Columns

There was at least one piece of good news at the birth of this New Year. Well, good news depends on one’s perspective. However one looks at it, that utterance from a government spokesman contained more than a kernel of truth.

Some other colonels, as a Sri Lankan wag put it on New Year’s day, were not overly concerned about truth and were awaiting a kick up the ranks and hoping that bashing a few trade union or aragalaya heads to drive some sense into them as did happen not too long ago, might be the answer to the nation’s problems.

If such simplistic answers were the solutions to the complex issues we face, there would be many headless citizens around as our witty friend from across the seas surmised.

Anyway, there was the government’s Oracle known to some Dr. Bandula Gunawardena, an economic maestro (of sorts), telling the nation as he often does after cabinet meetings, that this country like no other has no leaders to lead it out of the present mess.

At least no leaders can pull the nation out of the abyss into which it has fallen. Or, more correctly, into which it had been pushed by a bunch of mediocrities who had been elected leaders by an even bigger set of mediocrities who do not have the courage or the brains, to plead “mea culpa” and pray to the deities not to apply the karmic law when their turns come as they believe it will.

Colombo’s money bags and glitterati were still recovering from the post-31st night blues after their perambulations in what could soon be dear Diana’s “night economy”– if she is still around to kick start it, that is — when the news broke.

Our dear doctor of the tuition class, injected some sense into Pied Piper Ranil Wickremesinghe’s faithful followers who ingloriously believed that when he blew the horn it would be heard in all the capitals of the world, the international lending institutions and the money markets not to mention the “robber barons” his uncle Dicky anticipated would rush in with their baggage full of dirty money and head for the closest laundromat.

True, Wickremesinghe had warned even before he was handed the presidential mantle which he had found hard to come by, that hard times lay ahead and the people should tighten their belts, if indeed they had any belts left. More recently he admitted he had no plan to reform a nation without an economy.

Lest one is accused of misquoting the worthy words of cabinet ministers and their political ilk or misrepresenting them as it is wont to happen, let one cite his sayings from a post-cabinet news report headlined “No political leader can fix crisis.”

The dear doctor who has been in business—in political business that is—since 1989 and meandered through various portfolios, knows his business. But it has taken decades for many of our politicians, oscillating between occasional clarity and political senility, to reach a home truth though only one from the government barricades has had the temerity to openly say so at this critical juncture.

“No politician can give a solution to the economic crisis, irrespective of who rules the country……” He reportedly went on to say that it all boils down to the availability of foreign reserves.

Minister Gunawardena is castigating the political breed he is part of and the very government he now belongs to, led by a president that he and his parliamentary colleagues voted to enthrone.

That was, of course, after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa they had once welcomed with obeisance as the nation’s saviour, decided to settle down in other pastures but found that nobody seems to want him around in their territory.

What Minister Gunawardena is implicitly saying is President Ranil Wickremesinghe is not the messiah they voted in and supported but he is the only one we’ve got and better than the rest of the ruddy lot.

So, implies he, do not be misled by the political sloganising of disparate opposition leaders preparing for possible local elections– if they are not stymied, that is, by increasingly nervy and scared governing parties.

How it came to pass that the cabinet was discussing leadership failures one is hard put to say unless, of course, some hungry news hound in search of a story goaded the good doctor (academic not medical) into commenting on the quality of our political representation.

If that was the case then he might have started with the quality of recent cabinets whose make-up should have been better left to the carpenters in Moratuwa.

As a disgusted and dispirited population would have noticed, governments of recent times have had conspicuously few talents and some would never have had ministerial posts if competence, good education, and knowledge had been the criteria for recruitment as had often been promised by leaders who pledged they would be guided by meritocracy.

Instead, this country like no other had been fathered with loquacious ministers of little consequence and doubtful character and even some who should have in reality been guests of the State rather than feeding off an already impoverished people.

While the quality of leaders and their ministers has increasingly become a serious question of concern by a population that has been let down by those it had elected to office, one must equally—if not question more—the lack of political will that has allowed corruption, bribery, fraud and moral turpitude to grow and flourish in the political class and its families and cronies in the private sector.

The fact that the UN Human Rights bodies are increasingly focussing on corruption in Sri Lanka and on “economic crimes” which Foreign Minister Ali Sabry childishly questions, the IMF is euphemistically calling on the government to “reduce corruption vulnerabilities” and the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are acutely conscious of government/ministerial fiddling with government tenders, all point to these institutions being fed up of the prevailing corruption.

They are not only fed up they are disgusted with the lack of political will of successive governments to act against the corrupt and hold those responsible accountable for their crimes.

In countries near and far, those who have held the highest political office have been legally convicted by their justice systems that function with commendable independence and without fear and favour, to punish the guilty of robbing the State and the people.

How many persons who have held State office, be they politicians or officials, have met the same fate in our blessed land? Instead of ending up behind bars, they are given suspended sentences and end up in cabinets or exonerated and cleared of all wrongs by presidential commissions or some other arrangement.

I remember the International Anti-Corruption Conference called by then British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was in Colombo the other day and feted at a luncheon (for 100 guests I heard) at Kingsbury Hotel by a person also known by his abbreviated name as Nirj Deva who holds some office to which he was appointed by President Wickremesinghe.

Among the participants at the 2016 conference was recently-elected President Maithripala Sirisena who pledged that his government would crack down on corruption and money laundering. Ranil Wickremesinghe was his prime minister. It was during their time in office that the now notorious Central Bank scam happened.

But now that is history like so many other corruption scandals, frauds, and widely circulating money laundering stories. While other countries act and punish the guilty, in this Resplendent Isle they thrive and prosper.

Bandula Gunawardena laments that the country lacks a single leader today who can rescue the nation. Surely he misses the issue. At some point in time-particularly in the last couple or more years, it is they who created and exacerbated the crisis—individually and collectively.

They who are the creators cannot be the solvers of their own mess. The only way out is to dump the whole lot with the rest of the nation’s garbage and open the doors to a new class of leaders.

(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.)