Features

Marriage and some amazingly accurate astrological forecasts

Published

3 years ago

2023/03/26

Thilina Walpola

Excerpted from the Memoirs of a Cabinet Secretary by BP Peiris

(Continued from last week)

On my return from England as a fledgling barrister, I found that my kind father and mother had selected a bride for me, a close relative of mine. After about two months, he informed me of the fact, but I was reluctant to agree to marriage at so early an age because I was not earning enough at the Bar, not even enough to support myself.

Francis de Zoysa’s average of four guineas a month might, theoretically, have been a good yardstick, but for all practical purposes, my father had to give me money for my food and traveling which, for an advocate in those days meant first class travel by train.

In the meantime, every foreign mail was bringing me about six or seven letters from the girls amongst whom I had lived at Sutton and Ealing in England. They had all returned to their homes and the envelopes carried the stamps of their respective countries. They were harmless letters reminding me of old times, but parents probably feared that I might be under a promise of marriage to one of the letter-writers.

My mother was worried and her blood-pressure was rising. My father, to whom I had never lied since the caning I received from him for smoking in school and lying about it, asked me whether I had given a promise of marriage to any girl and said that, if I had done so, he would pull me out of the mess. I said I had given no such promise. Father then asked me why I was persistently refusing any offer of marriage and told me that my horoscope, which was a very difficult one to match, had been compared with the girl’s and had ‘agreed’ almost one-hundred per cent. I gave my consent. At the time of revising this (1976), I have been very happily married for 42 years.

My wife-to-be, Adeline, was related to me, but this relationship was extremely complicated. Her father, a simple and honest businessman, K. C. J. de Silva of Galle, was a highly respected man in the Southern province. The initials ‘K. C. J.’ were well known all the way from the Bentota Bridge down to Tissamaharama and the other way beyond Deniyaya.

I had an 18-month engagement. My father-in-law died three months after my marriage. He used to tell me stories about his rise to ‘power’, of his wealth and of the hard work which he had put in to earn that wealth. Of his integrity there was no doubt. This quality must have been ingrained in him; he expected it of others and he never forgave an ingrate. He held no university degree. But it could have been said of him that he had graduated in our local School of Business.

In the middle of my engagement, came one of the Supreme Court vacations. My normal visits to my fiancee was on Sunday by train. I had no car at the time, which was inconvenient as the train got to Galle at about 10 a.m. and I had to take the train back at 5 p.m. When the Supreme Court adjourned for the August vacation, I asked my father whether he could spare his car for me to go to Galle, and he agreed. I had arranged with my fiancee to come and spend the vacation at her house if her parents approved; but I had not asked her parents’ prior approval. The family had been brought up in a strict and conservative way.

On the morning following the commencement of the vacation, I had packed my suitcase for a two weeks stay at Galle. The suitcase was standing in the front verandah and the car was in the porch. I was about to leave when my father came out and asked me what the suitcase was for. I replied that it was the Supreme Court vacation. My father asked what the vacation had to do with the suitcase and I tactfully explained to him that the weekly Sunday train trips to Galle were wearing me out and that I proposed to spend my vacation with my fiancee.

He asked me whether I had obtained the permission of her parents, reminded me that I was not in England but going to the Southern province among very conservative people. I told him that I would take the bag, and that if I was not invited to stay at the house I would stay at the Hikkaduwa Resthouse. I reached the house at Galle at about 10 a.m. and my bag was taken out of the car and into a room. I asked the driver to take the car back to Panadura.

The home people knew that my only way of returning was by the 5 O’clock train. I was watching the clock – 4.30, 4.45 – not a hint from my mother-in-law-to-be, a kind woman, that I should get ready for the train. Five o’ clock. The train whistled and with it went my means of return. Seven-thirty, and I was asked to wash and be ready for dinner. And lo! I parked there for the next two weeks. The old couple were extremely hospitable. I received the impression that both of them liked me. They bought a piano specially for me; my fiancee did not know how to play.

And finally, came the wedding, June 8, 1934, with all the elaborate arrangements usually expected of weddings in the Southern province, in keeping with the status of the parties concerned. My father had reserved the hostel at the Manning Race Course at Boosa for the bridegroom’s party. We arrived there, changed and proceeded at the auspicious time to the bride’s house for the poruwa ceremony.

