Monday 12th May, 2025

A tragic road accident near Kotmale claimed 21 lives yesterday and left 35 others seriously injured. Disaster struck when a state-owned bus plying from Kataragama to Kurunegala via Nuwara Eliya, veered off a winding road and plunged down a precipice. Yesterday’s tragedy has jolted politicians and officials alike into action, but it is bound to be forgotten soon. Sri Lanka lacks a proper national strategy to prevent road fatalities. Hardly a day passes without a fatal road traffic accident being reported. About 2,243 people were killed and 4,552 others seriously injured in road accidents in 2024. Of those mishaps 2,141 were fatal.

The cause of yesterday’s accident had not been established at the time of going to press. The ill-fated bus had gone out of control due to a technical fault, according to some reports, but a survivor has been quoted as saying the vehicle was speeding. One can only hope that the police, the SLTB and the Transport Ministry will conduct a thorough probe into Sunday’s accident and take action to prevent such tragedies.

A World Bank report, Delivering Road Safety in Sri Lanka; Leadership Priorities and Initiatives to 2030, reveals that ‘the high road crash fatality and injury rates on Sri Lanka’s roads undermine the economic growth and progress made over the past decade on reducing poverty and boosting prosperity’. The report says the annual crash deaths per capita in Sri Lanka are twice the average rate in high-income countries and five times that of the best performing countries in the world! Sri Lanka reportedly has the worst road fatality rate among its immediate neighbours in the South Asia region.

It has been revealed that many drivers operate while being impaired by alcohol or drugs. In 2021, then the government disclosed that about 80% of the private bus drivers in Colombo and its suburbs were under the influence of drugs while on duty. The situation must be more or less the same where other heavy vehicle drivers are concerned. Trucks ply like bats out of hell on busy roads, terrorising other road users, making one doubt the sobriety of their drivers. The initial detection of impaired driving with visual inspection is relatively easier where drunk drivers are concerned, but the task of nabbing drugged divers is far more difficult. Hence the need for methods such as random roadside drug tests.

Complaints abound that passenger buses are not properly maintained or even regularly cleaned. Their owners try to teach politicians how to govern the country while they are doing precious little to operate their own buses in a civilised manner. Successive governments have not cared to arrest the deterioration of the SLTB, much less develop it to provide a better service. About 2,000 SLTB buses are out of service, mainly for want of spares, according to the Transport Ministry, and the roadworthiness of the ones in operation is reportedly in question. No surprise that the SLTB fleet is plagued by technical defects.

Meanwhile, a road safety expert, a few years ago, proposed that bamboo be planted on the slopes adjacent to curvy roads to stabilise soil, maintain the integrity of land in those areas and complement engineered structures such as guardrails to prevent vehicles from plunging down precipices. Nothing much has since been heard about this proposal, which deserves the attention of the authorities responsible for ensuring road safety.

Road safety experts have identified the following factors, inter alia, as the common causes of crashes on expressways and other roads in Sri Lanka: speeding, distractions, recklessness, fatigue, driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, inclement weather conditions, inadequate road conditions, tailgating, improper lane changes, inexperience of drivers, overtaking dangerously, poor visibility, unroadworthy vehicles, poor signage or lack of road markings and impatience or time pressure. One of the aforesaid factors or a combination of two or more of them could lead to fatal accidents on any road. So, any strategy to prevent road mishaps consists in addressing those causes.

One can only hope that yesterday’s tragic accident will galvanise the authorities concerned to make a truly national effort to save lives being lost on roads.

The missionary life is no highway paved with comforts. It is a journey of grit and grace, often walked amid many difficulties and hardships. You leave behind your homeland, your language, your family and begin afresh in lands where your name means nothing and your faith is everything. You must learn to speak a new language, eat what the people eat, walk where they walk and suffer as they suffer. It’s not a life for the fainthearted, but for those made of sterner stuff and deeper faith.

Two such men embodied that calling. One was Guillermo Steckling, a German Oblate who served with distinction in Paraguay. The other, an American Augustinian named Francis Prevost, laboured in tough terrains of Peru. Their missionary work was not just about building churches but about building lives – working alongside the poor, walking with the marginalized and anchoring the Church in places long forgotten by power.

They were, quite literally, men with little say but had big hearts to help the poorest of the poor and the marginalized. But Rome had its eye on them. Their work bore such fruit that both were called to lead their global congregations. Steckling became Superior General of the Oblates and Prevost Prior General of Order of St. Augustine.

Still, Pope Francis, ever the shepherd with a nose for humble holiness, sent them back – not to offices in Rome, but to the dusty front-lines where they had made their mark. Steckling returned to Paraguay as Bishop. So did Prevost in Peru. Pope Francis loved missionaries and he knew they were capable men. It was a move as pastoral as it was prophetic – a strategy to shape the future leadership of the Church not through ambition, but through service.

