Lucky liars

Monday 11th October, 2021

An unfortunate incident where a woman burnt her five-year-old daughter’s mouth with a firebrand by way of punishment for ‘lying’ has been reported from Kilinochchi. This mother from hell is not alone in harming hapless minors. Some children undergo extremely cruel ‘punishment’ at the hands of their parents in other parts of the country as well, especially when the results of competitive examinations are released. The fifth-graders who face a fiendish scholarship examination in a desperate bid to gain admission to the so-called popular schools, are in a far worse predicament than others. There have been instances where savage punishment drove some ‘poor performers’ to suicide.

The little girl from Kilinochchi has undergone savage punishment for lying, of all things, in a country where liars are going places, and lying is considered a basic skill that children of her age are required to possess. Most Sri Lankan children are coached in lying when they turn five in view of school admissions. They are trained to lie convincingly about their residential addresses, etc., because they have to face ‘interviews’ at the so-called popular schools. Ironically, the children who are trained to lie their way through into ‘good’ schools are expected to be truthful thereafter, and undergo punishment when they are caught lying! This is happening in a country which takes pride in being home to four great religions. When these children grow up, those who are adept at lying through their teeth and fooling others effortlessly go on to become politicians.

We have been treated to loads and loads of half-truths and blatant lies, courtesy of our political representatives, some of whom have been struggling to absolve themselves of the responsibility for mega rackets that have come to light of late. Everybody knows that no scam can take place without politicians getting in on the ground floor, but we have some tainted politicians insisting that they had nothing to do with the Treasury bond scams, the sugar tax racket and the garlic scandal! Politicians have, under successive governments, stolen public funds, received kickbacks from crooked deals at the expense of the country, and stashed away their ill-gotten wealth in tax havens. The Pandora Papers have shed light on their offshore financial transactions. How much money they have parked overseas is not known, but the general consensus is that if a fraction of their hidden wealth could be brought back, Sri Lanka’s forex woes will vanish in next to no time.

The public must have thought all hell would break loose here when the Pandora Papers revelations became known. But we have the Opposition ‘floating like a bee and stinging like a butterfly’, so to speak! It looks as if the rivals of the government were worried about the skeletons in their own cupboards and therefore baulked at going at it hammer and tongs. Something that Ranjan Ramanayake said, when he was an SJB MP, comes to mind; referring to politicians who fought in public but cooperated on the sly to further their mutual interests, he famously said, “Mun okkoma yaaluwo, malli—all of them are friends, bro!

Unfortunately, Ramanayake who had the courage to tell the truth about the rogues, their collusion and the web of deceit that is Sri Lankan politics, is languishing in prison. He should be given a full presidential pardon, and enabled to contest elections again.

A bad habit among Sri Lankans is to curse the mothers of the rogues who trouble them. These insults often lead to violent clashes. Irate members of the public, unable to bear the soaring cost of living and angered by the various rackets, are heard scolding not only the politicians responsible for their plight but the latter’s family members as well. But we believe that people must treat politicians’ mothers with utmost respect’; on listening to our MPs and other elected representatives utter barefaced lies and seeing them misbehave, we are convinced that their mothers are very decent, kind and caring women who never harm children, unlike the aforesaid mother from hell. Otherwise, these characters who have got lying down to a fine art obviously through years of practice since childhood should have burn marks on their faces, like the poor little girl from Kilinochchi.