We were received with the customary honours and conducted inside by the parents of the bride to the place where the ceremony was to be held. Jayamangala gathas were sung by half a dozen girls while the bride’s step-brother was tying our thumbs with gold thread and pouring water on them. The ceremony over, I was a married man according to the customary law of Ceylon.

After the ceremony, our party returned to the Boosa Hostel for lunch. The wedding was in the afternoon. I had done only two things – booked the Police Band and booked the photographer. To the Bandmaster, I gave the programme to be played. I had no control over the speeches and, unfortunately for me, Mr G. K. W. Perera, who was asked to propose the toast of the young couple preferred to speak in Sinhala, a speech which I understood but could not reply to in that language. I thanked him in English in one sentence.

And then for our 10-day honeymoon on a quiet rubber estate which Mr Alfred Dias of Panadura placed at our disposal. The bungalow was beautiful and one of the most modem type. An excellent cook had produced an excellent dinner. We had a lovely, quiet holiday there, at the end of which we paid a visit to my wife’s parents. After two days at Galle, my wife and I returned to my father’s house at Panadura where we were to live for the next two years.

On our return, my parents were “At Home” to about 1,000 friends. During a traffic block on the narrow road in front of the house, Joseph Light, Assistant Government Agent, directed the drivers in such classical Sinhala that the drivers were unable to understand him. In the course of the evening, Francis de Zoysa made a speech and presented me with a purse from my colleagues in the Law Library.

Though my parents were of the view that, after marriage, a child should live in his or her own house away from the ancestral home, still, as I had no house of my own at the time, they readily agreed to park the two of us. There was never any unpleasantness during the two years we spent with them. My brother-in-law, Dick Dias, was building a house in Panadura. When I saw the plan, I felt the house would suit me and said I would take it when the building was completed. It was a neat, comfortable and compact house into which we moved.

Soon after my marriage, my wife and I went to consult Proctor Clifford Pereira who had given up his practice as a proctor and taken to astrology on the Occidental system. He worked from four-figure logarithm tables and charged his fees by the guinea as a lawyer. Our first visit to Clifford lasted several hours. He was a meticulous man and had a good astrological library. I had taken with me my horoscope written on an ola leaf.

He asked me several questions for over one hour – when I entered school, when I passed each of my examinations here and abroad, when I returned to Ceylon, when I was called to the Bar, when I married, etc. He worked for long with his log tables, my wife and I sitting silently before him. He then said, “The time on your ola leaf, tested with the information you have just given me, is wrong by nine minutes. I will cast your horoscope on the corrected time. Come and see me again in three weeks.”

I called again on the due date and he gave me an amazingly correct written forecast from 1934 to 1952. First, he asked me whether my wife was expecting a baby. When I said “Yes”, he said that the child would be born on April 23 following, and he was correct, where the doctor in charge of the case from the very beginning, my uncle George Wickramasuriya, F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.O.G., was wrong.

Clifford then told me that I would get a Crown appointment in the Middle of August 1936, and inquired whether I had applied for anything. I said I had sent the usual application which every advocate sends for the post of Crown Counsel. He said I would never be appointed a Crown Counsel, that I would definitely get a Crown appointment but would not be in the public eye; I would be by myself, with books and papers and with no contact at all with the public. Reading further, he said “In the year … you will have a promotion, in… your second promotion, and in 1947 you will move into a political appointment.

All these forecasts were correct. But of them, I must speak in my later Chapters. Dr George Wickramasuriya, who brought my daughter into the world, was a much respected man. As I said before, he was in charge of my wife’s case from the very start. It was his last case before he went on two weeks’ leave to Nuwara Eliya. He had fixed April 10 as the date and applied for his leave accordingly. He had sent his family up in advance and was alone in Colombo, waiting for a summons in his last case, a telephone call from me; the confinement was to be at my father’s house at Panadura.

