Columns

Ever heard of the abbreviation MML and what it means? I hadn’t. So I thought it was one of those verbal concoctions pulled out of the mixed bag of verbiage of that self-elevated superpower of world sport, the International Cricket Council (ICC), to describe its antipathy towards our grinding mill of Socratic wisdom, also known as the House of Parliament.

After all it was only last week that Sports Minister Harin Fernando who wore the same mantle five or six years ago, but now vacuum-cleaned and renamed “Kowtower-in-Chief” to the desert empire of the International Cricket Council, told parliament that the ICC was saying some nasty things about our law-making — and- breaking — factory in Diyawanna Oya.

Replying to a question by Sajith Premadasa, the new saviour of Sri Lankan cricket, or should one say Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), Minister Fernando reportedly said that the “ICC does not consider what is said in parliament about Sri Lanka’s cricket as they have a certain way of doing things”.

The ICC sure has a certain way of doing things, just ask chummy Shammie. Many things happen in dubious Dubai where the ICC has conveniently parked itself. Money launderers stash away their dollars, others buy hotels or apartments with their ill-gotten gains and even our “kudu karayas” are said to lead a royal lifestyle while relaying instructions to their henchmen back home.

But Minister Fernando got one thing wrong. It is not only the ICC that does not give two hoots for what is said in parliament. There are millions of the citizenry who consider parliament the biggest waste of money and space.

Having once voted for these so-called representatives of the people, they now swear in language more suited to the legislative chamber than a respectable newspaper, cursing themselves for having ruined their lives and those of their families.

Since one must refrain from printing obscenities (for moral and other reasons) that emanate these days from the mouths of voters compelled to pay exorbitant electricity and other bills, one must resort to the least objectionable of their appeals to a myriad of deities, now that elections are said to be approaching—that is if one accepts President Wickremesinghe’s words.

If voters’ prayers are answered those parliamentarians whose lavish life-style is hardly dependent on the official perks, unpaid utility bills and languishing in government residences they are not entitled to, will not make another appearance in the parliament chambers for a thousand samsaras, even if Ranil Wickremesinghe’s promise of turning this sagara of corrupt into a Garden of Eden ever dawns.

So when first confronted with this abbreviation MML, one naturally thought that the ICC having turned to SLC for linguistic assistance, had labelled the Diyawanna abode where, most often, sound prevails over sense, the “Moda Manthrilage Lekanaya” (MML – stupid MPs’ register).

Personally, I thought it would be terribly unfair to dismiss all those entitled to sit in the legislative chamber, including Ranil Wickremesinghe who I have known from his student days and has been an active participant in discussion and debate far more than any previous president I have known when there are some who do provide intellectual and political input worthy of serious thought.

It seemed logical enough that the ICC and SLC had joined hands to hit back at the parliament that only last month unanimously passed a motion castigating the local cricket board for maladministration and, worse still, financial profligacy and possible corruption.

But the MML one suspected as the handiwork of the cricketing kings at some Arthurian roundtable was blown to bits a day later in an unexpected turn of synchronicity as my one-time colleague on the Daily News, Gamini Silva, sadly lost years ago, would have called it.

Last week’s “Business Times” in this newspaper elicited the real meaning of MML in the column by a Prof. of Economics at the University of Colombo, Srimal Abeyratne. It showed clearly how local investors are made to suffer because of public sector corruption while officials pander to foreign investors and corporate business with lavish concessions and exemptions.

Not too long ago a parliament oversight committee was amazed to find that one BOI project was granted tax exemptions for some 30 years. It took some aggressive dentistry to get officials to open their mouths to confess how many millions (or was it billions) of rupees would eventually be lost to the State.

Is this because foreign investors are more likely to grease the hands held out to them than local investors who must struggle to get approval for their projects as they cannot or will not succumb to the demands of corrupt officials determined to collect their share of graft like their blood-sucking political masters or their seniors in office?

Prof. Abeyratne’s sudden impulse to make an overnight stop at a boutique hotel in Bandarawela on his way back from an official assignment and his casual conversation with the hotel owner named Deva elicited a shocking tale of a $ 600 million project with estimated job openings for some 15,000 persons from the area and substantial tourist potential, is still struggling to be born after 12 years of gestation.

Conceived three years after the terrorist insurgency ended in 2009, Deva sits on this project of some 500 acres gazing at the distant skies and the shores of Hambantota on a clear day as politicians. bureaucrats and other vermin eat into his distant dream.

And all the while successive governments and more particularly the present one with promises of a great tomorrow, sing a thousand hallelujahs to the revival of tourism and of investors waiting in the wings with bagsful of dollars to spread the largesse among greedy politicians, burnt out bureaucrats ready to retire with their baggage full of dollars and others with hidden assets.

Had Prof Abeyratne not dug deeper into this travesty of a Sri Lankan living in his own country being deprived of an investment opportunity even after 12 years of struggle to get the first approvals, whereas our politicians and bureaucrats go crawling behind foreign nationals paying poojas at every turn, this callous disregard for our own people would not have reached the public domain.

Nor would I have learnt what MML—Deva’s abbreviation for the worst features of this resplendent isle which even international institutions such as the IMF have identified as the biggest and persistent bane of this country.

Asked why after 12 years his dream is still a distant one, Deva’s answer was couched in three letters of the alphabet.

“It is because of MML; whatever you do in this country, you must be subservient to the MML theory”.

And pray what is MML? Why everybody in this country which will soon be flowing with milk and money should know it! It stands for Mata Monewada Lebenne or to put it in English for the waiting investors and others waiting for their 10 percent (now several percent more surely after the increased VAT) “What do I get”.

So while our politicians enthral a gullible public and a pusillanimous party with rising hubs here and opening tubs there and dollars descending from the skies those whose names appear in Pandora Papers 1 and 2 continue to accumulate their ill-gotten wealth knowing that politicians do not prosecutive politicians for all the anti-corruption laws one might fill the statute books with from here to eternity.

(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.)