcerting is the direction in which the arrow head is currently pointing suggesting that our foreign reserves could turn even worse by the time dear Basil returns after all the pleading and offering more of the ‘family’ silver, never mind the stamping of feet on how Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and national assets would be safeguarded come what may.

While the finance minister might be ready to trade more State silver, we read last week of two patriotic officials going in search of a pot of gold to fill Cabraal’s empty Christmas stockings. The two officials-one from the staff of Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera and the other from Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda, had travelled all the way to Mullaivitu in search of gold said to have been buried by the LTTE, possibly when defeat was staring it in the face.

Of course the two officials were not seen with shovel and pick-axe on their shoulders like the old time prospectors. Or no! According to news reports they had sought the help of the head of police in Puthukidirippu where the gold was supposedly buried.

How they zeroed in on this place (wherever it might be) and who provided the information that there was this boodle waiting to be dug up by some enterprising lackey one could only speculate. There is one other little matter that needs to be sorted out. Is crossing provincial borders still taboo under the Covid health restrictions or has that too been lifted like that permanent ban on some chemical fertilisers.

If the ban was still operative at the time of their border crossings then the two could be said to have violated health regulations under which police last month rushed to several magistrate’s court seeking injunctions to stop public demonstrations.

Now if the same regulations were operating then and at the time the two gold diggers crossed the boundary lines then one law should apply to all. Now as there are some among our worthies who do not understand what one law means or does not care for it, maybe they should be referred to Galagoda-Aththe Gnanasara Thera who will explain it all.

In the meantime, the Public Security Ministry is reported as having said that it has asked the police to investigate into this hullabaloo of state officials on the hunt.

One can quite understand the scepticism of some readers about this police investigation business. None of this would have been necessary if our patriotic prospectors for hidden gold had first approached State Minister Lohan Ratwatte to seek his assistance in trying to trace the exact location of the hidden gold.

Lohan Ratwatte who was not so long ago State Minister for Prison Management and Prisoner Rehabilitation could have asked some prisoners in Anuradhapura jail what they knew of this buried gold. He has a persuasive and candid way of eliciting that it would have saved our patriotic duo a lot of time and trouble had sought the official route to the treasure.

But then such an orderly route would have been too late, for by then State Minister Ratwatte had surrendered half his portfolio and was handling only gems and jewellery.

But some would venture to argue that Minister Ratwatte still had a stake in this mini gold rush. It might be recalled that the LTTE did collect gold and jewellery from their temporary Eelam which some LTTE ideologues thought would last as long as Hitler’s Reich. We know what happened to Die Fuehrer and his 1000-year Reich.

Anyway to cut the Eelam story short, many families had to cough up their bullion, especially the women who had salted away their gold jewellery for their daughters’ dowries, to LTTE enforcers to build up the local Fuehrer’s reserves. What was buried when the tide began to turn against them was mainly the gold jewellery of the inhabitants of Eelam.

So State Minister for Gems and Jewellery had a good case to make that gems and jewellery wherever they are — above ground or below — came under his ministerial purview.

But exploring this logic further would be to digress from the main narrative about hidden gold and how it could save the economy from going down the tube — at least for a few months and warm the cockles of Cabraal’s heart.

That should deter him from concocting more rules and regulations to rake in the remittances of hard working migrant labour if cajoling them with a few rupees more hardly serves as a sufficient enticement like the billions of dollars, the public was told by a galaxy of myth-peddlers, would pour into the Colombo Port City.

All they have witnessed so far is Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa skirting the sand dunes with the Tourism Minister on his pillion at this Chinese venture.

Never mind all those tales that remind one of the Roman emperors of yore trying to pacify disgruntled citizens with “bread and circuses”. The truth is the country is in a hole. So there is some hope that our two patriotic officials will dig the nation out of this hole by finding the hole that the LTTE dug to bury the gold. That is if all this is not a hoax to distract the public from exploding gas cylinders and the innumerable excuses that have been trotted out by a bureaucracy now well trained in finger-pointing.

Instead of promising to hold investigations (the results of which, if they happen, are hardly known) into their gold-digging adventure, like the ranks of Tuscany one should scarce forbear to light fire crackers in acknowledgement of their patriotic duty of trying to save the nation from an economic explosion far more destructive than exploding gas cylinders that pock- mark the nation.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)