Kekilles in overdrive

Saturday 24th September, 2022

Government politicians are behaving as if the media had done something far worse than the economic crimes they and their leaders have perpetrated against the nation. They are tearing into the media outfits that expose the untold suffering their government has inflicted on the public by bankrupting the country. In Parliament, on Thursday, some government worthies were beside themselves with rage over a story that a poor girl had recently brought some coconut kernel to school for lunch, and teachers had provided her with a decent midday meal. They claimed that the media reports at issue were false, and the principal of the school concerned had said no such thing was ever brought to her notice.

Sri Lankans usually do not believe anything that the media says about governments until it is officially denied. They know that the very opposite of what the powers that be make out to be the truth is true.

State employees are scared of politicians in power and do not dare antagonise the latter, as is public knowledge. The aforementioned school is situated in Minuwangoda, which is Minister Prasanna Ranatunga’s constituency. A few months ago, the Colombo High Court sentenced Minister Ranatunga to two years rigorous imprisonment suspended for five years, and fined him Rs. 25 million, in a case where he had been accused of threatening a businessman and demanding money. (He has appealed against the judgement.) The SLPP parliamentary group has an MP, who summoned a female school principal, abused her in raw filth and made her kneel before him when he was a Chief Minister; he was infuriated because she had refused to carry out an illegal order. Subsequently, the victim gave in to political pressure, and the culprits got off scot-free. One may also recall that during the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, a Cabinet minister tied a public official to a tree as ‘punishment’ for being late for a meeting. The victim chose to grin and bear it. This is a country where a culture of impunity prevails; journalists are harassed or even vapourised for telling the truth; political dissent is violently suppressed; the long arm of the law has become a mere appendage of the government in power, and Justitia unashamedly cosies up to ruling party politicians. So, it is only natural that neither teachers nor the Education Department officials have vouched for the veracity of the news reports about the poor girl who had coconut kernel for lunch.

Having ruined the economy and turned the country into a hellhole, the government is in the same predicament as the proverbial cat which eased itself on a rock; it is making a determined yet futile effort to cover up the mess. The ruling party politicians have gone into overdrive to deny reports of their corrupt deals, rampant malnutrition and other such issues. They have even sought to challenge the reports issued by some UN agencies on poverty, food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition. They have insisted in Parliament that the situation here is not as bad as it is made out to be, but everybody knows that their cock-and-bull narratives are based on stories cooked up by a bunch of stooges in the garb of bureaucrats. Now, they have launched a witch-hunt against whistleblowers. The Health Ministry has initiated an inquiry against President of the Public Health Officers’ Association Upul Rohana, who has revealed that a consignment of Thriposha (a supplementary food item given free of charge to lactating mothers and undernourished children) was found to be contaminated with aflatoxin.

The SLPP politicians have overtaken King Kekille, who according to folk stories, always punished the innocent and spared the wrongdoers whenever he heard cases. He once had a goldsmith punished for a structural fault in a newly-built wall around his palace. On being questioned by the king, the bricklayer concerned said he had been distracted by an attractive woman who had been going past the work site several times a day. The woman, summoned to the royal court, said she had been compelled to make many trips to the goldsmith, who had delayed the delivery of her order. So, the king decided to punish the goldworker.The current rulers must be King Kekille’s descendants.