April 10 passed and we came to the 22nd. On that day, at about 3 p.m., I saw his car turning in at my father’s gates, and drums, gloves, sterilizers, and various other instruments were taken out. My wife was not in pain at the time and I asked him what all this meant. He said it was time she got “going”, that he had only three days more left of his leave and that he proposed to give her an injection, which he did, and left the house promising to return by 7 p.m. when, he thought, things ought to be going well.

My mother, whose cousin he was, had a room hastily prepared for him. He returned at the promised time, dressed as he always was, in a satin drill coat, waistcoat and trousers. As I stated, he came at 3 p.m. on April 22. The child was born at 7 p.m. on April 23 (Clifford Pereira’s first forecast). During all this period, throughout the night he refused to change into a sarong saying he was on professional duty and visited my wife’s room every half hour. A most conscientious doctor.

About half an hour after I had heard the cries of the baby, he came out of the room and asked whether he might have a bath. He then changed into an open shirt, his professional duties being over, and, being a most abstemious man, asked for a small whisky and soda. He must have been so very tired. After the first whisky, he took a second one, a most unusual thing with him, had an early dinner, after which he curled himself on the back seat of his large car and told the driver to drive to Nuwara Eliya. He had only two days leave available to him.

I had the greatest difficulty in getting him to send his bill. After about my fifth reminder, he said “Well, if you insist on a payment to me, give me…” which I thought was an extraordinarily low fee for such an eminent man. But he was one of those rare surgeons who had never a thought for a fee; with him service came first.

When I had a house of my own at Panadura, he used to come now and then to spend what he called a restful weekend. His medical bag was always in the car. It was an area of the houses of the wealthy, but right opposite my house lived a poor carpenter. The carpenter’s daughter was confined and the local general practitioner was having a difficult time with an instrument case when he noticed Dr Wickramasuriya’s car turning into my gate.

Before my guest’s bags could be taken out of the car, the carpenter was on his knees on my front doorstep imploring the doctor to come as the other doctor requested his presence. He returned after two hours having brought another child safely into the world. When I asked him what his fee would be in such a case, he said “I can’t charge that poor man a fee”.

He was human, he was sincere, and he was polite. There was always that smile on his face. Avaricious and selfish he definitely was not. He enjoyed helping, within his means, those who were in need, and his politeness went to the extent of raising his hat in a tram-car and giving up his seat to a basket-woman. The man, who could have had anything at all for afternoon tea preferred to have two slices of bread with a tasty fish or meat curry and I often enjoyed such a meal with him.

But there was also a streak of mischief in him. On On his estate at Pannipitiya, while he was playing tennis, he invited me to have some “barley water” which was in a large jug on a teapoy. I liked it so much that I asked whether I might have some more. Soon afterwards, I felt peculiar rumblings in my ‘innards’ and told him I was feeling ill. He smiled and said, “Not to worry, mister, you have only had a little too much sweet, iced toddy from the trees on my land.”

He died an early death and was mourned by his colleagues in the profession and more particularly by a grateful public. He had been the winner of the coveted Katherine Bishop Harman Prize by showing how many lives are lost through ankylostoma and hookworm in pregnant women. He received his prize in person at Oxford.

In the middle of August 1936, while spending a holiday with my wife at her house at Galle, I received a letter from father through a special messenger. To that, was attached the following letter ad dressed to me by the Legal Draftsman, which my father had opened:

Legal Draftsman’s Chambers,
Colombo.
15th August 1936

Dear Mr Peiris,

Will you be so good as to come and see me in my Chambers on Monday morning, about 10 a.m. I wish to offer you an acting appointment in this Department as an Assistant Legal Draftsman on a commencing salary of Rs 545/-.

Yours truly,

Mervyn Fonseka
I duly reported, was appointed and assumed duties on 18th August 1936 – Clifford Pereira’s second correct forecast. I served the Department for 11 years.

(To be continued)

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Features

Disaster-proofing paradise: Sri Lanka’s new path to global resilience

Published

1 day ago

2026/01/2

Thilina Walpola

iyadasa Advisor to the Ministry of Science & Technology and a Board of Directors of Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Regulatory Council A value chain management consultant to www.vivonta.lk

As climate shocks multiply worldwide from unseasonal droughts and flash floods to cyclones that now carry unpredictable fury Sri Lanka, long known for its lush biodiversity and heritage, stands at a crossroads. We can either remain locked in a reactive cycle of warnings and recovery, or boldly transform into the world’s first disaster-proof tropical nation — a secure haven for citizens and a trusted destination for global travelers.

