Call a truce

Monday 19th July, 2021

The incumbent government leaps before thinking, and suffers painful pratfalls. In its wisdom, it had some of those who protested against the Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) Bill, the other day, packed off to faraway quarantine centres. Thereafter, it got cold feet and had them released before the completion of the mandatory quarantine period, thus giving the lie to its own claim that the police had only enforced quarantine laws. Now, it is clear that the government either acted arbitrarily in having the protesters sent for quarantine, or had them released from quarantine centres prematurely for political reasons. Either way, it has done something illegal.

The warring teachers’ unions have not softened their stand despite the release of their leaders. They have not resumed online teaching. Students are like the proverbial grass that suffers when elephants fight. One can only hope that teachers will be considerate towards their pupils, and the government will desist from lighting the blue touch paper with trade unions. One may say with apologies to Gandhiji that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its children are treated. There have been several heart-rending reports about sickos preying on underage girls, during the past few weeks, and now the government and teachers are settling scores at the expense of schoolchildren.

Children are said to be the future of a nation. No wonder so many young Sri Lankans have reportedly applied for visas to migrate to the Global North. They must be fed up with living here. The day may not be far off when this country is left with only politicians’ progeny, who have all the luck.

The government is behaving like a drunkard who staggers out of his way to kick empty tin cans and thambili shells. It kicks up a shindy almost daily. It also has not got its priorities right. The KDU Bill is not a national priority. Everybody knew that an attempt to take it up would provoke protests amidst the pandemic, but the government chose to go ahead with it. The Delta variant of coronavirus is spreading rapidly, and protests will only facilitate its transmission. The government may have thought it would be able to use the health regulations to prevent protests against the Bill.

One of the main arguments against the KDU Bill is that the defence university will be independent of the University Grants Commission (UGC). President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is reported to have told the Buddhist Advisory Council recently that it will be brought within the purview of the UGC and some of the existing laws amended for that purpose. There is so much of resistance to the KDU Bill not because the defence university will not be under the UGC. Instead, the reason for protests is that the Bill seeks to enable the enrolment of local students for certain courses of study such as medicine on fee-levying basis, and the promotion of fee-paying universities will be inimical to free education. Any attempt to have such KDU degree programmes recognised by the UGC is bound to cause more trouble.

The government says there is a pressing need for setting up private universities in this country because a large number of Sri Lankan students go overseas for higher education and spend colossal amounts of foreign exchange. The opponents of this view insist that the establishment of private universities will be at the expense of free education. The arguments put forth by both sides sound tenable. The fact that successive governments have not done enough to develop the national universities has caused the assertion that free education has been left to wither on the vine to gain some credence. If the government wants to disprove the claim that it is planning to throttle free education, it must allocate more resources for the development of public schools and universities.

Meanwhile, the champions of free education must show their bona fides. If the protesting teachers have rendered so great a service to free education, as claimed by their trade unions, how come students are heavily dependent on shadow education or private tuition? Parents will vouch for the fact that although education at the state-run schools is free, they spend a lot of money on private tuition to prepare their children for the GCE O/L and A/L examinations. Students in other Grades also attend private tuition classes. Never do the best performers at competitive examinations thank their private tutors for their achievements, and this has enabled their schools to take all the credit. There are some good schools which provide a satisfactory education, but they are the exception that proves the rule. If the teachers really feel for free education, they must work in such a way that their students will have no need for private tuition. Will the teachers’ unions take up this challenge?

Both the government and protesters had better realise that they are endangering the lives of the public by locking horns while the Delta variant is spreading fast. Let them be urged to heed public health experts’ warnings and call a truce urgently. This is not the time for Parliament to take up any controversial Bills, or trade unions and political parties to take to the streets. The safety of the public must take precedence over everything else.