Columns

That’s a hell of a thing to say about a national hero. Remember the presidential and parliamentary elections since 2010 when President Mahinda Rajapaksa was hailed at election time and portraits and flags as tall and high as the Ruwanweli Seya were sprouting across the country calling on the people to place Mahinda Raja in his rightful place—the helm of the country.

So now what do we hear, here and everywhere else, that Mahinda the Great is not worth an extra security guard or two because nobody—and nobody—would want to assassinate him?

Now that is a nasty thing to say. And who do you think says it? Our top military man of aeons ago who almost sacrificed his own life for the nation. Who but the country’s sole Field Marshal and likely to remain so until or unless some other tinpot decides to start a war and those in the south, east or west, and maybe even the north, blow a few trumpets and yell charge, giving birth to another marshal on the field?

That is going to be rather difficult because Marshal Anura Kumara has captured all the fields—paddy and kurakkan—determined to feed a starving people instead of killing them, which Captain Ranil’s war games with the IMF seemed to be heading to achieve before 2048 when Sri Lanka would be raising the victory flag.

Anyway, Field Marshal Fonseka’s words decrying and degrading our national leader came at a calculated time.

In the past few years, an increasing number of dubious and suspicious people have been treating the stories spun with the combined dexterity of an Aesop and Munchausen, flooding the political landscape as more and more fairy tales of political derring-do and other master strategies have been circulated.

The thirst of the people for their democratic rights percolated in their hearts and minds, the more political legerdemain percolated in the minds of those greedy for power and influence.

So it was that a disdainful people began to treat political promises and manna from heaven not with a pinch of salt as they had learnt in the past, but by the ton. So, every time a dubious political mouth opened to promise the best from heaven in the coming months, the more the populace trekked to Hambantota, not to see their national hero or the prince in waiting (and waiting and waiting) but to fill truckloads of salt and bring them to Colombo, where it fetched a handsome price.

It seemed that even Colombo’s glitterati and the drug-pushing messyrati down the capital’s byways were beginning to lose their one-time confidence in the Grand Old Party, also known as the UNP. They were scouring the party headquarters for a believable figure that might encourage them to vote for the decaying ones. But even that did not produce even one in Colombo.

One notices that some of our scientists, or those that never lifted a finger to ensure that the salt of the earth was available as it used to be to make their otherwise tasteless curries still worthy of consuming at a time when normal commodity prices were heading for the skies, have decided to lay the blame for this saltless catastrophe on the weather.

Today any negligence, misdemeanour, upmarket bribery, or graft is blamed on the weather. If the rainwater at Thunmulla junction does not flow without holding up the traffic for hours, it is not the fault of the Water Works Department, where workers assigned to clean up the place are seated by the roadside betting on the next horse race.

One might tell a tale to buttress the argument. Some years ago I was on my way to work at Lake House along Flower Road with one of our photographers after an assignment when we spotted a hole dug in almost the middle of the road.

The driver slowed down, and it was then that I noticed a conspicuous board that had written on it in red letters, “Beware… Men at work.” But there were no men at work. There were two of them sleeping on the roadside with their backs to the front wall of the residence of the Thai ambassador.

Our picture on the front page of the Observer told the story and brought many a congratulation from obviously titillated readers.

Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka’s condemnation of Mahinda Rajapaksa is understandable. A man who led the troops to final victory against the LTTE cadres was nearly killed in a suicide bomber attack and has a right to be seeped in anger and perhaps hatred at the hands of politicians when the seasoned soldier entered politics.

There could still be enmity in the mind of the Field Marshal at the treatment he received. Some of what he said about Mahinda Rajapaksa might well be true. We don’t know all of it.

But the veteran soldier’s condescending remarks about Rajapaksa seem more out of anger than the reading of the LTTE or terrorist mind and intentions. History tells us that assassinations and killings do not necessarily happen the next day.

Those who engage in such death-dealing act only when they weigh the chances and odds and do not rush in like fools, unless they are suicide killers determined to finish the job assigned.

Since most people do not know the veracity or otherwise of Sarath Fonseka’s assertions, they are often inclined to take them more with a pound of salt than a pinch. Hence the growing shortage.

There are mighty suspicious persons who possibly conclude that the salt shortage has been deliberately created by the NPP and its cohorts to reduce salt-induced deaths and illnesses. This is another way of helping safeguard the nation’s health in the long run.

But then Health Minister Nalinda Jayatissa tells us the next budget will vote in the highest allocation for the health sector. That is indeed a good deed that has been long in coming. One hopes the same is done for education, which has suffered under semi-literate politicians, though some of them are educated with degree certificates ready to be flourished in parliament.

But certificates do not make them educated. After all, certificates can be bought, as some of our politicians must well know.

With all the hullabaloo about there being no salt for our pol sambol or to sprinkle over the eggs at a Colombo 7 breakfast table, there were hopes that the cabinet-approved salt shipments would end up in households.

But alas, they seem to be headed to industries that gulp or drink salt water.

So perhaps former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s sojourn in Nepal might not be simply to shake hands with a former Nepalese prime minister. Mr. Wickremesinghe is probably exploring the Himalayan slopes.

How many of those back home know of a product called Himalayan Pink Salt? I have one in my kitchen cupboard.

A Sri Lankan businessman in the salt business at home says that Jaffna salt pans will go into business in mid-January and we will have salt by March.

Take that with a gunny bag of salt. My bets are that Ranil Wickremesinghe will beat the Jaffna man with his Himalayan pinky.

(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).