The Presidential declaration to transition within one year from a limited, rainfall-and-cyclone-dependent warning system to a full-spectrum, science-enabled resilience model is not only historic — it’s urgent. This policy shift marks the beginning of a new era: one where nature, technology, ancient wisdom, and community preparedness work in harmony to protect every Sri Lankan village and every visiting tourist.

The Current System’s Fatal Gaps

Today, Sri Lanka’s disaster management system is dangerously underpowered for the accelerating climate era. Our primary reliance is on monsoon rainfall tracking and cyclone alerts — helpful, but inadequate in the face of multi-hazard threats such as flash floods, landslides, droughts, lightning storms, and urban inundation.

Institutions are fragmented; responsibilities crisscross between agencies, often with unclear mandates and slow decision cycles. Community-level preparedness is minimal — nearly half of households lack basic knowledge on what to do when a disaster strikes. Infrastructure in key regions is outdated, with urban drains, tank sluices, and bunds built for rainfall patterns of the 1960s, not today’s intense cloudbursts or sea-level rise.

Critically, Sri Lanka is not yet integrated with global planetary systems — solar winds, El Niño cycles, Indian Ocean Dipole shifts — despite clear evidence that these invisible climate forces shape our rainfall, storm intensity, and drought rhythms. Worse, we have lost touch with our ancestral systems of environmental management — from tank cascades to forest sanctuaries — that sustained this island for over two millennia.

This system, in short, is outdated, siloed, and reactive. And it must change.

A New Vision for Disaster-Proof Sri Lanka

Under the new policy shift, Sri Lanka will adopt a complete resilience architecture that transforms climate disaster prevention into a national development strategy. This system rests on five interlinked pillars:

Science and Predictive Intelligence

We will move beyond surface-level forecasting. A new national climate intelligence platform will integrate:

AI-driven pattern recognition of rainfall and flood events

Global data from solar activity, ocean oscillations (ENSO, MJO, IOD)

High-resolution digital twins of floodplains and cities

Real-time satellite feeds on cyclone trajectory and ocean heat

The adverse impacts of global warming—such as sea-level rise, the proliferation of pests and diseases affecting human health and food production, and the change of functionality of chlorophyll—must be systematically captured, rigorously analysed, and addressed through proactive, advance decision-making.

This fusion of local and global data will allow days to weeks of anticipatory action, rather than hours of late alerts.

Advanced Technology and Early Warning Infrastructure

Cell-broadcast alerts in all three national languages, expanded weather radar, flood-sensing drones, and tsunami-resilient siren networks will be deployed. Community-level sensors in key river basins and tanks will monitor and report in real-time. Infrastructure projects will now embed climate-risk metrics — from cyclone-proof buildings to sea-level-ready roads.

Governance Overhaul

A new centralised authority — Sri Lanka Climate & Earth Systems Resilience Authority — will consolidate environmental, meteorological, Geological, hydrological, and disaster functions. It will report directly to the Cabinet with a real-time national dashboard. District Disaster Units will be upgraded with GN-level digital coordination. Climate literacy will be declared a national priority.

People Power and Community Preparedness

We will train 25,000 village-level disaster wardens and first responders. Schools will run annual drills for floods, cyclones, tsunamis and landslides. Every community will map its local hazard zones and co-create its own resilience plan. A national climate citizenship programme will reward youth and civil organisations contributing to early warning systems, reforestation (riverbank, slopy land and catchment areas) , or tech solutions.

Reviving Ancient Ecological Wisdom

Sri Lanka’s ancestors engineered tank cascades that regulated floods, stored water, and cooled microclimates. Forest belts protected valleys; sacred groves were biodiversity reservoirs. This policy revives those systems:

Restoring 10,000 hectares of tank ecosystems

Conserving coastal mangroves and reintroducing stone spillways

Integrating traditional seasonal calendars with AI forecasts

Recognising Vedda knowledge of climate shifts as part of national risk strategy

Our past and future must align, or both will be lost.

