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In Biblical times it was considered a miracle when an ass spoke.

How times have changed!

The more one reads or listens to what seems like the collective wisdom of Darwin, Einstein, Marx and Wittgenstein spewing from the mouths of some of our worthy (if an overstatement is excused) politicians and their ever-serving acolytes in search of a few dollars, the more one is convinced that the perspicacious utterances of our own wunderkinder present formidable challenges to the Biblical Ballam’s faithful steed reduced by them to a plain donkey.

The more percipient of our citizens might add that while Ballam’s ass needed four legs to do what some of our worthies could do on two. It automatically bestows them with the title of miracle makers.

But that’s another story and it may not have a leg to stand on anyway.

In the last few years, and more recently in the passing months, the ever-growing political exchanges have been fascinating to listen to even when they were at times ham-fisted and, more interestingly, farcical, thanks to the multiplying social media platforms that open themselves to such comic relief.

It is not their fault. After all, an economically deprived, harassed and more recently silenced majority can very well do with some titillation — that is if electric power permits and political power does not descend on them with widening interpretations of our statutory laws and UN resolutions — or so our knowledgeable lawyers (exit AG’s Department) say.

Sri Lanka, as everybody knows, has gone through hard times as Charles Dickens would have said. With eggs selling at 50 rupees each or thereabouts and a kilo of tomatoes substantially more, the old habit of throwing the rotten ones at passing politicians in their SUVs has died a natural– or rather economic — death.

But the economy is not the only thing that is killing Sri Lankan people. If the lack of vital medicines does not send people to Kanatte or similar places of permanent rest, some passing gunman or gunmen on motorcycles or other means of transport will get you. Not too many options are available it would appear.

It is all gang warfare or drug dealers at play — that is if you believe official versions. And as you know only too well officials and politicians don’t lie. It is purely terminological inexactitudes, as Winston Churchill once said.

What is left is to listen to politicospeak (to coin a word) or read them and then burst into uncontrollable laughter on an empty stomach before throwing oneself on a mattress or mat, depending on how far one has descended like our foreign reserves.

One wonders how many of our decimated citizenry had the undoubted privilege of reading the glorified remarks the other day of Vajira Abeywardena, chairman of the UNP and now MP for ‘summa’ thanks to the far-sighted JRJ known as the ‘Old Fox’ who foresaw the day when the Uncle-Nephew Party would only be represented in parliament through the National List.

Anyway, at a media conference a few days back he made an astounding observation. He told reporters that “President Ranil Wickremesinghe has been recognised as the most powerful leader on the list of current world leaders”. These words are taken from two different news sources in the event the UNP chairman yells “misquoted” or “misinterpreted” to absolve himself of this ass-inine (if I might coin a word) remark and blame the media for it.

But so far as I know he has not done it. Therefore, I take it as said.

One can quite understand his paying a tribute to his party leader. After all, if Ranil Wickremesinghe did not pass on his national list seat to bring his party chairman to our ‘House of Democracy’ he would still be where the sovereign people deposited him and his party two years ago or he would be contemplating some wheeler-dealing in a residence in upmarket Queen’s Road or wherever.

So he seriously thinks that President Wickremesinghe has been recognised as the most powerful leader around. Fortunately, Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi don’t read our media. Putin is busy trying to beat the hell out of the Ukrainians and Xi is busy trying to re-educate the Uyghurs in Xinjiang with novel teaching methods.

Otherwise, Putin might well have cut off his fuel supplies to the Wickremesinghe-style government and Xi Jinping would send another research vessel or two to Colombo port and he wouldn’t be asking the foreign ministry if he could kindly anchor his toys for a couple of months to re-educate the UNP about the real boss in the Indian Ocean, never mind the world.

May one ask Vajira Abeywardena who has recognised his leader as the world’s top honcho a question please? Could he tell us the names of those who recognised him as thus so we could drop them an email and inquire if that is true or just another untruth concocted that unnecessarily embarrasses President Wickremesinghe than boost his ego.

Maybe Abeywardena is expecting a place in the cabinet when the rest of the Pohottuwa rabble that made an utter mess of things under Gotabaya is rounded up and herded into the cabinet office.

This “world’s most powerful leader” is not the only piece of idiocy that has percolated from Abeywardena brains. On another occasion, he issued a statement declaring that “political parties represented in parliament should agree on a set of policies that should remain unchanged for a period of 25 years” forgetting that Sri Lanka is still a democracy (well of sorts) and the policies he tries to impose on this country are not permanent verities.

He probably thinks that this globalised world will stand still for a quarter of a century while Sri Lanka’s panjandrums launch their 25-year miracle. It is true that Wickremesinghe expects to make Sri Lanka a developed nation by 2048.

But many of us will not be around to witness what must be miraculous revival a la Lazarus. It could be catastrophic if leaders believe they have preternatural political abilities.

There is more to be said of Abeywardena’s thoughts and on Tourism Minister Harin Fernando’s enthusiasm to turn Sri Lanka into a vast pub where tourists could drink into the wee hours as a novel means of attracting tourists to a country that claims to be Buddhist and to which the Constitution gives pride of place. What will happen on Poya days he fails to mention.

Besides encouraging drunken brawls such an idea will also promote the business ventures of alcohol manufacturers such as Johnston Fernando and the Aloysius family and foreign liquour importers who would applaud Harin Fernando’s intellectual input to tourism promotion.

I recall the story of an emperor in ancient Rome whose name is too long to mention in case he is mistaken for a Sri Lankan with a vasagama prefix, but was popularly known as Caligula, who was so fed up of his ignorant advisers and diplomatic envoys that he contemplated appointing his horse as a consul.

Seeing that we are not short of such talent and incompetence is no bar to political elevation perhaps the world’s most powerful leader might consider like Caligula, filling cabinet positions, task forces and diplomatic positions with purveyors of piffle.

(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)