Pandemic profiteering and constitutional distractions

Ah, take the cash, and let the virus spread!

by Rajan Philips

“Some for the Glories of This World; and some Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!”

― Omar Khayyam

Covid-19 is getting too close to home for too many. Last week it was Suresh Perera at the Sunday Island. This week it was Mangala Samaraweera, the veteran politician, who passed way after contracting Covid-19. He was a political stalwart behind the victories of Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena in presidential elections. He was also a faithful lieutenant to former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. A frontline cabinet minister in multiple portfolios since 1994, Mangala surpassed his father and political figure Mahanama Samaraweera in profile and in popularity.

Mangala Samaraweera will be remembered as a sincere and outspoken champion of pluralism, tolerance and national reconciliation even though his public pronouncements often created more controversy than consensus among his compatriots. As Foreign Minister, he tried to forge a new relationship with western countries predicated on respect for and observance of human rights. Shortly before his illness, he successfully interceded to obtain Covid-19 vaccine supplies for Sri Lanka from the US. Mangala Samaraweera’s death is widely mourned even as Covid-19 victims are getting more numerous and increasingly personal.

The 10-day lockdown imposed on Friday August 20 has not been able to reduce the daily totals of infections and deaths. Without a lockdown the totals would have been way higher. If the current trend continues, it would be a matter of weeks before total infections pass the half a million landmark and the number of deaths exceed 10,000. For the longest time after the onset of Covid-19, Sri Lanka’s totals were few hundreds of infections and hardly two dozen deaths. A political victory was declared prematurely, and public health was ignored almost permanently. Now there is no obvious end in sight, to plan for victory celebrations, even with the optimistic expectation of a fully vaccinated nation. Before looking for the end of the tunnel, look at what next steps are in sight.

The known unknown, at the time of writing, is whether the current lockdown will be ended or extended, come Monday. The decision apparently will be made on Friday August 27, according to news reports citing Dr. Asela Gunawardane, Director General of Health Services. By the time this column appears, you will already know whether or not the lockdown is continuing. The known known from Dr. Gunawardane’s statement is that the good doctor is at least open to continuing the lockdown. The unknown unknown, in Rumsfeld parlance, is the mind or the mindlessness of the President.

Friday last week, after months of resisting medical opinion, the President used the plea from the country’s highest prelates as reason for relenting and agreeing to a lockdown. Whose pleas are going to tip the scales a second time? What planetary signals are flashing in the national clairvoyant’s crystal ball? There are many other knowns and unknowns.

Unclaimed Bodies and Overclaimed Profits

The big known about the current lockdown is the confusion that shrouded its multiple announcements. As a result, people have been left to wonder whether they are in a lockdown, or a quarantine curfew; what is open and what is closed; and what activities are allowed and what are not. The administrative confusion is confounded by political infighting in the government. The SLPP is again taking to task its miniscule partners in the governing alliance for showing disloyalty to the President – this time writing to him and asking for a lockdown in deference to the medical opinion that has been calling for one for months on end.

It really requires extraordinary imagination to accuse the likes of Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanpila and Vasudeva Nanayakkara that they are of part of an international plot to bring about a regime change in Sri Lanka. Plot with whom – North Korea? But that apparently is the current pre-occupation of the SLPP – to safeguard the President, and not fighting Covid-19 to save the country. It has also been reported that at SLPP’s behest senior government officials are releasing communications and statements opposing the current lockdown and/or curfew measures. And this at a time when the police are arresting people on the street in record daily numbers for alleged curfew violations.

Besides the confusion at large in the country and paranoia within the government there is also the tragically known unknown about the last rites for people who are dying and are going to their graves or are turning into ashes – unseen and unwept and even unclaimed by their bereaving families. Lynn Ockersz has versified the insensitive crassness with which the (Covid-19) dead are being officially treated. His poem “The Unclaimed Body” (The Island, August 18) also calls out the Republic’s preference and religiosity: “Such treatment of the dead is no surprise,” the poem hits the nail on the coffin, “In a republic that’s preferred to be in chains … and in a land where religiosity pompously parades …”

Even elephants are protesting at parades, perhaps unlocking what DH Lawrence poetically saw while on a visit to the island during the 1922 “Pera-hera, at midnight, under the tropical stars,” as “the mystery of the dark mountain of blood, reeking in  homage, in lust, in rage, and passive with everlasting patience.” Prudent rulers, whether kings or presidents, would never take patience to be everlasting either among elephants or among citizens.

While it is too much to expect poetic sensitivity to be observed in government operations, it is fair and reasonable to expect that a government that is boastful of its vistas and splendour, would show some respect for the nation’s dead and compassion for those that are left to mourn. Just as healthcare workers are expected to have good bedside manners, it is not too much to ask that the government directs its deathcare workers to show proper mortuary manners, graveside manners and pyre-side manners.