Today, that same Francis Prevost has succeeded his mentor Pope Francis as Pope Leo XIV – shepherd of 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide. A professor of Canon Law and a mathematician by training, he was never considered a front runner for pope by Vatican watchers. In fact, when he entered the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave, he had been a Cardinal for barely two years. Yet, four ballots later, the white smoke rose.

Cardinal Prevost’s election recalls the October Conclave of 1978, when little known Karol Wojtyła, the Polish Cardinal who became John Paul II. But unlike 1978, where a stalemate between Italian heavyweights led to a compromise choice, this time the Cardinals rallied behind Prevost early. The two-thirds majority came swiftly after four ballots unlike in 1978 where they had eight ballots.

When he stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, his first words were not lofty proclamations, but a whisper to a wounded world: “Peace be with you.” In an age riven by conflict – in Gaza, in Ukraine and in Kashmir – his greeting rang out like balm on an open wound.

Pope Francis had often urged global leaders to be instruments of peace. Pope Leo XIV seems poised to carry that mission forward – not with diplomatic finesse, perhaps, but with the moral weight of a man who has lived among the poor and who speaks not from a podium but from the heart.

He has never shied away from uncomfortable truths. Even before his elevation, Cardinal Prevost voiced his concerns over U.S. immigration policies, particularly the practice of separating children from their families. He took on Vice President J.D. Vance – a fellow Catholic – when Prevost said, “Jesus does not ask us to rank our love.”

He may be the first American Pope, but he does not carry the triumphalism that often trails that label. Born in Chicago, yes – but shaped in Peru. His spiritual passport bears the stamps of Lima’s slums, not Washington’s corridors. His theology is rooted not in ideology but in going after the lost sheep.

His choice of name – Leo – is a signal in itself. The last to wear that name was Leo XIII, the great “Pope of the Workers,” who reigned for 25 years at the turn of the 20th century and became a beacon for social justice. Leo XIII was the author of an encyclical that championed the rights of labourers and demanded dignity for those who toil. It was a milestone in Catholic social teaching. By invoking that name, Pope Leo XIV seems to be saying: the mission continues.

Indeed, for centuries the papacy was seen as Rome’s to keep. That hold was first broken in 1978. John Paul II broke barriers in a papacy that ran for 27 years.

This time, many assumed the pendulum would swing back to Italy, especially with several seasoned Italian Cardinals in contention. But the College of Cardinals, guided by the spirit of Pope Francis, chose not a bureaucrat, nor a diplomat – but a missionary. A man who has “the smell of the sheep.”

Pope Leo XIV may have entered the Conclave a rank outsider; he now carries the keys of St. Peter to further Pope Francis’ mission and vision for the church.

Saturday 10th May, 2025

The much-awaited Local Government (LG) elections are over, but political battles continue. The government and the Opposition are all out to gain control of the hung local councils, which outnumber those with clear majorities. This issue has distracted the public from a crucial issue––campaign funding and expenditure. The NPP obviously outspent its rivals, who also must have spent huge amounts of funds on their election campaigns.

The Election Commission (EC) has asked all candidates who contested Tuesday’s LG elections to submit detailed reports on their campaign funding and expenditure, on or before 28 May. Commissioner General of Election Saman Sri Ratnayake has said this process is part of the EC’s efforts to ensure transparency and accountability in the electoral process. The EC has issued this directive under the Election Expenditure Regulation (EER) Act No. 03 of 2023, which requires all candidates to submit returns of donations or contributions received and expenditure incurred in respect of an election, to the EC within twenty-one days of the date of publication of the results thereof.

The EER Act has fulfilled a long-felt need. However, it contains serious flaws, which have stood in the way of its enforcement. Truthfulness is not a trait attributed to Sri Lankan politicians, and therefore the returns of campaign funding and expenditure are falsified in most cases, and they reveal only a fraction of campaign funds and expenditure. These returns are not subject to scrutiny. This has stood unscrupulous candidates in good stead, and the goal that the EER Act was intended to achieve remains unfulfilled due to the loopholes in the new law.

Unless the flaws in the EER Act are rectified urgently, it will not be possible to arrest the erosion of public trust in the electoral process. Election campaigns usually serve as a key enabler of money laundering and various forms of corruption in this country, as is public knowledge. Party war chests are the ground zero of corruption, as we argued in a previous comment, for they pave the way for undue influence, policy manipulations, etc.

One may recall that the perpetrators of the sugar tax racket under the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government were the financiers of the SLPP. The UNP benefited from the largesse of the Treasury bond racketeers ahead of the 2015 general election.

The submission of falsified returns of campaign funding and expenditure has made a mockery of the EER Act. Some anti-corruption outfits and election monitors have been demanding amendments to the EER Act to rectify its flaws. Their campaign deserves public support.

The incumbent NPP government came to power, vowing to eradicate corruption, and therefore it will have to ensure that the EER Act is rid of loopholes and noncompliance is severely dealt with. It is hoped that either the government or the Opposition will take the initiative without further delay, and Parliament will unanimously ratify the amendments to be moved.