Columns

Those who heard of the unprecedented cutlis-pattis party early one Sabbath morning last month must surely be recording all that for posterity. It would add to the ever-expanding anthology of funny tales and other humorous happenings to tell their grandchildren of the glory days in this country like no other.

What is more, if I were Tourism State Minister Diana Gamage (which, fortunately, I am not) I would have these anthologies of the comic tales of politicians and their faithful lackeys and their attempts at covering the truth, printed in their millions like the Central Bank does in its money-printing frenzies.

They could then be distributed free to every incoming tourist who sets foot in this country with laughter in the air and dollars to spend lavishly so that lady Diana can use it to grow her favourite ganja and earn the two billion dollars she said she would rake in from it next year which is not too far away.

Well, that story could be added to the collection too, along with another fairy tale about Walt Disney contemplating on a Disney Park at Hambantota to join other white elephants in the area and keep the four-legged grey pachyderms company.

No, this story which has been told and re-told, written and re-written, depending on who spins the tale, is not more pies in the skies, of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, or energy adventurers turning up to invest billions of dollars as the political spin doctors await the dollar tsunami.

They do, in a way, remind me of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s uncle Junius Richard Jayewardene’s celebrated saying when he threw open the country’s economy. “Let the robber barons come”, he said. They did not have to come, he discovered later. Most of the robber barons were already here, citizens of this country, and still are, or even claiming to be.

My story is a genuine 24-carat piece of work about the return of Basil Rajapaksa that Sabbath morn which made the news even before Colombo’s caterwauling gossips could wake up from their Sunday sleep to a leisured breakfast.

“Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in” wrote the poet Robert Frost.

For a man who tried to make a quick getaway in the wake of his president brother’s flight in search of a new home, but was unceremoniously turned back at the airport, he made a welcome return last month — welcomed by some 100 or more of his hangers-on at the very airport that refused to let him fly away.

So, as Robert Frost said, he was home — his second home — and they had to take him in. Not just let him in, mind you. He was greeted with loads of cutlis and pattis and lots of kowtowing as befitting a Chinese emperor of the Ming dynasty.

But Basil R had what the Chinese emperors did not have — a police motorcycle escort to lead him out of the airport and to the grand highway possibly built with Chinese loans. If that was not sufficient for a “please come home Basil and save us from Ranil ” plea from diehard Basilians, there was a former police chief and now chairman of the National Police Commission Chandra Fernando hovering around the VIP lounge in which Basil and friends feasted, to see what the “commotion” was all about — if one might quote from the ex-police chief’s explanation which left some gaps uncovered in the telling.

The story had hardly broken about the hundred or more packed like Maldive fish in the Golden Route VIP lounge, gobbling away at that time of the morning like starving schoolchildren, when fellow Sunday Times columnist Don Manu was already tearing away like an excited terrier.

With a penchant for mathematical precision, Don Manu had worked out the entire cost for the shindig that morning and kept asking the questions that those responsible seem to keep avoiding. Having first grabbed the issue by his teeth shortly after the VIP lounge fiasco, he persisted in trying to unravel what others were desperately trying to cover up.

In early December he wrote: “Basil and wife, duly paid USD 200 each to enter the lounge and enjoy the facilities offered. The fact that the USD200 entry ticket entitles only one person to partake the VIP fare, and does not permit one to invite guests, is evidenced by Basil forking out a further USD 200 for his wife’s ticket. As per the charges levied at Gold Route’s VIP lounge, the bill for hundred people at USD 200 per head should amount to USD 20,000 or Rs. 7,300,000”.

A week after Basil’s return, SLPP secretary Sagara Kariyawasam MP told the media: “Basil Rajapaksa and wife have paid USD 200 each for the use of the VIP Lounge at the airport. Payments have also been paid for the refreshments provided to his visitors.”

Kariyawasam dodges the main question. That Basil Rajapaksa paid for his wife and self is not challenged. But who paid the other bills and whether they were paid in full remain unanswered by the party secretary.

If any person who enters the lounge and makes use of its facilities is required to pay US$200, did the 100 or more who barged into the lounge like the hordes of Genghis Khan pay the required fee which according to Don Manu’s calculation amounts to 7,300,000 in local rupees.

Obviously, the airport authorities do not expect the average traveller or any other person without US dollars or equivalent amounts in some other currencies to use this lounge. Yet all sorts of hangers-on were using the facilities.

So, one of two things happened. Either they just barged in without paying. Or somebody in authority allowed them the luxury of entering the lounge and partaking of the food.

If it is the first, then would others too be allowed the same facility without payment? If it is the latter who in authority allowed non-paying, non-travelling persons to do so thus violating the regulations. One more question. If there were other foreign travellers who wished to make use of the lounge on payment would they have been shut out by the invading hordes?

As sections of the public reacted angrily to what appeared to be a morning tamasha at people’s expense and curious journalists tried to extricate the truth, another interesting revelation came from Airport and Aviation Services Chairman (Retired) Major General G. A. Chandrasiri.

He said the facility is open to anybody for a payment adding that ‘When MPs and local council members come we are obliged to serve them tea and refreshments’.

Why pray is the Airport and Aviation Services obliged to give them freebies as though these so-called representatives of the people have not fattened themselves enough at the expense of the people?

Would the Maj. Gen (retd) Chandrasiri tell the public whether MPs and especially local councillors actually pay $200 just to spend some time in the lounge? Or is it that they just walk in without payment, eat and drink free and depart? Is liquor also served to them for free?

Perhaps a change could be made. Let them come in free, eat and drink free as long as they do not have a return ticket. That way the people do not have to see their faces again. That is one way of getting rid of them, if President Wickremesinghe is hesitant to hold elections. Just days ago Basil Rajapaksa told the media that on inquiry a State Minister had told him that he paid the bill with his private funds. No amount was mentioned.

In days gone by when the early Chinese in Sri Lanka travelled on bicycles selling noodles and Chinese textiles, particularly Shanghai silk, there used to be a saying “kondey bandapu chinnanta kiyanna” (tell it to Chinese with knotted hair) whenever people heard the unbelievable story. Now that it is difficult to find Chinese even with pigtails one might stick an English saying — tell it to the marines.

(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).