Columns

Economic beggary and crushed mentalities drive home Govt failures

Fuel-less, power-less, gas-less, food-less, school-less, work-less, dollar-less and hopeless: that’s the gaunt face Lanka wears this Sunday morn as she glares at the progress report of the nation’s leaders, which starkly manifests on Lanka’s streets and needs no retelling why the landscape lies bleak, shrouded in a pall of gloom.

Had the President scored such damning minuses in all of his subjects at his school’s half-term tests, he would, no doubt, have been given ‘six of the best’ and sacked. Even from Ananda, which holds as its motto ‘Heedfulness, Punctuality lead to Nirvana’. As a schoolboy such flunks may be excusable. As a Head of State, such screw-ups are unforgivable.

He has not shown any close alertness to danger, heedlessly taking decisions, overnight with reckless abandon and has acted throughout as the ultimate know-all on all things, great and small, under the sun. Nor has he been on time, procrastinating his decisions until they had been rendered irrelevant and the damage irrecoverable. And, as for leading the nation to Nirvana as his school would have wished, he had led the people straight to Hell’s gates, and left them there to burn.

That is the grievous toll, Lankans are forced to pay for tolerating failure in office, even after it outstays its welcome and refuses to budge.

The curse on the nation seems so potent that even on the threshold of liberation, when the unknown angel appeared infinitely better than the familiar devil, an impish quirk of unknown fate, stepped into the sewer in a futile gesture to bloom the blighted lotus bud and delay salvation. Ranil’s bid to make a virtue out of failure stands doomed again to fail, with his promise to end the queues and create a tidal wave of dollars to break upon these island shores, now bared as simply hot air to balloon the people’s hopes.

Even though the people’s demand for a change in the leadership has been deferred, the indictment against the government still stands.

The damning indictment lists many counts some of which are:

• fuel, gas, food and medicine shortages,
• ghost government offices without service to the people,
• ghost schools without education to the children,
• ghost courts without dispensing justice to the seekers,
• ghost Parliament without representation from even government MPs, let alone from the Opposition ranks, as a result of the total Government breakdown.

These counts stand testament to the President’s and the Cabinet’s constitutional failure to fulfil Article 27’s ‘directive principle of state policy’ which holds, as one of its objectives, the pledge to see ‘the realisation by all citizens of an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families, including adequate food, clothing and housing.’

Though not of legal force, as made clear in Article 29, it, nevertheless, imposes upon the President and the Cabinet a moral responsibility to fulfil the people’s basic needs. Ironically this Article is conveniently ignored whilst harping, ad nauseam, the legal constitutional right of a President to remain cocooned in office, even when evident he has clearly lost the mandate, and thus the moral right to stay.

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON, ANYWAY? Lankan fans went bonkers groveling with gratitude, sporting the Aussie yellow colours to cheer the Aussie Kangaroos to victory against the Sri Lankan Lions at the ODI finals last Friday played on home ground, in a chameleon turn of loyalties after the Australian Government gave a USD14 million grant as food aid

But when sovereignty lies enshrined in the people, how long can a tenuous legal right withstand moral pressure’s irresistible force? This must trouble Lanka’s leaders when the road ahead spells further troubles for her people, which may end law’s dominant age when patience snaps, the tether breaks and plunges the nation into a state of anarchy.

For the past few months, we have lived thanks to India’s grace. Like chicken clucking in a barn at the sound of the farmer’s arrival with pails of chicken feed each dawn, we have whistled at the spotting of Indian fuel ships arriving at the port. And just like the chickens’ chuckled welcomes, expecting the same chicken feed on the day the farmer turned up with knife to slaughter, we gave wolf whistles to welcome the Indian delegation’s three-hour whirlwind mission to the island last week. But unbeknown to us, our great benefactor, the one who had fed us and fuelled us, gracious, generous India had come for the kill.

The credit line, set up by former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa in February this year, has so far enabled Lanka to ‘march on its stomach’. But now, four months later, with emergency aid topping the 4 billion dollar mark, both India’s patience and wherewithal had come to the end of the line. The Indian pipeline was running dry.

Instead, as the Sunday Times revealed last week, the Indian delegation had told the Government it had not come to grant more credit lines but to shop for new Indian-led projects.

Among the ventures India is keen to fast-track are the Mannar-Pooneryn wind power plants granted to Adani Green Energy Limited; the West Container Terminal in which Adani Ports has a controlling stake; and the proposed joint venture solar power plant in Sampur with India’s National Thermal Power Corporation. The Trinco Tanks have already been signed away. What else they have in mind is still unknown.