A Global Destination for Resilient Tourism

Climate-conscious travelers increasingly seek safe, secure, and sustainable destinations. Under this policy, Sri Lanka will position itself as the world’s first “climate-safe sanctuary island” — a place where:

Resorts are cyclone- and tsunami-resilient

Tourists receive live hazard updates via mobile apps

World Heritage Sites are protected by environmental buffers

Visitors can witness tank restoration, ancient climate engineering, and modern AI in action

Sri Lanka will invite scientists, startups, and resilience investors to join our innovation ecosystem — building eco-tourism that’s disaster-proof by design.

Resilience as a National Identity

This shift is not just about floods or cyclones. It is about redefining our identity. To be Sri Lankan must mean to live in harmony with nature and to be ready for its changes. Our ancestors did it. The science now supports it. The time has come.

Let us turn Sri Lanka into the world’s first climate-resilient heritage island — where ancient wisdom meets cutting-edge science, and every citizen stands protected under one shield: a disaster-proof nation.

Features

The minstrel monk and Rafiki the old mandrill in The Lion King – I

Published

1 day ago

2026/01/2

Thilina Walpola

Why is national identity so important for a people? AI provides us with an answer worth understanding critically (Caveat: Even AI wisdom should be subjected to the Buddha’s advice to the young Kalamas):

‘A strong sense of identity is crucial for a people as it fosters belonging, builds self-worth, guides behaviour, and provides resilience, allowing individuals to feel connected, make meaningful choices aligned with their values, and maintain mental well-being even amidst societal changes or challenges, acting as a foundation for individual and collective strength. It defines “who we are” culturally and personally, driving shared narratives, pride, political action, and healthier relationships by grounding people in common values, traditions, and a sense of purpose.’

Ethnic Sinhalese who form about 75% of the Sri Lankan population have such a unique identity secured by the binding medium of their Buddhist faith. It is significant that 93% of them still remain Buddhist (according to 2024 statistics/wikipedia), professing Theravada Buddhism, after four and a half centuries of coercive Christianising European occupation that ended in 1948. The Sinhalese are a unique ancient island people with a 2500 year long recorded history, their own language and country, and their deeply evolved Buddhist cultural identity.

Buddhism can be defined, rather paradoxically, as a non-religious religion, an eminently practical ethical-philosophy based on mind cultivation, wisdom and universal compassion. It is an ethico-spiritual value system that prioritises human reason and unaided (i.e., unassisted by any divine or supernatural intervention) escape from suffering through self-realisation. Sri Lanka’s benignly dominant Buddhist socio-cultural background naturally allows unrestricted freedom of religion, belief or non-belief for all its citizens, and makes the country a safe spiritual haven for them. The island’s Buddha Sasana (Dispensation of the Buddha) is the inalienable civilisational treasure that our ancestors of two and a half millennia have bequeathed to us. It is this enduring basis of our identity as a nation which bestows on us the personal and societal benefits of inestimable value mentioned in the AI summary given at the beginning of this essay.

It was this inherent national identity that the Sri Lankan contestant at the 72nd Miss World 2025 pageant held in Hyderabad, India, in May last year, Anudi Gunasekera, proudly showcased before the world, during her initial self-introduction. She started off with a verse from the Dhammapada (a Pali Buddhist text), which she explained as meaning “Refrain from all evil and cultivate good”. She declared, “And I believe that’s my purpose in life”. Anudi also mentioned that Sri Lanka had gone through a lot “from conflicts to natural disasters, pandemics, economic crises….”, adding, “and yet, my people remain hopeful, strong, and resilient….”.

“Ayubowan! I am Anudi Gunasekera from Sri Lanka. It is with immense pride that I represent my Motherland, a nation of resilience, timeless beauty, and a proud history, Sri Lanka.

“I come from Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’s first capital, and UNESCO World Heritage site, with its history and its legacy of sacred monuments and stupas…….”.

