Columns

This column should have appeared last Sunday. But my technological illiteracy, among other things, intervened while I was writing this.

My initial foray into Minister Harin Fernando’s sudden and unexpected announcement that Serendipity had parted with part of its real estate and appeared to be conjoined to Modi-land came unstuck.

My first reaction to hearing Minister Fernando utter these words was one of shock, or shokku, as the Japanese might say. It seemed to have had such a telling effect on my computer that my early thoughts concerning the tourism minister’s kindness in gifting parts of this country’s territory—which is not his to give, to start with, unless he has done some deal we are not aware of—disappeared into cyberspace, not to be found, however hard I tried to recover what I had written up to then.

After all, how could I let such phenomenal generosity as dragging some parts of this Resplendent Isle and handing them all over to our friendly neighbour who, for centuries and until modern times, kept such a fatherly (or is it motherly if we are to consider Indira Gandhi’s maternal interest) eye on our well-being?

Surely such a Herculean endeavour cannot be allowed to go uncelebrated and hidden from the rest of the world, especially China, which has long claimed to be our “all-weather” friend.

If you don’t believe me, ask President Xi Jinping or our former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (from whom RW picked up the baton as a gesture of national sacrifice, as claimed), now apparently in hibernation and recovering from political misadventure but refusing to take Rambukwellian decoctions that promise quick and permanent relief from all maladies, human and otherwise.

While wise men and women still try to sort out what prompted Harin Fernando to venture into fields that he is hardly competent to discuss or even handle, there are those who have already castigated him for trying to outdo NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake after the latter’s recent pow-wow with Indian front-liners seems to have irked Fernando.

After all, there were those—especially party lackeys—who thought that only Ranil Wickremesinghe could hobnob with the high and mighty.

Then there are those like that middling State Department chappie called Donald Lu who was hanging around that country like no other, singing the praises of Ranil W’s Houdini—like the act of turning a winter of economic discontent into a glorious summer by the sun of York, as the Bard would say when he has nothing significant to add.

Of course, it is easy for an American official on a State Department expense account, like many of our high flyers of today who see no crime in wasting public funds while preaching austerity and traversing the globe, to sing such ditties until their throats run dry.

But what do these officials living on the fat of their citizens, just like our boorucrats do, know or care about the prevailing economic hardships of the common man trying to stay alive because the cost of dying seems as damning as the cost of living, thanks to our ingenious ‘official’ economists who pass off as our country’s greatest thinkers since the proverbial Andare?

After all, it does not cost Donald Lu a cent to break into hallelujahs. But he seems to forget what others from his neck of the woods, including Washington’s ceaselessly talkative envoy Julie Chung and more important US politicians and officials, have to say about our democratic credentials.

Recent attempts to legislate a series of obnoxious laws have impinged on the constitutional rights of the people and trampled on other rights such as the right to peaceful protest and demonstrations. They have not only raised the serious concerns of UN bodies and some foreign nations to whom we are not averse to visiting with begging bowls hidden behind a thin veneer of camaraderie and a fake policy of friendship with all, but in reality more with some than others.

They have also caused concerns at the highest levels of our judiciary, with the latest strictures levelled only last week at the government’s attempts to push through badly drawn-up legislation by incompetent or unconcerned drafters of a very sensitive piece of legislation that treads heavily on people’s constitutional rights.

This, of course, is not the only legislative cadaver the country has been confronted with. A case in point is the Online Safety Act, or whatever it is called. The new self-elevated Supremo Tiran Alles is to take foster care of this monstrosity.

While Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe tries to exude sweet reasonableness on TV talk shows and media gatherings, he cannot absolve himself of the horrible drafting of laws, for ultimately that other questionable institution, the Attorney General’s Department, comes under his purview.

Donald Lu’s pleasant melody has come at the expense of throttling the constitutional rights of the people, which should surely precede his melodious tidbits.

So while the battle over constitutionally-derelict legislation will continue, for there is more of this witches’ broth that is surely brewing in the executive kitchens, Harin Fernando’s unpardonable faux pas will not slowly fade into the sunset.

Fernando, who quit the UNP under Ranil Wickremesinghe’s leadership with a huff and a puff apparently as his talents—whatever they may—were not recognised, quickly paraglided back to the Uncle-Nephew gathering with an ‘all is forgiven smile’ from the head honcho of the party and a portfolio to boot, which some think was what he was after.

Harin Fernando may not have gone exactly crawling to Mumbai, where he dropped those disastrous words before the fun city’s fat cats, before whom even our own Jacqueline Fernandez seems to make a quick pick, with fast wheels to take one to the pinnacle.

He might have thought he was doing his current boss, who has struck a deal with India’s new emperor named Modi—not to be confused with Moda—a word Sri Lankans more frequently use now to describe their political leaders.

It sure sounded as though he was paying tribute to Big Chief Modi, as visitors to China did before the Chinese emperors.

Anyway, there was Tourism Minister Fernando savouring the luxuries of Mumbai the other day, and its glitterati as they paraded at India’s biggest tourist industry show obviously had our man enthralled and wondering how he could emulate some of the big names in world business.

Such names are less familiar to the island nation’s struggling populace, not knowing when the IMF, which has bloodied many a Third World country, would order Dear Ranil to slap a new levy under duress or not, while Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe seems ready to sing a more open-mouthed melody, tutored, it would appear with the IMF choir in earlier times.

One does not know how much of the history of this country Harin Fernando has absorbed during his schooling days. But he must surely have heard that some of our kings of the past did surrender territory to advancing Western imperialism, if not to foreign forces from neighbouring India, long before that.

One can, in a way, understand Harin Fernando’s thought process—if one might call it that. If our ancient and more modern rulers can do what they did and still have their names mentioned in glorified terms, why not some lowly cabinet minister in a not particularly venerated government and earn a few encomiums, if not from his own countrymen, then at least their neighbours.

(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.)