Throughout these past few months, Lankans had remained complacent, relying on India’s goodwill to refill the larder, irked only if the ships of hope, tarried to reach the port. Willingly held spellbound by the great Indian rope trick, the illusion now lies shattered to reveal India’s ulterior motive in her seeming altruism.

This is no reflection on foster Mother India. Naturally the interests of her own children come first before that of the adopted orphan. It is the primary duty of any responsible Government worthy of high office, to protect and promote the interests of her people. In regard to the Sri Lankan issue, Modi and his Cabinet have discharged their duty to the Indian people admirably. They owe no legal or moral obligation other than to the people of India. Certainly not to those of a foreign nation, howsoever sorry their wretched plight maybe.

The same tenant, the same hallowed duty, applies equally to that of the Lankan Government with regard to its own people.

Thus while it’s not unbecoming of India to ask collateral after supplying fuel and food worth USD 4 billion, it is indeed an indictment on the Lankan President and his Cabinet for having brought us to this sorry pass, for reducing a nation of 22 million people to shameful beggary; and leaving us, in our penury, to be exploited to the core without reservation. We have willingly left ourselves vulnerable and have none to blame but ourselves, even if we’re taken to the cleaners.

Perhaps, we should be grateful and say thanks to Mother India for feeding and keeping alive the Lankan lamb she intends to slaughter when its own shepherd and collies had strayed from their duties and left it tottering at the brink of the cliff.

And it’s not only economic beggary that now enables us to bear without murmur the peacetime plan to pillage the remaining family silver. The collective mindset of the nation has been so pauperised and pounded by hardships to pulp that we will now readily part with all on India’s shopping list in return for a few more shiploads of fuel and grain; and, probably, go down on all fours and thank India for it.

Nay, in gratitude for the credit line India granted to us in February, on which we have survived until now with no new steady source since then, it can be forgiven even if we had laid prostrate in obeisance, compared to what some displayed last Friday at the Premadasa International Cricket Stadium during the final ODI between Australia and Sri Lanka.

Cricket can be a loverly tonic to lift the surrounding gloom, a welcome escape from the horrors of morose strife for those still with the means to delve into its world for transient relief. The arrival of the Australian cricketing team in June to a country wearing the sad willow had provided the fans the chance to take a break from their burning home fires and, instead, chill witnessing live the battle on the turf.  But last Friday, it had taken a warped flight.

Last Monday, the announcement of the Australian Government’s USD15 million grant to the World Food Programme for food aid to Lanka, made an elated Lankan crowd leave their dry billabongs and emerge from the backwater to shower their gratitude on Aussie philanthropy in no small a measure.

Spurred by a mystery social media campaign that urged them to show their immense gratitude to Australia by sporting Aussie colours and cheering them and, perhaps, by heartily singing the Aussie National Song the world knows best, Waltzing Matilda, as Sri Lanka’s tribute to the Aussie’s large hearted generosity in granting an equivalent of 15 million US dollars to beat Lanka’s famine.

Forgetting the surrounding poverty — or perhaps to justify their presence on a sporting event feasting cricket while their fellowmen starved in queues, the sporty mob, donned in yellow T-shirts, followed the herd instincts of hare-brained wildebeests, and hopped to Colombo 10’s cricket grounds last Friday where the Sri Lankan Lions were playing against the Aussie Kangaroos in the final ODI of the series.

Make no mistake, we should be grateful for every crumb of food aid that comes to fill Lanka’s hungry stomachs but whereas a sincere expression of thanks and appreciation would have done quite nicely, was it necessary to have gone overboard and crassly given a tawdry ostentatious display of abject servility in the nauseating manner peasants of yore grovelled in gratefulness before their feudal masters 500 years ago?

Wasn’t it irreverent to drape the Lion flag and become the Aussie cheer squad as the Kangaroos began their winning run chase? Was it patriotic to cheer every run scored against a Lankan team playing on home ground, and in their ultimate defeat, finding euphoric joy in the Aussie triumph to roar, ‘Australia, Australia’?

No orchids for the Lankan team who had won the series last week, only roses for the Aussie players whose Government had fed the kitty with some dough.

If this was for USD 14 million, had it been the Indian team, these brainwashed, manipulated and misled sucker-bunch with their values mixed up, would have been rolling naked around the field, and kissing the ground the Indian cricketers walked on to show their gratitude for the USD 4000 million credit line.

If it will take 5 years to rebuild the economy, it will take a good fifty to remould this slavish, grovelling grotesque mind frame.

We have sunk to the nadir of our existence, economically and mentally; we have been left without our means, and, beggared of cash and spirit, we are in the process of fast losing the last vestige of dignity and shame, led by leaders who lost theirs long ago.

Justice always triumphs but the struggle demands sacrifice.