The “inspiring words” that Anudi quoted are from the Dhammapada (Verse 183), which runs, in English translation: “To avoid all evil/To cultivate good/and to cleanse one’s mind -/this is the teaching of the Buddhas”. That verse is so significant because it defines the basic ‘teaching of the Buddhas’ (i.e., Buddha Sasana; this is how Walpole Rahula Thera defines Buddha Sasana in his celebrated introduction to Buddhism ‘What the Buddha Taught’ first published in1959).

Twenty-five year old Anudi Gunasekera is an alumna of the University of Kelaniya, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Studies. She is planning to do a Master’s in the same field. Her ambition is to join the foreign service in Sri Lanka. Gen Z’er Anudi is already actively engaged in social service. The Saheli Foundation is her own initiative launched to address period poverty (i.e., lack of access to proper sanitation facilities, hygiene and health education, etc.) especially among women and post-puberty girls of low-income classes in rural and urban Sri Lanka.

Young Anudi is primarily inspired by her patriotic devotion to ‘my Motherland, a nation of resilience, timeless beauty, and a proud history, Sri Lanka’. In post-independence Sri Lanka, thousands of young men and women of her age have constantly dedicated themselves, oftentimes making the supreme sacrifice, motivated by a sense of national identity, by the thought ‘This is our beloved Motherland, these are our beloved people’.

The rescue and recovery of Sri Lanka from the evil aftermath of a decade of subversive ‘Aragalaya’ mayhem is waiting to be achieved, in every sphere of national engagement, including, for example, economics, communications, culture and politics, by the enlightened Anudi Gunasekeras and their male counterparts of the Gen Z, but not by the demented old stragglers lingering in the political arena listening to the unnerving rattle of “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”, nor by the baila blaring monks at propaganda rallies.

Politically active monks (Buddhist bhikkhus) are only a handful out of the Maha Sangha (the general body of Buddhist bhikkhus) in Sri Lanka, who numbered just over 42,000 in 2024. The vast majority of monks spend their time quietly attending to their monastic duties. Buddhism upholds social and emotional virtues such as universal compassion, empathy, tolerance and forgiveness that protect a society from the evils of tribalism, religious bigotry and death-dealing religious piety.

Not all monks who express or promote political opinions should be censured. I choose to condemn only those few monks who abuse the yellow robe as a shield in their narrow partisan politics. I cannot bring myself to disapprove of the many socially active monks, who are articulating the genuine problems that the Buddha Sasana is facing today. The two bhikkhus who are the most despised monks in the commercial media these days are Galaboda-aththe Gnanasara and Ampitiye Sumanaratana Theras. They have a problem with their mood swings. They have long been whistleblowers trying to raise awareness respectively, about spreading religious fundamentalism, especially, violent Islamic Jihadism, in the country and about the vandalising of the Buddhist archaeological heritage sites of the north and east provinces. The two middle-aged monks (Gnanasara and Sumanaratana) belong to this respectable category. Though they are relentlessly attacked in the social media or hardly given any positive coverage of the service they are doing, they do nothing more than try to persuade the rulers to take appropriate action to resolve those problems while not trespassing on the rights of people of other faiths.

These monks have to rely on lay political leaders to do the needful, without themselves taking part in sectarian politics in the manner of ordinary members of the secular society. Their generally demonised social image is due, in my opinion, to three main reasons among others: 1) spreading misinformation and disinformation about them by those who do not like what they are saying and doing, 2) their own lack of verbal restraint, and 3) their being virtually abandoned to the wolves by the temporal and spiritual authorities.

(To be continued)

By Rohana R. Wasala ✍️

Features

US’ drastic aid cut to UN poses moral challenge to world

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

An UN humanitarian mission in the Gaza. [File: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]

‘Adapt, shrink or die’ – thus runs the warning issued by the Trump administration to UN humanitarian agencies with brute insensitivity in the wake of its recent decision to drastically reduce to $2bn its humanitarian aid to the UN system. This is a substantial climb down from the $17bn the US usually provided to the UN for its humanitarian operations.