From deaths to profits is a tortuous leap, but not with a pandemic around and with this government at the helm. There are plausible allegations that profits and commissions are being garnered from selling vaccines, performing tests, disposing dead bodies and designating quarantine hotels. A retired Chief Epidemiologist has publicly stated that the President’s directive to conduct weekly Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) on people over 60 years of age with pre-existing medical conditions will not contribute to saving lives but only to generating profits for companies importing RAT test kits.

It known that test kits are imported at USD 4 (Rs. 800) per kit with 10 testing samples, or a cost of Rs. 80 per sample. Private hospitals apparently charge patients Rs. 2,500 per sample, for a profit of Rs. 2,420 on each sample with the bulk of it going to the importer. The cost of a RAT test kit in India is INR 150, and in many countries the kits are distributed free. It is bad enough to have a government that is ill-equipped and incompetent, but do people deserve a government that presides over such a rip off in the middle of a pandemic? Ah, take the cash, and let the virus spread. That seems to have become the unwritten motto.

Constitutional Distractions

As for the virus spread, Sri Lanka has all the experts needed in Epidemiology and Public Health to advise the government and lead a programmatic path to containing the spread of the virus. But the government has failed to assemble them to perform this task. The government’s failure to give medical experts an organizational forum to provide leadership has led them to literally freelance in the media instead of directly advising the government.

Practically in most countries governments are following the advice of medical experts. In some western countries governments conveniently abdicate their responsibilities to scientists and experts. India and Sri Lanka are notable exceptions. The results on the Covid-19 front are unmistakable. The Indian situation is different from Sri Lanka’s. In India, the BJP and Prime Minister Modi do not trust any Indian expert, professional, or academic who is not a BJPer. They are suspected to be secularists or Nehru loyalists and are excluded as far as possible from decision making in state institutions. All important decisions have to be made by the Prime Minister himself. Similar to the Trump presidency. This approach blew up in the face for Modi and the BJP, jus as it did for Trump.

In Sri Lanka, until recently, almost everyone of consequence wanted to be associated with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the SLPP. There are no Senanayake or Bandaranaike loyalists lurking in state institutions and agencies to undermine the Rajapaksas. President Rajapaksa did not have to suspect anyone or exclude anyone especially in the matter of Covid-19. He could have summoned and consistently obtained the best expert advice and recommendations possible and presided over their implementation through the state machinery including the army. When things go right, he could take political credit for them, and if they go wrong he could damn the experts. Why was this approach not taken? That has already become the defining question for the prematurely tottering GR presidency.

As explanatory factors go – there is inexperience and incompetence. But one year of Covid-19 experience is worth a lifetime of normal experience, and you can always compensate for incompetence by picking and relying on people who are competent. Sinhala nationalism is more a convenient ruse than a defining political cause for the Rajapaksas. Of course, for those who want to manipulate Rajapaksas as weapons of history, they can be a pretty authentic bunch. In any event, nationalism is neither a vaccine nor therapy against Covid-19. Even ‘vaccine nationalism’ never found much traction, and for Sri Lanka it has no meaning.

What seems to have pushed the GR presidency off track on Covid-19 is the administration’s, and the family’s, hunger for project distractions. They would rather allocate national resources and incur debt for financially profiteering but economically dead end development projects than spend time and resources in purposefully fighting Covid-19. The government and the family have never shied away from their distractive priorities: the Port City in Colombo, a millionaire Yacht Club in Hambantota, 500 gyms throughout the country, transport and highway projects based Ponzi funding sources – the list will keep going on. And where there is a choice involved between public interest and commercial interests, the scales are always tilted in favour of the latter. No government has so comprehensively alienated and outraged every working segment of Sri Lanka’s population – farmers, teachers, fishers, workers and professionals.

A qualitatively different distraction is the constitutional project. Covid-19 may have put on hold the work of the Expert Committee set up to guide the writing of a new constitution – the fourth in 74 years. The Committee’s report was expected in July, there has not been any new news on its current status. This is hardly the time for preparing a new constitution. More importantly, the present government and parliament are by far the least constitutionally literate government or parliament in 90 years of constitutional government. Without Covid-19 the government may have ploughed through to producing a new constitution.

In the current situation and alternating between lockdowns, the government will be pilloried by the public if it takes up the constitutional project as a priority. The project should ideally be allowed to stay quiet and wither away. However, the government would likely welcome any opportunity to restart the project if the suggestion were to come from outside the government. It would be unfortunate and politically ill-advised if a request were to be extended to the government at this time, to write a new constitution to address the problems of the Tamils. It is irresponsible to think that “Covid-19 is a temporary situation and a new constitution is more important.” No one wants a permanent Covid-19 situation, but until Covid-19 is significantly controlled, nothing else can be a priority. More importantly, Covid-19 has turned upside down the credibility of the Rajapaksa government. The government must be pushed and persuaded to focus on Covid-19, even if leads to restoring its credibility. It should not be given the excuse to be distracted from Covid-19 to write a new constitution.