Columns

I wonder whether our whizz-kids in the tourism industry grant frequent visitor passes for those who set foot in our country like no other, especially now that Emperor Trump has trumped the rest of the world and gathered up much of what he could to negate the rest of the universe.

Personally, I doubt that those gatherers of dollars would have given up such an opportunity when they have been moaning for decades that they have been the mistreated ones.

No, they are too imaginative to have missed such an advantage when, at one time a couple of years ago, the industry was coming up with London-educated strategists such as state minister Diana Gamage parading on the Parliamentary website with such academic qualifications as MBA, LLB (UK), which took so many by surprise.

After all, they had not heard of the UK’s givers of educational largesse peeping into every nook and corner in that ancient monarchy with the hope of finding some academic sub-strata to present them with the Kingdom’s non-existent degree certificates in the name of the highest in the land.

The surprised multitude, wherever they came from, would have liked to have collected a degree or two. Even a Third Degree would have been welcome to take home and even hoodwink some naïve parliamentary staffers presented with santhosam for their loyal service to inconsequential representatives of the people.

But then stranger things have happened in our corner of the globe, which is being covetously eyed by a rising real estate accumulator from the south of the Himalayas, though with less avariciousness than a more ambitious wool-gatherer blowing his own trumpet from the frozen ice in the north to the warmer waters of the Panama Canal, hoping to grab anything, anywhere, anyhow.

Even if we have not heard about it, a frequent flyer pass must surely have been considered a supremely fit gift for someone turning out to be a constant visitor to Sri Lanka, as our great neighbour from the North, the most charitable of them all, proved to be the other day.

I am certain there are many good-hearted persons in the travel trade who would have proposed the idea of crowning dear Modi sahab with the first Very Frequent Flyer or even something more lavish and internationally recognised had the idea oozed from several but was immediately shot down in flames because the country’s new incumbents in office had intentions to elevate him to a more prestigious position than a jealous world has done up to now.

Now if every Sri Lankan paddakama is hung round the neck of Rusi Modi—oops, sorry, that was the delightful Indian batsman now deteriorated to the plebeian argot ‘batter’ in keeping with the current status of cricket—there would come a time (hopefully not for the sake of the more thoughtful and patriotic-minded of our people) when Modi Sahab will not wait for AKD sahodaraya now leading our tribe from the front to hang it himself but do so as the rightful bearer.

After all, to be gratefully announced as Sri Lanka’s supreme friend, though I dare say it has others like offshore gatherers Tiran Alles, foreign academic certificate owners from Orara University in Australia (which I am still trying to locate), the hard-working Prasanna Ranatunga and some other ministers of one shade or another who have obtained ‘qualifications’ from one dubious institute or another.

Who said, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen”? It matters not whether it came from the Bible at this relevant moment in time or from some Shakespearean tragedy. What matters is those words bring to mind a national leader of today.

Several decades ago an aspiring Marxist-Leninist and follower of Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka) revolutionary youth leader Rohana Wijeweera was beginning to imbibe the teachings of his ideological guru.

If then Anura Kumara Dissanayake sat—metaphorically speaking—at the feet of Marx today, he seems to worship a new messiah. His seeming political, if not ideological, transformation from Marx to Modi and Modi’s own paternal greetings that are clearly noticeable to others who have a grasp of the AKD then and now wonder where Sri Lanka is heading bilaterally and internationally.

It did lead to a widespread ‘shokkus’, as our more friendly Japanese brothers might say when Sahodara Anura Kumara Dissanayake, today’s leader of the Left and the country, announced he would bestow on Modi Sahab, better known for his exploits as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, which did earn him some accolades from parts of the West, which did not permit frequent travel as modern Sri Lanka has so graciously extended to special visits to our First City of Anuradhapura.

And mind you, it was not by Jet Travel, Mihin Lanka (that would have thrilled Sajin dear, having stored so much wealth in the counting house on behalf of Mean Lanka—how mean of him) or even Sri Lankan to save fuel, which is now trying to work out where it should go next to save on fuel now that some nasty chaps are quarrelling over energy and other things.

Oh no, not by turning to such cheap, ambitious political leaders who have not stopped airing their expansionist ambitions, though they appear muted at this time. Elevating them into internationally respected figures by conferring on them the nation’s highest civilian honour presented to a country’s head of state or prime minister might make the giver happy as much as the recipient.

Perhaps both the giver and the recipient enjoy—for a period at least—the self-satisfaction of the supreme mitra viewed by people on both sides of the Palk Strait.

But is this true camaraderie or just fake theatre between a major power playing its own geopolitical and geostrategic maritime adventures, pressuring the smaller and weaker neighbour to play along at the expense of regional support and defence?

There are no doubts about who believes this growing camaraderie between two long-time enemies and the expanding relationship is to the advantage of Sri Lanka and its stuttering economy run by a party in shaky governance that is ready to enter into MOUs with a neighbouring leader with a power craze.

And on our side of the international boundary is a new leader who would like to rub off his old image of a left-wing revolutionary and present himself as a onetime Joseph II of Spain.

Is there no child among the hordes of NPP supporters who have not thought of turning to one of these leaders and saying, but our lokka has no clothes on. Don’t fret, we will find some whatever the hue.

(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).