Considering that the US has hitherto been the UN’s biggest aid provider, it need hardly be said that the US decision would pose a daunting challenge to the UN’s humanitarian operations around the world. This would indeed mean that, among other things, people living in poverty and stifling material hardships, in particularly the Southern hemisphere, could dramatically increase. Coming on top of the US decision to bring to an end USAID operations, the poor of the world could be said to have been left to their devices as a consequence of these morally insensitive policy rethinks of the Trump administration.

Earlier, the UN had warned that it would be compelled to reduce its aid programs in the face of ‘the deepest funding cuts ever.’ In fact the UN is on record as requesting the world for $23bn for its 2026 aid operations.

If this UN appeal happens to go unheeded, the possibilities are that the UN would not be in a position to uphold the status it has hitherto held as the world’s foremost humanitarian aid provider. It would not be incorrect to state that a substantial part of the rationale for the UN’s existence could come in for questioning if its humanitarian identity is thus eroded.

Inherent in these developments is a challenge for those sections of the international community that wish to stand up and be counted as humanists and the ‘Conscience of the World.’ A responsibility is cast on them to not only keep the UN system going but to also ensure its increased efficiency as a humanitarian aid provider to particularly the poorest of the poor.

It is unfortunate that the US is increasingly opting for a position of international isolation. Such a policy position was adopted by it in the decades leading to World War Two and the consequences for the world as a result of this policy posture were most disquieting. For instance, it opened the door to the flourishing of dictatorial regimes in the West, such as that led by Adolph Hitler in Germany, which nearly paved the way for the subjugation of a good part of Europe by the Nazis.

If the US had not intervened militarily in the war on the side of the Allies, the West would have faced the distressing prospect of coming under the sway of the Nazis and as a result earned indefinite political and military repression. By entering World War Two the US helped to ward off these bleak outcomes and indeed helped the major democracies of Western Europe to hold their own and thrive against fascism and dictatorial rule.

Republican administrations in the US in particular have not proved the greatest defenders of democratic rule the world over, but by helping to keep the international power balance in favour of democracy and fundamental human rights they could keep under a tight leash fascism and linked anti-democratic forces even in contemporary times. Russia’s invasion and continued occupation of parts of Ukraine reminds us starkly that the democracy versus fascism battle is far from over.

Right now, the US needs to remain on the side of the rest of the West very firmly, lest fascism enjoys another unfettered lease of life through the absence of countervailing and substantial military and political power.

However, by reducing its financial support for the UN and backing away from sustaining its humanitarian programs the world over the US could be laying the ground work for an aggravation of poverty in the South in particular and its accompaniments, such as, political repression, runaway social discontent and anarchy.

What should not go unnoticed by the US is the fact that peace and social stability in the South and the flourishing of the same conditions in the global North are symbiotically linked, although not so apparent at first blush. For instance, if illegal migration from the South to the US is a major problem for the US today, it is because poor countries are not receiving development assistance from the UN system to the required degree. Such deprivation on the part of the South leads to aggravating social discontent in the latter and consequences such as illegal migratory movements from South to North.

Accordingly, it will be in the North’s best interests to ensure that the South is not deprived of sustained development assistance since the latter is an essential condition for social contentment and stable governance, which factors in turn would guard against the emergence of phenomena such as illegal migration.

Meanwhile, democratic sections of the rest of the world in particular need to consider it a matter of conscience to ensure the sustenance and flourishing of the UN system. To be sure, the UN system is considerably flawed but at present it could be called the most equitable and fair among international development organizations and the most far-flung one. Without it world poverty would have proved unmanageable along with the ills that come along with it.

Dehumanizing poverty is an indictment on humanity. It stands to reason that the world community should rally round the UN and ensure its survival lest the abomination which is poverty flourishes. In this undertaking the world needs to stand united. Ambiguities on this score could be self-defeating for the world community.

For example, all groupings of countries that could demonstrate economic muscle need to figure prominently in this initiative. One such grouping is BRICS. Inasmuch as the US and the West should shrug aside Realpolitik considerations in this enterprise, the same goes for organizations such as BRICS.

The arrival at the above international consensus would be greatly facilitated by stepped up dialogue among states on the continued importance of the UN system. Fresh efforts to speed-up UN reform would prove major catalysts in bringing about these positive changes as well. Also requiring to be shunned is the blind pursuit of narrow national interests.