Columns

So what more can one do? I am all for President AKD’s policy of non-interference with the judicial process from the pages of literature… It is the intervention with and the tampering with justice that have caused the breakdown of good governance and inevitably turned the people even against the forces of law to the point that they had come to believe that law is an ass even if they had not heard the original saying from the pages of literature.

One wondered how the government, and particularly that sharp-visioned deputy minister who spotted a monkey doing what he is accustomed to doing—being up to monkey tricks—is expected to take the culprit to court for what surely was a national crime—disrupting the country’s power supply.

Some might well ask with legal justification now that lawyers have more work than they had for a long time, how one could take a dead monkey to court having earlier retained counsel as a protection against aggressive humans.

This is hardly the time for me to engage in legal exchanges when one knows well enough that many lawyers are waiting for this to enter into legal fisticuffs now that all sorts of audio and video contraptions are spreading like monkeypox and causing some confusion and debate in medical circles, adding to the drama of the legal fraternity poking their faces and dropping their tired words in front of visual junk.

But so far nobody seems to have questioned the evidence provided by Energy Minister Kumar Jayakody, who seems to be the only person of some energy to tell whoever listened to him that he was a witness to a dogfight between two bunches of monkeys somewhere in Panadura, and it is they who caused the subsequent rumpus that ended in the island-wide outage, as engineering and technical people of superior knowledge call it.

Well, believe me, it is not me saying this. Several months ago, as I listened to the election give and take—some giving it and others taking it—as though they had consumed expensive arrack from some distillers who didn’t pay their taxes, I heard it had been said of the AKD-led troops that they were ready, brawn and brain, to take on any Einstein, Charles Darwin and economic screw top like Donald Trump they might confront.

So who are we to question the hierarchy now running the state when one learned minister dragging his PhD like the Pied Piper followed by enough mice (and rats too, if you don’t mind my saying) gets around with great panache trying to solve the nation’s problems before one-time President Ranil Wickremesinghe comes around after his bout with an Al Jazeera heavyweight in London a week or more ago and tells AKD (who some of his detractors say is following RW policies) it might do him good to have a little chit-chat on how to run an economy and a clean country without having monkeys running all over except in parliament and its canteen as a lesson for increasing the price of meals and decreasing the quantity so the staff can take it home.

But what still seems to go unanswered is whatever happened to the monkey, which took a huge shock, as did the people, no doubt, when he sat on a high-tension wire.

It is surely unlikely that he just brushed his burnt skin aside and promised to teach Minister Jayakody a lesson when he comes around for a vote the next time—if that ever happens, that is.

Minister Jayakody insists—to me it seemed like swearing under a heavy oath, but then it was only me that thought so, and even I can make a mistake if you ask me—that he saw the monkey playing with monkeys and wires, and who is anybody to contradict him?

But then there was a watchman on site who seems to swear that he saw no monkeys anywhere around except perhaps a few politicians. But he would not insult by claiming to have mistaken one for the other. I mean, he could not have been that daft, even though watchmen have been known to take a tipple now and then—more now than then.

So what do we have here? A qualified engineer who saw monkeys playing experts from the Electricity Board or whatever outfits run this wretched thing that seems to break down more often than onetime minister Tiran Alles’ genius in dealing with passports and visas at costly rates and a watcher who not only saw no monkey but not even an incinerated monkey corpse unless some passing Chinese had grabbed it, leading Minister Jayakody with plausible evidence.

While contemplating what is fast developing into an interesting legal juxtaposition between man and monkey with intervention likely from elsewhere, I was shown a fascinating and obviously critical document circulated to all households in the country by the Department of Census and Statistics that went about collecting data for the next national census.

Since I have mentioned legal issues, let me raise a couple of questions. Is it permissible for the Sri Lankan government to conduct surveys and insist on the people answering vital questions relating to their lives and those of their closest families in a language most of the population would not conceive—English?

Even some of the citizens who would consider themselves competent in the English language would not be able to answer them, not because they did not comprehend English but because some of the questions would have left them confused and calling for help.

Let me quote a section of a question asked of “Usual Residents’ information (Part 2).

“Ever married women?”. Personally, I could think of two answers. I could, of course, say yes now and then.

I could also say let me ask Donald Trump since he has queer ideas on the subject.